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Open Source The Courts Linux

'Open Source Security' Loses in Court, Must Pay $259,900 To Bruce Perens (theregister.co.uk) 141

Bruce Perens co-founded the Open Source Initiative with Eric Raymond -- and he's also Slashdot reader #3872. Now he's just won a legal victory in court. "Open Source Security, maker of the grsecurity Linux kernel patches, has been directed to pay Bruce Perens and his legal team almost $260,000 following a failed defamation claim," reports The Register. Slashdot reader Right to Opine writes: The order requires Spengler and his company to pay $259,900.50, with the bill due immediately rather than allowing a wait for the appeal of the case. The Electronic Frontier Foundation's attorneys will represent Perens during OSS/Spengler's appeal of the case.

Perens was sued for comments on his blog and here on Slashdot that suggested that OSS's Grsecurity product could be in violation of the GPL license on the Linux kernel. The court had previously ruled that Perens' statements were not defamatory, because they were statements by a non-attorney regarding an undecided issue in law. It is possible that Spengler is personally liable for any damages his small company can't pay, since he joined the case as an individual in order to preserve a claim of false light (which could not be brought by his company), removing his own corporate protection.

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'Open Source Security' Loses in Court, Must Pay $259,900 To Bruce Perens

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  • by Bruce Perens ( 3872 ) <bruce@perens.com> on Saturday June 16, 2018 @03:46PM (#56795856) Homepage Journal

    I am very lucky to have my attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and my attorneys from O'Melveny and Meyers who won the lower court case and will continue to help EFF during the appeal.

    My attorneys have requested that I not comment about the case at this time. Obviously, I'd love to discuss it with you sometime, when it's all over.

    Valerie, Stanley and I are doing well and send you our best wishes.

    Thanks

    Bruce

    • I hope there's enough left over after legal fees for yourself.

      We met at the Linux Expo in 1998, and I enjoyed meeting you.

    • Bruce,
      sad that we have any court battle in the OSS world.
      However, congrats.
      And yes, follow your lawyer. Do not trump this.
    • by WindBourne ( 631190 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @04:36PM (#56796012) Journal
      Some of you trolls are real assholes. Bruce has worked tirelessly on the OSS world. His name is obviously well known amongst the top 10 in it.
      For some of you to rip into him, is just sad.

      /.,
      Seriously, it is long past time to make the code so as to lower the trolls. Make it so that unless we are moderating, that we can skip ACs below a certain point. Hey, if a moderator brings them up to say 2 or 3, I will want to see them. OTHERWISE, why bother. I get sick of reading so many lies and crap from the trolls.
      • Did you mean to say you get sick of writing so many lies? [slashdot.org]
        I know I get sick of reading them.
      • Seriously, it is long past time to make the code so as to lower the trolls. Make it so that unless we are moderating, that we can skip ACs below a certain point. Hey, if a moderator brings them up to say 2 or 3, I will want to see them. OTHERWISE, why bother. I get sick of reading so many lies and crap from the trolls.

        Don't know what you're talking about, I see no trolls here. The sliders set at their default level pretty much hide ACs as it is.

      • There is an account setting where you can assign values to comments based on various things such as who sent the message, what kind of moderation it has received, etc. Just set Anonymous Coward to -2 and your wishes will come true. :)

        • But his real wish isn't that he doesn't see them, that's easy. His real wish is that no one else sees the AC people pointing out his lie after lie.
    • by oojah ( 113006 )

      Hi Bruce,

      I'm pleased that this has gone your way.

      All the best,

      Roger

    • Good job Bruce!
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Khyber ( 864651 )

      "I am very lucky to have my attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation"

      Yes you are, considering they're just publicity whores like the ACLU.

      You only got them on your side because of your name. Many others that could've used them are rotting away in prison because they're not 'high profile enough.'

      Maybe you should draw some attention to that fact while you've got the publicity.

    • Thanks for doing this, Bruce. I know it's not just "taking one for the team" but If you establish a precedent here it will provide lasting benefit for discourse within the community and beyond.

