LWN: Comments on "Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy"

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

paulj — Wed, 19 Mar 2025 12:58:16 +0000

For the casual reader, Mike Dolan is a long-standing executive at a trade association - the Linux Foundation - representing commercial corporate interests, at least some of whom are GPL violators.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

mathstuf — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 12:39:16 +0000

It seems to have happened on Twitter which I don't really feel like digging into right now. There was this article[1] last May and an overview of whatever happened in December from Gizmodo[2].

[1]https://creativecommons.org/2021/05/04/at-the-intersectio...
[2]https://gizmodo.com/wait-are-nfts-the-new-creative-common...

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

pabs — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 04:37:30 +0000

The trolling wasn't done by the CC org though? Can you link to the NFT thing? :(

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

flussence — Mon, 07 Feb 2022 00:15:42 +0000

Oh, this is tiresome. Between this and the CC org endorsing NFTs recently, maybe it's time to find a more modern replacement.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

jezuch — Tue, 01 Feb 2022 12:22:03 +0000

In related news, Cory Doctorow recently wrote about Creative Commons trolling: https://doctorow.medium.com/a-bug-in-early-creative-commo...

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

flussence — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 22:21:53 +0000

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

farnz — Fri, 28 Jan 2022 14:44:23 +0000

AIUI (not a lawyer), the legal theory behind that provision was that the state governments were a party to the settlement, and thus could prohibit use of their courts for suing the defendant. Would have been fun to see that tested in court…

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

kpfleming — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 20:27:15 +0000

Rather off-topic, but the massive 'settlement' in the US between Purdue Pharma/its owners and various state governments included just such a provision: once accepted (it's since been un-accepted), no third party could bring a claim against the defendants, they were granted immunity from third-party claims as part of the settlement. This was a ludicrous thing for anyone to agree to, but it happened.

I would have loved to see a large, well-financed, third-party bring a suit anyway if the settlement had been fully implemented, just to see the judge in that case throw out the 'defense' that this unrelated case provided immunity.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

NAR — Thu, 27 Jan 2022 11:09:40 +0000

But what happens if there's a fallout between the members of the core team? Someone is kicked out, but the kicked out person does not accept this? OK, in this case the project has probably lot of other problems too...

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

bosyber — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 13:12:53 +0000

Ah, thanks. Sorry, I guess my lack of practice in looking for Hamburg and other German court documents showing there.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

developer122 — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 20:43:00 +0000

>Maybe we were already there according to the adjacent article about RYF, but it's more obvious now

The Problems that RYF tries and fails to solve are unrelated to copyright. There's no open-source code in any of these silicon vendor's bring-up blobs. They're written from scratch (and for practical reasons have to be) to bring-up their specific hardware. Writing configuration values, calibrating receivers they designed, etc.

These then find their way into open source and proprietary products alike, because without them the system simply doesn't work. Without using synopsys's DDR4 PHY blob (through secondary-processor obfuscation), the librem phone wouldn't have any ram.

But the argument that "these blobs should be open-source because they interact with open source code" like uboot doesn't hold water. They're provided to all users of the chip, open source and proprietary alike, and it's the vendor's right to choose the licence of code that's 100% theirs. The open source projects then have to decide if they can legally pick it up and use it.

In the end, it all comes back to nurturing open hardware where the bringup code is written open in the first place.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

mdolan — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 17:54:33 +0000

Paf, that is all correct. The damage done to Netfilter as a brand has been considerable - Pablo and the team have had a lot of unwanted stress because of McHardy's actions.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

armijn — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 15:06:59 +0000

There actually is a verdict in the first case (and has been for a bit over 4 years as it was decided in November 2017): https://dejure.org/ext/945f91adbb3ce04fcddbfa5d83994382

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

Paf — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 15:01:58 +0000

I would encourage you to read up on details of McHardy’s practices. They were clearly not done in good faith and there was no attempt to encourage compliance. The only goal was to extract as much money as possible even if the violations were more technical or incidental in nature and the companies willing to attempt remedy. Even minor and unintentional violations were pursued zealously without interest in remedy - just cash.

My understanding is he also didn’t truly prioritize deep pocketed violators (no suit against VMWare, afaik) - he prioritized that delicious sweet spot of “deep enough to pay me off, but too small to make it realistic to fight me in court”. And, again, he was uninterested in remediation of even minor and unintentional violations - he wanted cash. It seems unlikely this was helping the cause of free software.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

xophos — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 09:36:07 +0000

I don't follow. Even disregarding the doubious practice of calling anything you disagree with terrorism, i see any GPL enforcement as good.
Prioritizing targets with deep pockets results in more press coverage and (in case of success) therefor more motivation for other parties to avoid becoming a target by complying without waiting for a lawsuit.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

anselm — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 08:58:04 +0000

There is no association being formed here between them.

As a matter of fact there is (in German civil law, the GbR is, so to speak, the “default case” of associations, which happens automatically when some people act together towards a common goal – no explicit written or oral agreement is required, it can be implied in fact), but as long as they sued McHardy in their own personal capacity and not as “the Netfilter core team”, that association does not appear as a separate legal entity.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

bosyber — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 07:57:48 +0000

The two exempt cases I indeed also didn't find out what they are, but it might well just be because they are currently going on (no verdict yet in either), so (not-a-lawyer-not-even-in-DE) that this settlement cannot (automatically) end those, possibly because other parties are (also) involved, for example, companies that are being sued for copyright infringement. The settlement might end up playing a role there though.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

bosyber — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 07:48:29 +0000

Well, that's sort of true. But in order to use netfilter code to do so, you do need a copyright in netfilter.

