Re: Will no-one sue GrSecurity for their blatant GPL violation (of GCC and the linux kernel)?
From: nipponmail
Date: Mon Nov 04 2019 - 12:56:37 EST
You are incorrect. GPL version 2 section 6 states that one shall not add
additional restrictions between the agreement between the licensee and
further licensees. It governs that relationship vis-a-vis the protected
Work.
GrSecurity has, indeed, stipulated an additional restrictive term.
From: You may distribute derivative works freely.
GrSecurity has forced customers to agree to: We shall not distribute the
(non-separable) derivative work EXCEPT to our own customers (when
required).
That is clearly an additional restrictive term.
Yes, I am a lawyer. A court would not be "tricked" by GrSecurity putting
it's additional restrictive term in a separate writing. The license is
instructions about what you are allowed to do with Copyright Holder's
work; He EXPLICITLY forbade additional restrictive terms.
GrSecurity does not have a pre-existing legal right to create
non-separable derivative works at all. The default rights are: nothing
(all rights reservered).
On 2019-11-04 17:36, ams@xxxxxxx wrote:
One is not under obligation to guarantee that new versions are
distributed to someone, which also means obligations can be terminated
for any reason. So while grsecurity might not be doing the morally
and ethically right thing, I do not think they are violating the GNU
GPL. You're still free to redistribute the patches, but grsecurity
isn't under obligation to give you future updates.
Their agreement text is located at
https://grsecurity.net/agree/agreement_faq