Okay, how long do pickles keep? And, how do you tell if they've "gone bad"? Can they go bad?

Here's the story. An acquaintance of mine asked me "do you like pickles?". I said yes. He then dropped off a 5 GALLON container of big dill pickle chips, the kind where one covers a whole hamburger. It's one of those 5 gallon buckets, it appears to never have been opened, and according to him, it's 3 or 4 years old, somebody gave it to *him*. I'm collecting smaller containers to put them in, because the way I was raised, once you open pickles, you need to refrigerate them. I don't have room to refrigerate 5 gallons of pickles, so I was going to pass the smaller containers around to friends. But I don't want to poison anybody, either. I considered just digging a hole and burying them, but pickles are often full of salt. Bad for the surrounding plant life, right?

So, now I'm responsible for these pickles, and I suppose I could just let the bucket sit out in my garage forever, but that doesn't feel right, either.

Any suggestions? (outside of NEVER saying yes to that acquaintance again, that is...)

Kate