GrSecurity Kernel Patches Will No Longer Be Free To The Public

[balouba]

I wish the title reflected better that GrSec is no longer following the open source spirit, even if its correct.

As far as companies "leaking" the patches, the thing is, it's also completely legal for GrSec to stop selling the code to these companies after they leaked it, effectively making stuff closed source, while technically being GPLv2 open source code.

Basically, GrSec is now in my book of "anti open source" companies.

[starshipeleven]

cool! I've been waiting for this for so long

wat? why?

[starshipeleven]

Do they also provide pre-compiled kernel images to "free" users?

Would be a bit hard to do, given that each distro has their own patched kernel.

AFAIK they can't prevent their customers from releasing the patches (since the patches themselves will be under GPL).

Correct. It is reasonable to assume that paying customers will not be very eager to share for free what they paid for.

I really hope there is some organization that steps in and does this chaperon duty though.

[starshipeleven]

I'd guess that this is because Grsec feels threatened by the Kernel Self Protection Project. That is a good thing -- a sign that mainline Linux is becoming competitive with them despite them never caring too much about giving back to project they're based on. Collaboration prevails.

You mean upstream not accepting most of their changes? Because that's what happened in reality.

[peppercats]

Any subscribed customers could release the patches as they're required to distribute the source with any binaries…

[Holograph]

RIP GRSecurity.

Or more like GTFO and don't let the door hit ya.

Or maybe do. Just GTFO mainly.

Do they also provide pre-compiled kernel images to "free" users? Because that's a violation of GPL. Also, AFAIK they can't prevent their customers from releasing the patches (since the patches themselves will be under GPL).

[stefansaraev]

cool! I've been waiting for this for so long

[TheBlackCat]

Grrrrrrr...

Sorry, couldn't resist.

[ruff]

Grr... who?