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EFF Defends Bruce Perens In Appeal of Open Source Security/Spengler Ruling (perens.com)
Bruce Perens co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond -- and he's also Slashdot reader #3872. "The Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed an answering brief in defense of Bruce Perens in the merits appeal of the Open Source Security Inc./Bradley Spengler v. Bruce Perens lawsuit," reads his latest submission -- with more details at Perens.com:
Last year, Open Source Security and its CEO, Bradley Spengler, brought suit against me for defamation and related torts regarding this blog post and this Slashdot discussion. After the lower court ruled against them, I asked for my defense costs and was awarded about $260K for them by the court.
The plaintiffs brought two appeals, one on the merits of the lower court's ruling and one on the fees charged to them for my defense... The Electronic Frontier Foundation took on the merits appeal, pro-bono (for free, for the public good), with the pro-bono assistance of my attorneys at O'Melveny who handled the lower court case...
You can follow the court proceedings here
"Sorry I can't comment further on the case," Perens writes in a comment on Slashdot, adding "it's well-known legal hygiene that you don't do that." But he's willing to talk about other things.
"Valerie and I are doing well. I am doing a lot of travel for the Open Source Initiative as their Standards Chair, speaking with different standards groups and governments about standards in patents and making them compatible with Open Source."
The plaintiffs brought two appeals, one on the merits of the lower court's ruling and one on the fees charged to them for my defense... The Electronic Frontier Foundation took on the merits appeal, pro-bono (for free, for the public good), with the pro-bono assistance of my attorneys at O'Melveny who handled the lower court case...
You can follow the court proceedings here
"Sorry I can't comment further on the case," Perens writes in a comment on Slashdot, adding "it's well-known legal hygiene that you don't do that." But he's willing to talk about other things.
"Valerie and I are doing well. I am doing a lot of travel for the Open Source Initiative as their Standards Chair, speaking with different standards groups and governments about standards in patents and making them compatible with Open Source."
Keep up the good fight. People like the Grsecurity folks are the scourge of the industry in my opinion.
Giving up mod privs for this thread by posting in it and IT'S WORTH IT!
Bruce, I've been an FOSS advocate in every company I've worked in, for, managed, ran, owned, started, and directed.
YOU are the champion of living the word.
Thank you!
Ehud Gavron
Tucson AZ
FAA CPL-H
Not sure who this Bruce guy that everyone keep talking about but to assert my superiority, I demand to fight him in an epic battle for the ages! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
The entire proceeding reads like a personal grudge unsupported by facts and yet executed in the public court system. That would be the very textbook definition of frivolous.
Leave the shrooms mate
You can't sue someone just because they made you look like a tool.
Especially if they're right. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
Well, at least somebody that can match the meaninglessness of his action in his personality got it.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This was a defamation lawsuit. It didn't settle the issue of whether the copyright issue itself is prohibited.
Perens' argument on the legal issue itself strikes me as dubious. He's claiming that GPL copyright automatically extends to separately distributed patches that, themselves, do not contain any of the GPL'ed code. I'm not sure why that would be the case, and I'm not convinced that that would be a ruling that would be in the interest of open source software, because it seems to put a lot of other open source software at risk of being considered "derivative works" of proprietary software.
Nah, your just a troll trying to divide allies. The US and Europe are both very fine places to live. :)
So by your argument I can sue you for voicing an opinion about whether Perens should be sued.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Suppose you write a novel. Perhaps, like Stephen King, you're living in a broken down trailer with no telephone when you're book sells 13,000 copies, netting you $2,500. Then someone turns your book into a movie. The movie doesn't have any pages of the book read aloud in the movie. It doesn't "contain" the book per session, it's a transformation, an adaptation, of the book. The author is entitled to a share of the movie revenue because it's his novel, adapted to the screen. That's a derivative work. "Derived from" doesn't mean "contains".
Are you so inexperienced with UNIX that the only patch format you have ever seen is a context diff?
Please enlighten us oh great unix guru:
What type of patch does not specify which content is being deleted as part of the edit?
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
But to Oligarchs like Larry Page, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates it makes perfect sense.
