Does something prevent distributing the patches?

Posted May 5, 2017 19:13 UTC (Fri) by dmoulding (subscriber, #95171)
In reply to: Does something prevent distributing the patches? by mathstuf
Parent article: Grsecurity goes private

That in itself sounds like a clear-cut GPL violation to me. Telling your end users that they're violating some additional agreement (even if it's an unwritten agreement) with your company if they redistribute the code is adding an additional restriction on top of the GPL, which the GPL does not allow, for obvious reasons.

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Does something prevent distributing the patches?

Posted May 5, 2017 21:47 UTC (Fri) by nybble41 (subscriber, #55106) [Link]

> Telling your end users that they're violating some additional agreement...

They're not doing that at all. Not only are you unconditionally free to use and distribute the patches under the terms of the GPL, you wouldn't even be violating any separate agreement you had with grsecurity by doing so. They just won't sell their future patches to anyone who has been known to distribute them in the past, which is well within their rights.

With all due respect to RMS, I think he's wrong on this one. It's a stupid and self-destructive move, as others have already pointed out, but not a violation of the GPL.