How 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?
GRSecurity are patches to the Linux kernel right? Can you distribute patches for a GPL licensed software without the patches themselves being GPL?
The way these things tend to work is "It's GPL, but if you redistribute it publicly we terminate your subscription with no refund." (I think RHEL binaries work the same way, for instance.) The reason for companies to pay is to get reliable updates for new versions, so that they can avoid hiring a bunch of people in-house to build / forward-port things. So usually this incentive works.
Now that grsec is completely unavailable without a paid subscription, either source or binary, it'd be interesting to see if the incentive holds up, or whether someone wants to burn a subscription to get a version out to the public. I imagine that they're cautious about who they allow to sign up as a customer.
You say "burn a subscription", does that mean you assume the patchsets are earmarked? And wouln't simply... two subscriptions and a diff fix that?
https://01.org/linuxgraphics/gfx-docs/drm/admin-guide/tainte...
Edit:
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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.
The 'P' taint flag exists because upstream kernel maintainers aren't interested in dealing with bug reports where the bug may have been caused by proprietary code loaded by end users, which often can't be examined or copied even for the purpose of discussing the bug. Total waste of time, so the flag makes those cases obvious to anyone reading the bug report. The user can be told upfront to remove the proprietary code and try to reproduce the bug again.
End users can combine proprietary code with GPL code if they want to, because end users aren't bound by the GPL unless and until they distribute something covered by it. You don't even have to accept the terms of the GPL just to run the program[1].
A company distributing a proprietary module for the kernel may or may not be violating the GPL, depending on what it does and who you ask.
In contrast to the module stuff, GRSecurity is a set of patches to very low level parts of the Linux kernel itself. It could never be licensed in a way that prevented the patch set or the resulting patched kernel source/binaries from being covered and distributed under the GPLv2. If that were the case, the kernel would effectively not be covered by the GPL at all.
Is this true? I would think that as long as your "new" code is sufficiently distinct from the stuff you're replacing, you'd be fine distributing a non-GPL patch (at least if it's e.g. purely positional to elide context related issues). The result of applying the patch would not be distributable, but I'd think the patch itself would be fine.
On the other hand, seeing how everyone turns their back on you when you do try to prosecute GPL violations (e.g. SFC and the VMWare GPL lawsuit), I can see why the Linux maintainers don't try to enforce their copyleft. It certainly doesn't help that the Linux foundation is almost entirely run by companies that do not want the GPL to have teeth.
Why do so many pieces of FOSS software—especially in their Windows or macOS distributions—have clickwrap that makes me accept the GPL to install them? Are they just misinformed?
Misinformed, or just using installer tools that have a slot for an EULA, so they just stick whatever license applies to the software even if it is expressly not intended to be a use license in without thought.