Also, and especially after this settlement, a company that you have a McHardy like go at would seem to be encouraged to get in contact with the netfilter core team to work out a way forward, which does hamper the potential threatening nature of any action you take. In the end a valid copyright claim remains a valid copyright claim, so sure everyone who (believes they) has(ve) one is allowed to pursue that against an infringing company, and the best solution for companies remains to be in compliance, but when not, it does seem that working with them constructively has the most effect for the future to resolve things if they hadn't properly clearly done that before.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

t-v — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 07:46:02 +0000

From reading the (German) settlement:
The settlement is between Pablo Neira Ayuso, Harald Welte, and József Kadlecik as the plaintiffs and Patrick McHardy as the respondent, so it is legally binding to those four as individuals. They have the requirement to seek agreement for copyright complaints around netfilter that they want to file.
Third parties can recur to this requirement as a defense to claims brought by any of them.
There is no association being formed here between them.
An interesting detail is that the plaintiffs bear the costs of the lawsuit, but I guess this is the compromise part of getting a settlement. Also, there are two cases listed as exempt, I don't know what these are.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

felixfix — Tue, 25 Jan 2022 02:49:56 +0000

If parties A and B reach a legal settlement to some dispute, their agreement has no hold on parties C, D, ... This shows up, for instance, when party A wins a libel lawsuit against party B and tries to make Google or a website stop referencing the result.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

warrax — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 22:39:53 +0000

> Thing is, I believe it's true in America, and it's likewise probably true over here in Britain, you cannot be bound by a court decision where you were not involved.

Define "you were not involved".

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

warrax — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 22:35:33 +0000

Sounds like a "forening" in Denmark. (Which is of course a cognate of vereinung, but doesn't mean quite the same thing.)

It's just a loose association of people with a stated common purpose. I do think there is a (probably vague) legal requirement that they do have a have agreed-upon bylaws, where some parts have to be spelled out, e.g. "how are the bylaws changed, by percentage of votes", etc...

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

Wol — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 20:35:28 +0000

Similar to an English Partnership, although I suspect over here there may need to be at least some form of formal agreement.

Cheers,
Wol

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

Wol — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 20:33:28 +0000

Thing is, I believe it's true in America, and it's likewise probably true over here in Britain, you cannot be bound by a court decision where you were not involved. So this agreement is in many ways brilliant.

Netfilter can carry on as they were, decisions are made by the core team. Hardy can NOT take any action against violators of Netfilter, the kernel, or anything else covered by the agreement, without the agreement and consent of the Netfilter core team (which of course they are extremely unlikely to agree to).

But everybody else can just ignore the agreement. I'm not a German national, I don't (and never have) lived there. If I were a kernel copyright holder suing in the High Court, how (or why!!!) am I supposed to know anything about some obscure legal agreement in some provincial German court?

Hardy however, whether or not he has any personal link to Germany, chose it as his jurisdiction of choice to be plaintiff. He therefore chose to give Germany jurisdiction over himself.

Cheers,
Wol

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

flussence — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 20:08:59 +0000

Overall, this is a relief. McHardy's actions were, by the most literal definition, terrorism. The sort of thing you'd expect from BSA members like Microsoft. Targets prioritised by the depth of their pockets, not their infringement.

Yet at the same time it looks like we're back to the status quo of "go ahead and steal this code, ship your semi-proprietary embedded junk and never upstream anything, the LF won't ever care". (Maybe we were already there according to the adjacent article about RYF, but it's more obvious now)

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

anselm — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 16:56:16 +0000

Also I don't think that courts absolutely require formal incorporation to accept the validity of a group acting as an entity, someone with appropriate expertise might care to comment on that aspect.

German law stipulates that if a number of people (such as the “netfilter core team”) act together towards a common goal even without incorporating, they form a “Gesellschaft bürgerlichen Rechts” (GbR, roughly translatable as “civil-law association”), even in the absence of a written agreement, so given that this is taking place in Germany, that should be OK. If a GbR participates in commerce as its own entity, it has an independent legal existence (e.g., it – rather than its individual members – can sue someone or be sued by someone), even though its members are personally liable for any debts that it incurs.

(Disclaimer: not a lawyer.)

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

beagnach — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 16:14:41 +0000

The netfilter core team has a long <strikethrough>paper-</strikethrough>trail in the form of email announcements and other interactions with the wider community. It would be very very hard for someone to plausibly make a false claim in this regard. Also I don't think that courts absolutely require formal incorporation to accept the validity of a group acting as an entity, someone with appropriate expertise might care to comment on that aspect.

Bottom line - the current informal nature of the netfilter core team doesn't nullify the effectiveness of the settlement, but it may well be wise for them to move to some more formal arrangement.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

fenncruz — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 15:46:23 +0000

Then you just get to spend even more time with your lawyers and the judge first proving that you are the core team.

Netfilter project: Settlement with Patrick McHardy

kleptog — Mon, 24 Jan 2022 15:38:10 +0000

The part I find most interesting about this is that the settlement specifies the Netfilter Core team which is something that (AFAICT) has no formal legal existence. In a normal situation you'd have a cooperative/association/whatever that has founding documents that determine who is in, who is out and who decides disputes. Here this all appears to be informal.

If someone were to hack the website and the Git repo to remove references to everyone else but them, do they become the Netfilter Core team?

I'm guessing that the role of the court here was to stamp the agreement, not to agree to its workability.