Important Notice Regarding Public Availability of Stable Patches

by dantiberian • 11 years ago

235 114 11 years ago

dijit• 11 years ago

This angers me. I mean, they're doing the right thing, but it should never have come to this.

volunteers shouldn't be shelling out thousands in copyright and licensing violations- even if they won in court, the amount awarded back would probably be a pittance compared to what these manufacturers make by using their code/trademarks.

I love what the pax guys do, almost every major exploit in the last year is mitigated in some form by grsec.. I wonder what becoming a sponsor entails.. I mean, I wish I could support all the FOSS I use, but I'd go broke pretty quick. :(

lucb1e• 11 years ago

I mean, I wish I could support all the FOSS I use, but I'd go broke pretty quick. :(

Yeah I seem to have that a lot as well.

What I figured a while ago, in summary, is this: we will always use more than we can contribute back. As a silly example, I am grateful for the invention of the wheel but in no way could I pay someone back (living or dead) for every single thing like that. The important thing is that we do something. Contribute either with time and skill or with money to a few projects you care about and which you feel can actually use your help. That's still tricky, though, I wouldn't know which of the 2100 installed apt-get packages need my support the most, but realizing this (rather than feeling indebted) gives me some peace of mind.

(If anyone cares, I actually blogged about this: http://lucb1e.com/?p=post&id=121 )

0x02• 11 years ago

That's a shame. :(

Also a shame that it's probably going to be way too expensive to lawyer up something like the Firefox an RedHat style of trademark protection (where forks (or even re-compiles) must use off-label branding). :(

Also a shame that the companies in question can't even be named (and shamed)...

zobzu3• 11 years ago

Veriphone https://forums.grsecurity.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3938&p=139...

There, shamed. Easy.

Animats2• 11 years ago

OK, figure out who the involved is. It shouldn't be too hard if you're active in that area.

crazysim• 11 years ago

I'm going to guess it's the top result from the Google search of the forums for EFI and grsecurity? That or the wind is blowing me the wrong way down the river.

gnoway2• 11 years ago

This would be really surprising and disappointing. Wind River used to be a/the major FreeBSD sponsor and is now owned by Intel. Intel of course is heavily invested in the Linux and FOSS community.

fotcorn• 11 years ago

This is probably the forum post they are talking about:

https://forums.grsecurity.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3713&p=134...

epimenov• 11 years ago

Also https://twitter.com/grsecurity/status/450995354972864513

Animats2• 11 years ago

See this product overview from Wind River, which mentions "grsecurity".[1] (Backup copy: [2]).

[1] http://www.windriver.com/products/product-overviews/PO_LINUX... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20150403191546/http://www.windri...

NeutronBoy• 11 years ago

  The test series, unfit in our view for production use, will however continue to
  be available to the public

Doesn't sound like that will stop companies from picking it up and using it unfortunately.

This is such a shit situation to be in. Hopefully this publicity gains them some traction with the companies and communities who do care about it.

halosghost2• 11 years ago

This is such a bummer! I just recently switched over to grsec (on Arch) and I could not be happier with the results; seriously, it has made such a huge increse in security so simple to navigate. The Grsec team does incredible work; that no lawyer is willing to pursue this case saddens me, but that's a secondary issue. The core problem here is the corporations with money have functionally unlimited legal authority. It is so far beyond me that society has allowed this to come to be and continues to do nothing to stop it.

To Brad and the PaX team directly (if you read this): You do incredible work and I sincerely hope this move leads to an inundation of sponsorship so that even more people can benefit from your hard work and innovation. Till then, know that there are those of us that stand behind you 100 percent!

ploxiln3• 11 years ago

"Since our lawyer has advised us not to mention the companies by name"

Yeah, uh, they're lawyers, they always say that, it's not a signal with any information in it.

As you said, this company can outspend you, and it's not worth it for you to try litigating. Public shaming is all you have! And, since the primary issue was them claiming their kernel has "grsecurity", public shaming is actually a great solution: try to make the technical community aware that this company's security hardening doesn't deserve the "grsecurity" description. You may even get more business from competitors who want to be able to say they worked with you on their grsecurity integration.

ars2• 11 years ago

I suspect they are hoping the public will do it for them. They gave enough clues for that.

