6 ms·

Naive question: can't EFF help?

by CodeMage 11y ago

RaleyField 11y ago
Linus should've helped. But they don't want to merge patches to the kernel. Use OpenBSD.
- mburns 11y ago
  > But they don't want to merge patches to the kernel. To be clear, the 'they' in that sentence are the authors of GRSecurity, not the kernel developers.
  - simoncion 11y ago
    Are you sure about that? From what I heard Torvalds refuses to merge patches from folks who won't identify themselves[0], and the PaX Team refuses to reveal the membership of the team. [0] This is a perfectly reasonable policy.
    - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
      The problem is they're both right.
      - simoncion 11y ago
        Pardon me, I'm confused. Who is "they" in your statement? Is it the mass "you"? Is it referring to my statement and mburns's statement? If it is, then can you provide a first-hand citation that supports mburns's statement? AIUI, the GRSec folks don't gain anything by keeping their patches out of tree. If they could merge them in, they should.
        mburns 11y ago
        GRSecurity devs have actively avoided submitting the patches into mainline. http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/59020/why-are-the-grsecurity-patches-not-included-in-the-vanilla-kernel/59039#59039 http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/59020/why-are-the-gr... Someone should really break up the patchset and submit it upstream as discrete features.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        simoncion 11y ago
        If you can't get the PaX Team to attribute their code to a meatsack, (or -I guess- get someone to vouch for it), then this will be a non-starter. Grsec is pretty much useless without PaX.
- zobzu 11y ago
  To be frank, the grsecurity folks and Brad in particular aren't exactly nice to others or trying the get stuff merged in the right way, so they don't get a lot of support from the kernel folks. Most of the time Brad is shaming kernel devs and saying they're all idiots.
  - bigiain 11y ago
    <devil's advocate> The existence of his project/business and specifically the fact that other eople not only use but rip off his wrok - seem to strongly provide evidence that supports his "they're all idiots" theory... (To be fair, "all" is clearly an exaggeration, but enough kernel devs are clearly writing security bugs into the kernel source tree to require an external "adult supervision" project to improve the security focus...)
  - rodgerd 11y ago
    > To be frank, the grsecurity folks and Brad in particular aren't exactly nice to others or trying the get stuff merged in the right way, so they don't get a lot of support from the kernel folks. Linus "I am not a nice person, deal with it" Torvalds is upset because someone else is a ranty meany about him? Heaven forbid!
    - strcat 11y ago
      Brad doesn't throw personal attacks and insults around like Linus anyway. Plain spoken criticism of actions and ideas is not a personal attack. He tends to strongly disagree with the upstream kernel developers on issues related to security and what pisses them off is that his criticism is fair and accurate. They should be embarrassed about the state of security (and stability...) in vanilla, and they get offended when it's pointed out.
      - Pyxl101 11y ago
        Do you have any examples? I'd be curious to read the discussions - in particular, legitimate criticism that was ignored.
      - 11y ago

Naive question: can't EFF help?

RaleyField 11y ago

Linus should've helped. But they don't want to merge patches to the kernel. Use OpenBSD.

mburns 11y ago
> But they don't want to merge patches to the kernel. To be clear, the 'they' in that sentence are the authors of GRSecurity, not the kernel developers.
- simoncion 11y ago
  Are you sure about that? From what I heard Torvalds refuses to merge patches from folks who won't identify themselves[0], and the PaX Team refuses to reveal the membership of the team. [0] This is a perfectly reasonable policy.
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    The problem is they're both right.
    - simoncion 11y ago
      Pardon me, I'm confused. Who is "they" in your statement? Is it the mass "you"? Is it referring to my statement and mburns's statement? If it is, then can you provide a first-hand citation that supports mburns's statement? AIUI, the GRSec folks don't gain anything by keeping their patches out of tree. If they could merge them in, they should.
      - mburns 11y ago
        GRSecurity devs have actively avoided submitting the patches into mainline. http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/59020/why-are-the-grsecurity-patches-not-included-in-the-vanilla-kernel/59039#59039 http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/59020/why-are-the-gr... Someone should really break up the patchset and submit it upstream as discrete features.
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        simoncion 11y ago
        If you can't get the PaX Team to attribute their code to a meatsack, (or -I guess- get someone to vouch for it), then this will be a non-starter. Grsec is pretty much useless without PaX.
zobzu 11y ago
To be frank, the grsecurity folks and Brad in particular aren't exactly nice to others or trying the get stuff merged in the right way, so they don't get a lot of support from the kernel folks. Most of the time Brad is shaming kernel devs and saying they're all idiots.
- bigiain 11y ago
  <devil's advocate> The existence of his project/business and specifically the fact that other eople not only use but rip off his wrok - seem to strongly provide evidence that supports his "they're all idiots" theory... (To be fair, "all" is clearly an exaggeration, but enough kernel devs are clearly writing security bugs into the kernel source tree to require an external "adult supervision" project to improve the security focus...)
- rodgerd 11y ago
  > To be frank, the grsecurity folks and Brad in particular aren't exactly nice to others or trying the get stuff merged in the right way, so they don't get a lot of support from the kernel folks. Linus "I am not a nice person, deal with it" Torvalds is upset because someone else is a ranty meany about him? Heaven forbid!
  - strcat 11y ago
    Brad doesn't throw personal attacks and insults around like Linus anyway. Plain spoken criticism of actions and ideas is not a personal attack. He tends to strongly disagree with the upstream kernel developers on issues related to security and what pisses them off is that his criticism is fair and accurate. They should be embarrassed about the state of security (and stability...) in vanilla, and they get offended when it's pointed out.
    - Pyxl101 11y ago
      Do you have any examples? I'd be curious to read the discussions - in particular, legitimate criticism that was ignored.
    - 11y ago