"diff -e"
You don't have to come up with it, it has been around since V7 and since before context diffs: diff -e
If you wanted a context diff but didn't want to include the literal context, you could replace the context by a hash of the context.
by lawyers I mean. It's really a shame that so much money is spent on things like this, and other frivolous legal actions. While hopefully the right people are vindicated by this (you know who you are, Bruce), the only ones who really win are the lawyers. Their profession is such a twisted self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Ok, that is a fair point. I had not seen that option before.
So rewinding a couple of steps to the part of the argument that led here:
Assume that a patch is created as an ed script, it does not contain any of the kernel code. Its only use is to transform the kernel source. Who owns the coyright on the transformed source that results after the patch is applied?
Slashdot: where don knuth is an idiot because he cant grasp the awesome power of php
a) I know this is not APK, as I actually am able to communicate with people directly and openly, something you obviously have never mastered.
b) Is that all you have? A smart 12 year old can do better. I guess you based these "insults" on the defects and fears of your own person. Here is a hint: That does not work in me, I am way out of your league. Some sophistication is required (look it up).
c) You are pissed at me because I am not pathetic, unlike you? Nice! Makes my day. Thanks for that and keep the inept trolling coming.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Original Linux Kernel: Linux kernel authors hold the copyright and define copy terms for the kernel. Since that's the GPL, you can redistribute it under the GPL.
Patch: patch authors hold the copyright and define copy terms for the patch itself. If that prohibits redistribution, it can't be redistributed.
Patched kernel: both the Linux kernel authors and the patch authors hold a copyright in the result. When copying the combined work, you must comply with the terms of both the Linux kernel authors and the patch authors. One license permits redistribution, the other one doesn't, so the combined work can't be redistributed.
Keep in mind that the GPL allows for proprietary modifications; that is, if you modify and deploy GPL software in-house, you are not required to share your modifications. This was the express intent of the authors of the GPL. Furthermore, if you are a company and you have employees modify GPL software as part of their job, they can't just take the modified software and publish it; they are still bound by their employment agreements. Proprietary patches like this really are not all that different.
Both Europe and The US are big places. Both have many fine places to live.
Than you have places like Decatur Illinois and Scotland. Places where they would stick the tube to give the content an enema.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You're not allowed to call just any license "GPL". Only the GPL license can be called by that trademark name. The GPL does not allow adding clauses. Therefore it cannot be licensed "GPL with additional clauses".
They have said their software is GPL licensed. Therefore if they try to say "no, we mean our own special 'GPL', with extra terms added", that would violate the GPL trademark.
PS I forgot to say they COULD legally use a license that is similar to thr GPL, but different, and call it by a different name. They haven't chosen to do that. At least, under trademark they could.
If they chose to do that, they wouldn't be violating trademark, but since they are distributing things copy-pasted from the GPL kernel, it's a derivative work and would violate the license.
Bottom line:
If you sell a modified version of GPL software, it as to be GPL licensed, and you can't change the GPL to whatever you want it to be. Playing games doesn't work, you just end up falling into a different kind of violation.
But they aren't. They are neither selling kernel sources nor are they distributing kernel sources. All they are distributing is their own patches. It is the end user that creates the "modified version of GPL software".
How do you know what license they distribute their kernel patches under to paying customers? Are you a paying customer?
> How do you know what license they distribute their kernel patches under to paying customers?
It's stated quite plainly on their web site. It'll be the top result if you Google "grsecurity license". (Kinda sad you didn't bother to Google it before arguing about it.)
> They are neither selling kernel sources nor are they distributing kernel sources. All they are distributing is their own patches. A patch IS modified kernel sources. Here's a trivial kernel patch so you can see what they look like:
printk("comedi%d: ni_labpc: %s, io 0x%lx", dev->minor, thisboard->name,
iobase);
- if (irq) {
+ if (irq)
printk(", irq %u", irq);
- }
- if (dma_chan) {
+ if (dma_chan)
printk(", dma %u", dma_chan);
- }
printk("\n");
if (iobase == 0) {
It starts with a couple lines exactly as in the original, unchanged. Then where a line is changed, it has the original line, with a "-" mark added, then the transformed version, marked with a "+".
It's not only the new lines derived from the original (a derivative work), but also which lines to remove, copy-pasted exactly from the original GPL kernel. You can't copy-paste from the original kernel OR distribute your modified version of those source lines without complying with the GPL. A kernel patch generally does both.