    • On a lighter note, I giggled a little when I saw my UID was lower then yours. :-P Congrats and good luck with the remainder of case tho! :-P

  • Half of Legal Fees (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mentil ( 1748130 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @03:55PM (#56795888)

    According to TFA, the $260k was awarded due to California's anti-SLAPP law. However, this is half of what Perens asked for to cover legal fees. I'm really wondering why he chose to spend over $500k on lawyers, for a defamation and business interference case. Surely the default judgement wouldn't even be that much money? Posting a comment to slashdot leads to half a million dollars in legal fees for the poster? Doesn't anyone else see this as insane? Imagine how many slashdotters would be bankrupted daily by various posts about Theranos, Microsoft, Systemd, Yahoo, Google, or various government officials, if robo-lawyers automatically filed charges for every arguably-defamatory post about them, leading to $500k legal fees each.

    • by Entrope ( 68843 )

      Why do you think Perens paid that much? EFF certainly paid some (I have no idea what fraction), and his other lawyers might have worked on a contingency basis, having faith that courts would get this right.

      • Spender must have mental illness to think that writing some posts questioning the legality of some random piece of software is defamation... He was in over his head when trying to go up against one of the most popular people in open source software movement.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      So he should have rolled over even though he was right b/c it was cheaper. Ever wonder why patent trolling works????? People like you.

    • various posts about Theranos, Microsoft, Systemd, Yahoo, Google

      Is it possible to defame a corporation (or in the case of systemd, a piece of software) at all?

      • by Anonymous Coward

        Yes. Legally it's no different from defaming an actual person.

    • by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @04:40PM (#56796022)
      He's standing up not just for himself but everybody.
      • This. The U.S. uses a common law system [wikipedia.org]. The decision in a case sets a precedent which can influence future cases. So when a high-profile case like this shows up, you want it to set a good precedent. It's the same reason Google bought YouTube when Google Video failed to dethrone it - they just knew YouTube was going to get sued for copyright infringement, but didn't have the finances to adequately defend itself in court. And a lopsided court case where high-paid Hollywood attorneys squared off against
    • by Xtifr ( 1323 )

      In the US, at least, a lawyer (robo- or otherwise) cannot sue on your behalf without permission from you. So you can't be bankrupted by these evil robo-lawyers unless you agree to pursue the suit. In which case, you probably deserve to be bankrupt.

      • by mentil ( 1748130 )

        I mean Microsoft or whoever could have software that crawls the web, parses posts to find ones that seemingly meet the legal definition of defamation (where Microsoft is the target), and then files a suit for each one.
        And then the people on the receiving end of these suits get bankrupted by the legal fees of their human lawyers and/or the judgement/settlement.

    • by epine ( 68316 )

      I'm really wondering why he chose to spend over $500k on lawyers, for a defamation and business interference case.

      Probably because deterrence, on general principles. It's far less insane for Bruce to do this than nearly anyone else (given his prominence, and his Rolodex, he might have had some support footing this bill, too). Plus for $500k, you want to run the deterrence (it can bite back) up the largest available flag pole, and with the most credibility.

      Plus I'm pretty sure you missed the essential circul

    • Doesn't anyone else see this as insane?

      Americans either enjoy this crazy legal system or feel powerless to change it. None of these matches any theories of a benevolent government.

  • by OctobrX ( 2726 )

    My, I should have gotten an account like a year before I did... I remember when Rob told me about /. on #Linux96 and so I was like, ok sure I'll check it out... then it became Slashdot... and finally I was like, damn, perhaps I should have an account. I could have had a cool reader #. :( Maybe even in the double digits lol.

    Ok, yeah this comment adds exactly zero to the conversation. Sorry.