That way they said it, without actually saying it.

michael_storm• 11 years ago

The lawyers say that because they're advising their clients not to set themselves up for a libel suit, not because they're buzzkills. In other news, doctors recommend you eat healthy, but don't they always say that?

ploxiln3• 11 years ago

ya know... my mother is a doctor, a Family Practitioner (FP). She's the type who's probably more frank with her patients than most. But she still would give slightly different advice to family than to patients. This is to manage risk of lawsuits, unreasonably angry patients, etc. It has to do with the balance of risk and blame. You can imagine the typical stuff - excessive tests, end-of-life decisions...

JohnTHaller3• 11 years ago

As a general rule, smaller companies that release their code under the GPL have almost no recourse against huge companies violating their copyrights. One of the big flash drive makers released their own portable browser based on PortableApps.com's Firefox Portable a few years back and distributed it on millions of drives with my name and all copyrights stripped off of it. This happened after I'd been in negotiations with them about using our software platform and fully informed their subsidiary in charge of their resulting software platform of the legal obligations of the GPL including a direct call with the subsidiary's CEO. The most I could do was send them a C&D.

To add insult to injury, the subsidiary released a hardware product years later and another company released a similar but different product in the same segment. The subsidiary sued the other company and had this PR story published about how the CEO was so offended by the "theft" and had to sue them to be able to look his kids in the face.

themartorana• 11 years ago

What about the DMCA? It seems like people cower in fear of it, but only with regards to the entertainment industry. Is that only because it's dangerous when the copyright holder is a huge corporation, but remains effectively toothless for those unable to support years of litigation?

AnthonyMouse• 11 years ago

The DMCA safe harbor applies to intermediaries. It essentially says nobody can sue YouTube for the copyright infringement of its users if they take down user content on request. The problem with it is that the intermediaries have no practical way of knowing whether the user who posted the content had a legal right to, so it causes everybody execute takedown requests regardless of merit.

People violating the GPL usually aren't intermediaries. If they don't get the safe harbor to begin with then they can't lose it by not following the takedown process.

I wonder if an intermediary could be found though. If an infringer is hosting their website on AWS, what happens when somebody sends a takedown notice to Amazon?

randx8385• 11 years ago

This is not at all true. They are liable for significant monetary damages for violating copyright, and you can find a lawyer to take up the case if you own the copyright. There are a couple well known organizations who have gotten paid more than their expenses from lawsuits against gpl violating companies: sfconservancy.org, sflc.org., fsf.org.

teraflop3• 11 years ago

In principle, yes. In practice, large companies have extensive legal resources and can afford to drag out a lawsuit far beyond the resources of a team volunteer/hobbyist developers.

It's great that groups like the FSF and Software Freedom Conservancy are using their funds to support legal action when necessary, but they can't be everywhere and enforce everything.

JohnTHaller3• 11 years ago

For most of us, it doesn't actually work that way. Folks like you've mentioned don't take on work unless you're a non-profit. And a pro-bono attorney generally won't touch a case like I mentioned, speaking as someone who asked multiple attorneys.

pornel• 11 years ago

Apple has been selling closed-source knock-off of my GPL app for 6 months after acknowledging they've received my takedown request. They've eventually took it down, but they haven't notified users and kept the money.

I've asked sfconservancy and fsf for help, but they wouldn't take the case.

vini• 11 years ago

https://www.google.com/search?q=grsecurity+forum+patch+porte...

coderjames3• 11 years ago

I'm obviously misunderstanding something about this.

Since grsecurity is GPL'd (being modifications to the GPL'd kernel), anyone that is "a customer of any product that uses grsecurity in binary form, [is] entitled to the complete corresponding source code." Which means their stable patches will get requested and released by someone anyway.

Help me understand how this will have any effect on the actual availability of their stable series?

ars2• 11 years ago

The sponsors use it (Kernel+Grsecurity), they don't distribute it.

Since they don't distribute it, they also don't distribute the patches.

ploxiln3• 11 years ago

That assumes that the sponsors don't distribute operating systems or devices containing them, only services in the cloud (or user-space software).

