linux-kernel - Grsecurity blaims insane conspiracy theory for self-imposed legal woes

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Message-ID: <3ee534a5d4a4a442356a528a9fe5fe18@waifu.club>
Date:   Tue, 18 Feb 2020 10:57:36 +0000
From:   agentoranger@...fu.club
To:     linux-kernel@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Grsecurity blaims insane conspiracy theory for self-imposed legal
 woes

Grsecurity blaims insane conspiracy theory for self-imposed legal woes
 From the Grsecurity website: 
https://grsecurity.net/setting_the_record_straight_on_oss_v_perens_part1

> Company Background
> 
> Open Source Security, Inc. was formed in 2008 initially to handle 
> donations related to the grsecurity project, an open source project 
> started in 2001 and freely (in all senses) available to the world until 
> at least 2015. In 2015 we made our stable patches available to paid 
> customers only via our website, a right granted by the GPL. At the 
> time, we still had a freely (in all senses) test patch available. In 
> April of 2017 we stopped providing the test patches to the general 
> public.
> A Troll's Revenge
> 
> Only a few months after this, a notorious Internet troll who had used 
> grsecurity in the past and been banned from our forums for misogynistic 
> comments was apparently upset at having his access cut off completely 
> (after previously being denied access to the stable patches in 2015), 
> and came out of hibernation to extend a private and public campaign to 
> get revenge. This campaign continues today even, with posts to LKML, 
> various distribution mailing lists, and posts and comments on Slashdot, 
> Reddit, and other news aggregators. This person poses under various 
> names, usernames, and email addresses, but most recently poses as a 
> legitimate lawyer claiming the GPL can be rescinded. The emails come 
> from @redchan.it,@airmail.cc, and other anonymous mailing services with 
> usernames like "aconcernedfossdev", "visionsofalice", "gameonlinux", 
> "nisus", and "unconditionedwitness". Most commonly, the email subject 
> regarding us includes: "Why will no-one sue GrSecurity for their 
> blatant GPL violation?" or "Yes you have standing to sue GRSecurity." 
> In many instances, due to the changing names and email addresses, 
> readers are unaware this is the same "MikeeUSA" troll, a self-professed 
> misogynist and pedophile, that had been harrassing and issuing death 
> threats to women in Open Source for years.
> 
> But the anonymous troll wasn't able to inflict the kind of damage he 
> wanted to achieve alone. People saw an unstable individual mixing 
> misogynistic comments with nonsensical legal theories, making it clear 
> he was not an expert and his comments had no basis in reality. To 
> inflict the damage he wanted, he'd need to enlist the help of someone 
> the public trusts and views as an expert on license compliance matters, 
> so that it'd be accepted as fact by the public. So in private, he 
> contacted various influential people (including Richard Stallman, Eben 
> Moglen, Bradley Kuhn, and Bruce Perens) involved in Free Software/Open 
> Source in an attempt to bait them into accepting and repeating his 
> claims and wild legal theories as true. None of them took the bait, 
> except for Bruce Perens.
> 
> Perens' Collaboration
> 
(... and on it goes)
( 
https://grsecurity.net/setting_the_record_straight_on_oss_v_perens_part1 
  https://archive.is/7B9No
)
( 
https://grsecurity.net/setting_the_record_straight_on_oss_v_perens_part2 
  https://archive.is/7B9No
)
( 
https://grsecurity.net/setting_the_record_straight_on_oss_v_perens_part3 
  https://archive.is/tvlWf)