Grsecurity blaims insane conspiracy theory for self-imposed legal woes
From: agentoranger
Date: Tue Feb 18 2020 - 05:57:42 EST
Grsecurity blaims insane conspiracy theory for self-imposed legal woes
From the Grsecurity website:
https://grsecurity.net/setting_the_record_straight_on_oss_v_perens_part1
Company Background
Open Source Security, Inc. was formed in 2008 initially to handle
donations related to the grsecurity project, an open source project
started in 2001 and freely (in all senses) available to the world until
at least 2015. In 2015 we made our stable patches available to paid
customers only via our website, a right granted by the GPL. At the
time, we still had a freely (in all senses) test patch available. In
April of 2017 we stopped providing the test patches to the general
public.
A Troll's Revenge
Only a few months after this, a notorious Internet troll who had used
grsecurity in the past and been banned from our forums for misogynistic
comments was apparently upset at having his access cut off completely
(after previously being denied access to the stable patches in 2015),
and came out of hibernation to extend a private and public campaign to
get revenge. This campaign continues today even, with posts to LKML,
various distribution mailing lists, and posts and comments on Slashdot,
Reddit, and other news aggregators. This person poses under various
names, usernames, and email addresses, but most recently poses as a
legitimate lawyer claiming the GPL can be rescinded. The emails come
from @redchan.it,@airmail.cc, and other anonymous mailing services with
usernames like "aconcernedfossdev", "visionsofalice", "gameonlinux",
"nisus", and "unconditionedwitness". Most commonly, the email subject
regarding us includes: "Why will no-one sue GrSecurity for their
blatant GPL violation?" or "Yes you have standing to sue GRSecurity."
In many instances, due to the changing names and email addresses,
readers are unaware this is the same "MikeeUSA" troll, a self-professed
misogynist and pedophile, that had been harrassing and issuing death
threats to women in Open Source for years.
But the anonymous troll wasn't able to inflict the kind of damage he
wanted to achieve alone. People saw an unstable individual mixing
misogynistic comments with nonsensical legal theories, making it clear
he was not an expert and his comments had no basis in reality. To
inflict the damage he wanted, he'd need to enlist the help of someone
the public trusts and views as an expert on license compliance matters,
so that it'd be accepted as fact by the public. So in private, he
contacted various influential people (including Richard Stallman, Eben
Moglen, Bradley Kuhn, and Bruce Perens) involved in Free Software/Open
Source in an attempt to bait them into accepting and repeating his
claims and wild legal theories as true. None of them took the bait,
except for Bruce Perens.
Perens' Collaboration
(... and on it goes)
(
https://grsecurity.net/setting_the_record_straight_on_oss_v_perens_part1
https://archive.is/7B9No
)
(
https://grsecurity.net/setting_the_record_straight_on_oss_v_perens_part2
https://archive.is/7B9No
)
(
https://grsecurity.net/setting_the_record_straight_on_oss_v_perens_part3
https://archive.is/tvlWf)