And even still, they could re-distribute the grsecurity code if they wanted to. But they probably won't bother. So yes this private-patches policy will have a big impact on availability, at least on convenience.

coderjames3• 11 years ago

Ah, that makes sense. I didn't look into what businesses the sponsors were in.

awalton2• 11 years ago

It basically just adds a level of indirection. Rather than going straight to the grsecurity folks, you now have to go to whichever downstream is disseminating the kernel based on that patch. Bummer.

Really, it's just weakening the brand they've created for themselves. It always sounds really great in theory, but it's almost never worth it. It's the GPL, they've literally signed up for this type of code (ab)use. I'm not sure why people have trouble understanding this concept.

(Though if they wanted to be really snarky, they'd relicense their code GPLv3 and watch these companies go into complete hysterics.)

0x02• 11 years ago

But wouldn't they need to follow the Linux license, which is GPL2only?

fredkbloggs2• 11 years ago

The GPLv2 doesn't grant any trademark rights. The only mention of trademarks in the GPLv3 at all is a single clause explicitly allowing the grantor not to license trademark rights.

Licensing code under the terms of the GPL does not constitute signing up for trademark infringement. The article's primary focus was on trademarks, as it should be. Nowhere did the authors claim that this vendor was violating the terms of their code license.

coderjames3• 11 years ago

This helps clear things up for me, thanks.

RaleyField8• 11 years ago

We decided that it is unfair to _our sponsors_ that the above mentioned unlawful players can get away with their activity.

How is that unfair to them specifically? The purpose of this is to protect them by raising a paywall for anyone that isn't their 'sponsor'? (tangentially, that's why I prefer BSD/MIT, because people aren't as obsessed with other people doing dirty, nasty things with their free code.)

It's bad enough that these patches aren't integrated into the kernel like they ought to be or that they aren't included into mainline distros and are only ever present on custom built machines, now they are behind paywall as well. Damit, I don't want to move to OpenBSD.

yellowapple8• 11 years ago

Damit, I don't want to move to OpenBSD.

Why not? OpenBSD's awesome.

na853• 11 years ago

Maybe for servers. It's completely unusable due to performance problems on my i7-powered thinkpad.

RaleyField8• 11 years ago

Because they feel bipolar on security sometimes. On one hand they go to the extremes with auditing and being early adopters of various security technologies but on the other hand they lack in other areas. Until recently they didn't sign binaries because the blessed method was to acquire patches via CVS which were signed. Iso files and their signatures are distributed via http because the blessed method of acquiring the signing key is to acquire and verify it over multiple networks, because PKI can't be trusted even though some of us check that https isn't being signed by a weird CA and companies like Verisign aren't likely to burn their CA business for anyone - so I'm forced to use Tor just to download an iso file complete with updating virtual machines hooked to Tor because who knows which exploits are being pushed from exit nodes... Then there is limited choice of packages and for everything else you are left to community ports and I don't trust randomers maintaining them. In practice OpenBSD is good only for servers where you are willing to put some effort in maintaining them, but it isn't prepackaged solution like Ubuntu is.

cortesoft• 11 years ago

I think he means that it is unfair because the abusive companies are releasing an insecure and untested version of grsecurity, while using the grsecurity brand name in their advertising. This means that any vulnerabilities discovered will hurt the grsecurity brand, making customers trust it less, and hurting the actual legit sponsors using a real secure version of grsecurity.

It is similar to how any knock-off of a brand could hurt the brand; a crappier version of something that people will now associate with the real brand.

RaleyField8• 11 years ago

Grsecurity has been here for a while and I don't think common people know of it at all, they hardly know of what Linux is and half of them run it on their phones. Those who know of it will also understand that running outdated versions on outdated kernels isn't a fault of Grsecurity. Grsecurity isn't really a brand or needs to be defended.

performa• 11 years ago

Sounds like Verifone is one of the GPL violators. They are known for being "open" except when you want to innovate without permission.

http://global.verifone.com/products/software/v-os/ - Says its Linux Based.

http://www.verifone.com/products/hardware/multimedia/ - Have an MX 900 series of products.

http://www.verifone.com/products/hardware/petro-pos-systems/ - Have a Petro series of Products

NYSE:PAY - are a multi-billion dollar company.

