Re: Yes you have standing to sue GRSecurity

From: David Lang
Date: Sun Jul 30 2017 - 02:03:35 EST


On Sat, 29 Jul 2017, Paul G. Allen wrote:

It's not even clear that there is infringement. The GPL merely
requires that people who have been distributed copies of GPL'ed code
must not be restricted from further redistribution of the code. It
does not require that that someone who is distributing it must
available on a public FTP/HTTP server.

what I have seen reported is that they are adding additional restrictions, that if any of their customers redistribute the source, their contract with grsecurity is terminated.

If there is something to this (that GRSecurity is somehow in violation
of the GPL), then it would probably be a very good idea for someone
(the community, Red Hat, etc.) to protect the kernel. From my
understanding, at least in America, protections under any license or
contract (especially dealing with copyright and trademark
infringement) are only enforceable as long as the party with the
rights enforce the license/contract/agreement.

You are thinking of Trademarks, they must be defended or you loose them. Contracts and Licenses do not need to be defended at every chance or risk loosing them.

There is also something in law called "setting a precedent" and if the
violating of the Linux license agreement is left unchecked, then quite
possibly a precedent could be set to allow an entire upstream kernel
to be co-opted.

This is a potential problem.

David Lang