    I do want to say I remember when Bruce and Eric were coming out of the office after they were having meetings about

    • lol.
    • by Nite_Hawk ( 1304 )

      Ha, I remember thinking roughly the same thing. It took me a while before I finally made an account. Looks like there are still a number of us old dinosaurs kicking around. I was one of the high school script kiddies that hung around in the enlightenment channel running bitchx back in the 90s. Back when Rob was still best known for his afterstep plugins. Caught the tail end of the wave but never quite felt like I was riding it like some of the other folks that were already in college and working on int

  • 3872? Punk kid needs to get off my lawn. :)

  • grsecurity (Score:2, Insightful)

    by NynexNinja ( 379583 )

    I think grsecurity is a great set of patches to the linux kernel, most of which were originally provided by others and integrated into his combo-patch set. I think it was better when he offered it for free and only charged commercial users. It would be like linus all of sudden start making linux a pay-only piece of software. Most people would be turned off or have a bad taste in their mouths. He should realize that these patches, things like untrusted path execution, /proc restrictions and so on, althou

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      The idiotic drama surrounding Linux "security" shows a large area for improvement that few have cared about during the lifetime of Linux. OpenBSD, MINIX, seL4 and others are very successful for pursuing security without drama, due to security being a clear goal that is designed for.

    • Re:grsecurity (Score:5, Informative)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday June 16, 2018 @09:49PM (#56796960) Journal
      Grsecurity likes to claim they are secure, but at DEFCON last year, someone looked into it, and hacked it pretty easily, even installed DOOM on the device running it.
  • by Wrath0fb0b ( 302444 ) on Sunday June 17, 2018 @06:16AM (#56798214)

    Just to get this out of the way, while I disagree strongly with Bruce about the merits of his claim, I do not in any way support the defamation claim against him for saying it. A differing view is not the same as a defamatory statement.

    That said, the idea that a set of modifications to a copyright product, distributed separately, constitutes a derivative work is terrible policy and is philosophically counter to the 'freedom to tinker' that the tech community holds dear. I don't know if it is is the law right now (and absent. a very expensive test case, we aren't likely to find out), but just as a matter of policy I think it would be a Very Bad Ideaâ.

    Consider, for instance, a student or researcher that patches the software in a commercial digital microscope to improve image quality or performance in a fashion. Let's further suppose they release the patch under some F/OSS license both to benefit other users of the product but also as part of disclosing their methods for the purpose of scientific integrity and reproducibility. It's undisputed that the company selling the microscope retains copyright. in the original software, but under Perens' claim they also have rights to the patch as a derivative work.

    To me, this cannot be right. A modification to a work, distributed separately, is not derivative. It is not a copy with some changes, it is just the changes. To say that one violates copyright without distributing a single bit of the underlying work inflates the power of rights holders at the expense of everyone else, in a regime that's already quite solicitous of the rights holders.

    [ Of course, GRSecurity are not the greatest poster boys for this claim. But bad examples should not make bad policy. The claim here is a one that has broad implications beyond the individual lawsuit-happy jerks involved this time. ]

    • by robinsc ( 84714 )

      I think what Bruce is saying is that if the original software is distributed under GPL the modifications must be distributed under something that is compatible with the GPL and that any statements added to the license cannot take away rights to redistribution guaranteed under the GPL. I.e a modification based on GPL published source has to be GPL compatible.

      • if the original software is distributed under GPL the modifications must be distributed under something that is compatible with the GPL

        There is no way to limit this to the GPL (or F/OSS licenses generally). If his claim is a correct. statement of law, then modifications of a copyright work are derivative works irrespective of whether they derive from a GPL original or a proprietary original.

        There's no special law over just the GPL -- if GRSec (or nVidia!) create a derivative work by distributing a patch or

    • That said, the idea that a set of modifications to a copyright product, distributed separately, constitutes a derivative work is terrible policy and is philosophically counter to the 'freedom to tinker' that the tech community holds dear.

      I have always felt that it was a bit of an overreach too. Kind of like how EULAs overreach. *sigh* So many greedy and selfish people on all sides. It also annoys me that they think linking is a copyright issue too. No, you are using an API. Just because my code can talk to your code, that does not give you any right to my code.

  • Spengler: You have no chance to survive. Make your time!

    Judge: Yawn. lolwhat? omgwtfbbq. Next case!

    Love grsec, but Spengler is such a prick.

    • Spengler is such a prick.

      How can you say such a thing about the lead scientist of Ghostbusters?

  • Was pretty confident that the suit would fail, too bad it takes $500k to make the court see common sense.

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