Employee asking for help: https://forums.grsecurity.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3938&p=139...

GRsec saying its verifone: https://twitter.com/grsecurity/status/450995354972864513

Thread indicating they are using an old unmaintained kernel: https://twitter.com/grsecurity/status/424914478912651264

Industry called out specifically: "Not only has the entire embedded industry as a whole not contributed a single dime toward our continued development and maintenance (despite our work being critical to the security of the millions of devices using our code: streaming media players, credit card processing systems, etc), the companies we've identified have actively violated the GPL and even our trademark. These transgressions have continued despite their awareness and our legal action."

CodeMage• 11 years ago

Naive question: can't EFF help?

RaleyField8• 11 years ago

Linus should've helped. But they don't want to merge patches to the kernel. Use OpenBSD.

mburns2• 11 years ago

But they don't want to merge patches to the kernel.

To be clear, the 'they' in that sentence are the authors of GRSecurity, not the kernel developers.

zobzu3• 11 years ago

To be frank, the grsecurity folks and Brad in particular aren't exactly nice to others or trying the get stuff merged in the right way, so they don't get a lot of support from the kernel folks.

Most of the time Brad is shaming kernel devs and saying they're all idiots.

AaronFriel• 11 years ago

Looks like the product in question is Wind River Linux, a product of a subsidiary of Intel.

Here's the forum post on backporting an EFI fix:

https://forums.grsecurity.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3713

And products with Wind River Linux prominently mentions GRSecurity advertisements:

https://www.google.com/search?q=wind+river+linux+grsecurity

Edit: It looks like I wasn't the only one to find this. I'll keep this post at the top for other people to reply to.

na853• 11 years ago

That's infuriating.

chowder• 11 years ago

I'm pretty sure Wind River Linux is using kernel versions grsecurity would approve of. https://forums.grsecurity.net/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=3938&p=139... seems more likely to indicate the problem company.

sarciszewski2• 11 years ago

Can we as a society stop ripping off open source developers?

Companies that do are essentially stealing from artisans to build infrastructure to defraud the poor so they can horde wealth.

stephengillie• 11 years ago

Yeah, we just have to find their project page, hope they have a PayPal or Stripe or other donation link (that accepts a currency we already have, sorry I own no Bitcoin)...

And then donate.

For every developer or project. I don't know about most of the engineers whose work powers my internet use. How do I donate to people I don't know about?

strcat5• 11 years ago

The grsecurity brand is a registered trademark and spender has the right to control how it's used. If you ship a product with the official grsecurity patch applied, you get to say it uses a grsecurity kernel in your marketing. If you want to use anything but the latest official/test kernels, then you need to make it clear that it's not grsecurity (but rather your port) or pay official support with all of the backporting, auditing and testing that entails.

I'm working on a product using my own port of PaX/grsecurity and I had no problem understanding and complying with spender's wishes about this.

cwyers• 11 years ago

Actual GPL violations are bad. If actual trademark infringement happened (the blog post presents the company's counterarguement as to whether or not that happened, and I neither know enough about the law to assess the competing claims or know enough about the situation to know whether or not the blogpost fairly represented the counterarguement), that's bad.

But "[not] bother[ing] to hire us to perform the port properly for them or to actively maintain the security of the kernel they're providing to their paid customers" isn't ripping off the developers or stealing from artisans. Nor is "not contribut[ing] a single dime toward our continued development and maintenance." None of those things are required by the GPL. If you want to sell software, and if you want to get pissed when people use your software without paying you for it, choose a license that requires people to pay you for your software.

(And exactly how much money has GRsecurity paid to the developers of the kernel they're patching? The unmitigated gall factor here is stronger than most of these kinds of rants that I've seen, because they're not even the upstream.)

strcat5• 11 years ago

I'm working on an open-source product using my own port of PaX/grsecurity (as it needs to target an unsupported kernel) and I had no problem understanding and complying with spender's wishes about this.

These companies have to respect the GPL license, so they need to provide the users with the source code for their kernels.

