Passing the Baton
grsecurity.net
Passing the Baton
1–10 of 82 posts
Re: Passing the Baton
#2Also read the corresponding FAQ: https://grsecurity.net/passing_the_baton_faq.php
Re: Passing the Baton
#3I love how grsecurity is always quick to point out how generous they have been by providing the patches for free.
> We have been providing grsecurity freely for 16 years.
Meanwhile the kernel upon which their work is built has been provided for free for much longer, and continues to be.
Re: Passing the Baton
#4I love how grsecurity is always quick to point out how generous they have been by providing the patches for free. > We have been providing grsecurity freely for 16 years. Meanwhile the kernel upon which their work is built has been provided for free for much longer, and continues to be.
I thought the same thing. The Linux kernel has been "freely available" for a measly 26 years, and will continue to be so.
Re: Passing the Baton
#5How does this work at a licensing level?
GRSecurity are patches to the Linux kernel right? Can you distribute patches for a GPL licensed software without the patches themselves being GPL?
Re: Passing the Baton
#6How does this work at a licensing level? GRSecurity are patches to the Linux kernel right? Can you distribute patches for a GPL licensed software without the patches themselves being GPL?
Of course you can.
https://01.org/linuxgraphics/gfx-docs/drm/admin-guide/tainte...
Edit:
---
Good point about the distinction between adding modules modifying existing source. It is an interesting question, actually and I haven't been able to find an authoritative answer on the subject.
A patch is a description of changes that would be made to a work, if they were made. Does it trigger the licence before it is applied to the source tree? On the other hand to generate a patch you would require the original source (even if you write it by hand you would still have to look at the source to determine line numbers). An you will probably have some bits of the source in your diff, but they are not being used for anything other than position information.
Re: Passing the Baton
#7I love how grsecurity is always quick to point out how generous they have been by providing the patches for free. > We have been providing grsecurity freely for 16 years. Meanwhile the kernel upon which their work is built has been provided for free for much longer, and continues to be.
I thought the same thing. The Linux kernel has been "freely available" for a measly 26 years, and will continue to be so.
Why are the grsecurity patches not included in the Vanilla Kernel?
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/59020/why-are-the-g...
Re: Passing the Baton
#8I love how grsecurity is always quick to point out how generous they have been by providing the patches for free. > We have been providing grsecurity freely for 16 years. Meanwhile the kernel upon which their work is built has been provided for free for much longer, and continues to be.
They have, in fact, been generous in providing patches for free. Other people have been generous too. Generosity doesn't cancel itself out.
It must be particularly irritating in Spengler's case, because he works in a field where most of the best people make millions turning poorer versions of the same ideas into commercial products that only huge companies ever get to play with, while he spends his career arguing with upstream and taking shit from people on message boards.
Re: Passing the Baton
#9How does this work at a licensing level? GRSecurity are patches to the Linux kernel right? Can you distribute patches for a GPL licensed software without the patches themselves being GPL?
Of course you can. https://01.org/linuxgraphics/gfx-docs/drm/admin-guide/tainte... Edit: --- Good point about the distinction between adding modules modifying existing source. It is an interesting question, actually and I haven't been able to find an authoritative answer on the subject. A patch is a description of changes that would be made to a work, if they were made. Does it trigger the licence before it is applie…
Ah I see. So as long as they don't distribute the patch together with the GPL base codebase, they are good. Does that sound right?
Re: Passing the Baton
#10How does this work at a licensing level? GRSecurity are patches to the Linux kernel right? Can you distribute patches for a GPL licensed software without the patches themselves being GPL?
The kernel remains GPLv2, so the standard licensing issues apply: you can make changes, but if you distribute the changes, you have to provide an offer to distribute the source to the changes (and follow through with it). Those changes are then licensed under GPLv2 as well. LKMs are an exception, where code which does not use GPLv2-only symbols can remain a proprietary binary blob. (GRsec is too tightly wound into the kernel to be an LKM)