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Am 03.09.2015 23:08 schrieb Marc Schiffbauer: |
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> * Matthew Thode schrieb am 03.09.15 um 21:46 Uhr: |
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>> On 09/03/2015 02:28 PM, Marc Schiffbauer wrote: |
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>> > * Anthony G. Basile schrieb am 02.09.15 um 18:13 Uhr: |
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>> >> Hi everyone, |
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>> >> |
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>> >> So by now most people have heard the news that the Grsecurity/PaX team |
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>> >> are no longer going to be making their stable patches available. The |
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>> >> reason is that they are in dispute with a certain embedded systems |
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>> >> vendor and those negotiations broke down. So they decided to make their |
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>> >> stable patches only available to the sponsors. [1] |
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>> >> |
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>> >> What does this mean for Gentoo? Up until now I have been maintaining |
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>> >> both the grsec upstream stable and testing patchsets in our |
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>> >> hardened-sources. Currently the upstream stable kernels are 3.2.71 and |
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>> >> 3.14.51 and the testing are 4.1.6. In about one week, the 3.2.71 and |
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>> >> 3.14.51 patchsets will no longer be available and I'll continue pushing |
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>> >> out the 4.1.6. Unfortunately the testing patchset is precisely as the |
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>> >> name suggests --- for testing and not production. For the embedded |
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>> >> systems company this will be the kiss of death because those patches are |
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>> >> not suitable for long term. For Gentoo it will mean that I will have to |
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>> >> be more vigilant about bugs and trying to stick with a well known kernel |
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>> >> before moving on. You can still use these kernels in production, but |
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>> >> you must be carefull about instabilities as upstream pushes out |
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>> >> experimental feature that may oops or panic. Keep older kernel images |
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>> >> around and revert if it doesn't work. Look to this list for |
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>> >> announcements about more serious issues like things that can cause data |
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>> >> loss. |
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>> >> |
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>> >> I'm hoping that once this company feels the sting of what has just |
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>> >> happened, they'll come back to the table and talk with Grsec/PaX people. |
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>> >> They won't be able to ship boards with grsec anymore because its not so |
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>> >> easy to switch out a kernel on a board! If they ship a board with a |
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>> >> bug, they loose. We just reboot :) |
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>> >> |
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>> >> [1] https://grsecurity.net/ |
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>> > |
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>> > Can't Gentoo be a sponsor? I think we could easly croudfund a |
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>> > sponsorship. |
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>> > |
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>> > This would help Gentoo and Grsecurty/PaX but OTOH that vendor might just |
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>> > use the gentoo kernel if they not already did so. |
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>> > |
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>> > Thoughts? |
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>> > |
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>> We can't do that because it would make the LTS patches public, which |
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>> spender is trying to avoid. |
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> |
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> True and what I wanted to say with the OTOH part. But doesn't this |
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> apply |
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> to any sponsor? I mean we are talking about GPL'ed Software... does the |
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> GPL permit to distribute source under some kind of NDA? |
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> |
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> I fully respect their decision but I hope things will be back to normal |
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> again soon. |
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> |
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No you can't override the GPL with an NDA. But a sponsor - who is |
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selling products based on grsecurity - is not required to make the code |
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available to the general public, only to the customer who pays for the |
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product. They're also not required to make their /patches/ available, |
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only the complete source. So even if you get the sources from a customer |
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(or you buy the product yourself), you would have to diff the code |
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against a vanilla kernel - and then you only get a huge patch that |
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includes *all* changes. Extracting just the grsecurity patch from that |
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is complicated and error prone. You'll probably run into less bugs if |
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you just stick to the public testing patches. |
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Philipp |
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