And exactly how much money has GRsecurity paid to the developers of the kernel they're patching? The unmitigated gall factor here is stronger than most of these kinds of rants that I've seen, because they're not even the upstream.

The grsecurity project respects the upstream trademark and licensing. In this case, they are one of the upstreams... they're not complaining about kernels not using their substantial amount of code.

rodgerd2• 11 years ago

And exactly how much money has GRsecurity paid to the developers of the kernel they're patching?

They've donated a lot more mockery than money, I would think.

It's a good point.

blm2• 11 years ago

I want to add something. I am sure that it will get obliterated by other people. I am not with anyone that uses grsecurity.

On the one hand I can imagine nothing more bitter than other people making money on your hard work.

However, isnt this how the whole thing goes? I mean there wouldn't be a linux kernel without the work of a whole bunch of companies. Did they get sponsorship money from you? grsecurity wouldn't exist without the work of a bunch of other people. Did grsecurity pass on money to other vendors that they rely on? What about people that wrote the drivers that grsecurity use when they did development.

Open source only works because people contribute to a shared base. In return for their contributions they get to use what others already contributed.

halosghost2• 11 years ago

It seems like you've missed the point. The problem isn't that companies are using the work without paying. The problem is that the unnamed companies are essentially lying in their marketing and violating the grsec trademark in the process.

This is not how FLOSS is supposed to go.

blm2• 11 years ago

Why do you think they are lying? Did the companies use not apply the grsecurity patches but claim they did?

If they did apply the patches AND used the grsecurity trademark in their brochures what is the problem? They arent misrepresenting grsecurity. They arent being derogatory in any way. Why can't you say that you have the kernel and you applied grsecurity patches?

It seems so funny when people are all about GPL code and "freedom" and yet act so precious about a "trademark" just like proprietary enterprises.

armitron• 11 years ago

Ah Spender. Always the drama queen.

The real problem here is not companies abusing the GPL (good luck with that), but grsecurity not being integrated with mainline after more than a decade.

You see, if Spender really cared about security he would work with the kernel developers in order to get grsecurity into the kernel but of course being such a famewhore, he never did that. Everything is fine as long as he is the center of attention, actual security be damned.

Spender: I among many have little sympathy for you, you've long exhausted our patience with your antics. Grsecurity is a niche project with minimal actual security impact in the "real world", all because of the deranged way you choose to manage it. Your primary concern, your _ONLY_ concern should be getting grsecurity into the kernel, not companies ripping you off, not companies abusing your trademark, not companies "not playing nice". In the grand scheme of things, these are irrelevant.

dewyatt• 11 years ago

Do you mean Spengler, perhaps?

adamzochowski• 11 years ago

I think "spendy" is his irc nick. And "spender" is his grsec machine nick https://www.grsecurity.net/~spender/

csirac2• 11 years ago

I can appreciate that it's been a bit like that, but isn't the truth really somewhere in between?

Oversized egos are a problem at the best of times in open source, especially in the kernel. Which has traditionally had a culture of casual indifference toward the security priorities of PaX/grsec, and some would say toward security generally (I don't buy that - there's a lot of concern for integrity in the kernel, and that at least buys you some security).

Whilst it would have been great if Spender could have completely changed his personality, outlook and perspective on the world so that he could commandeer the linux kernel from the outside-in toward his vision of a safer kernel, is that really compatible with the wider project? And so, it's equally depressing there hasn't been more recruitment from the kernel side - the side that actually has resources - to figure out a path toward getting PaX stuff mainlined from the inside-out.

I guess my point is: grsec has one focus, one priority. But the Linux kernel is a project that has a much more vast, broader scope of competing priorities to untangle, and I just can't see that such an enormous, busy and byzantine project ecosystem truly will ever see a clear mandate to get something as disruptive and single-minded as grsec mainlined.

Not only would Spender have to become a different person, but the core kernel teams as well.

In any case, I've reduced my patreon donations and put what little that is towards grsecurity. It's certainly that important and useful to me.

Asbostos• 11 years ago

It's not clear to me that he has any case at all with the trademark. You don't get to dictate how everyone uses your trademark. Some uses are acceptable without permission:

"Usually it is permissible to use another person’s or company’s trademark or service mark when referring to a product or service of that person or company, provided it is clear that the mark is being used truthfully to refer to that specific product or service. It may not be used in a way that might mislead others as to that person’s or company’s affiliation with, sponsorship of or endorsement of your company or its products or services—for example, using a logo instead of simply the word form of the mark, or using the mark more prominently or frequently than necessary." [1]

This appears to be how Wind River is using it.

[1] http://www.inta.org/TrademarkBasics/FactSheets/Pages/Tradema...

randx8385• 11 years ago

Agreed. I could see this being possible with a pre-existing trademark policy, and an explicitly different trademark for "test quality" code, and being very careful about it all, but otherwise I just don't see it. Trademark is to correctly identify the source of a good, and the source here is identified correctly. If it was creative commons licensed, they would be required to do what they have done.

Not only all that, it seems like this is a bit strange that their complaint is that they called it grsecurity without using a blessed version, so their response is to stop giving out blessed versions publicly. Won't that just encourage more companies to do exactly what they are complaining about?

davorak• 11 years ago

Won't that just encourage more companies to do exactly what they are complaining about?

It will become much harder for any company to argue the they are using grsecurity if they are not a sponsor since it is not public disseminated any more.

This should give their lawyers considerable more leverage and the offending company's lawyers are more likely to warn discourage stone walling the grsecurity team since the company will be in a weaker position.

foota• 11 years ago

I believe the point is that by modifying their code and making use of unsupported versions that they are no longer using the product and therefore lose their right to use the trademark under those rules?

strcat5• 11 years ago

Wind River isn't using grsecurity. They're using their own variant / port of it and advertising it as grsecurity.

spender just wants them to say they have an "unofficial port of grsecurity" if they're unwilling to pay for it to be done properly (i.e. a well-done port, auditing of code specific to that kernel, backporting of all relevant fixes, etc.).

bmir-alum-0073• 11 years ago

Most, but not all, companies generally don't donate any money to server OSes and open source they deploy by the hundreds of thousands. It sucks but it's the current state of affairs. (I think more FOSS should be be less free and monetized more in the context of large-scale enterprise purposes, in order to keep developers' bills paid and support quality up. The honor system doesn't work because most corporate choose to "cheat" where possible.)

If a project releases open source totally for free, it cannot realistically expect sponsorship to magically appear.

If a project needs sponsorship to keep the lights on, the we're closing up shop, unless ... routine works.

If a project prefers to become a commercial product with a freemium option, they should do such.

Otherwise, don't slave away on a project and resent what you cannot afford to give away. Just don't do it, if you can't live with it being exploited by companies for free.

Punishing everyone for the sin of a few rogue companies is the kindergarteners routine and childish. It doesn't work and it just angers people without solving the licensing issue at a core level.

PS: Perhaps grsecurity may want to instead consider a sensible noncommercial license similar to somewhere between AGPL and something like what good ol' evil Oracle would license their DBMS, i.e., companies over X employees or Y revenue need a license; hobbyists, academics and individual developers exempted. Drama resolved.

geofft• 11 years ago

PS: Perhaps grsecurity may want to instead consider a sensible noncommercial license similar to somewhere between AGPL and something like what good ol' evil Oracle would license their DBMS, i.e., companies over X employees or Y revenue need a license; hobbyists, academics and individual developers exempted. Drama resolved.

Being a set of Linux patches, it would be hard for them not to make their code available under GPLv2.

They can do the Red Hat thing of making code available only to paying customers, and terminating their customers' accounts if they redistribute things publicly. They mention that in the post.

stevejones• 11 years ago

This isn't about money, this is about abuse of the trademark.

dfc• 11 years ago

There are a lot of people complaining about a future w/o grsecurity and I share your feelings. However I was surprised to see that nobody has mentioned that you and I can also donate to the project.

Yes, it sucks that MegaCorp and InnoTrode are not compensating Grsecurity for the work. Its probably just as shitty that I have used grsecurity for as long as I have and just got around to donating to the project. If you use grsecurity and don't want to see it disappear go donate. Grsecurity accepts paypal/bitcoin/dwolla:

https://grsecurity.net/contribute.php

Important Notice Regarding Public Availability of Stable Patches

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