Re: TE/DTE Patent issues?

crispinat_private

Clint Byrum wrote:

>On Mon, 2002-07-01 at 15:57, Seth Arnold wrote:
>  
>
>>On Mon, Jul 01, 2002 at 03:34:57PM -0700, Clint Byrum wrote:
>>    
>>
>>>I think I have decided that, while SELinux and Type Enforcement(tm...
>>>hehe) are the right way to do this, I'd rather not deal with the
>>>licensing issues. What is the best alternative?
>>>      
>>>
>>I'd suggest writing to NAI and ask them how they intend to enforce their
>>patent. I'd also suggest staying tuned for a response from SCC about how
>>they intend to handle their patent. I think they realize it matters very
>>much to the SELinux users, so they will likely report their final
>>decisions rather publicly.
>>    
>>
>Yes, and let me make something perfectly clear. It is definitely within
>SCC and NAI's privilege to do whatever they like with their patents.
>They probably should have made things clear earlier on, but they didn't,
>so we'll consider it a lesson learned.
>
To be perfectly clear, it is SCC's patent, not NAI's. I have met with 
SCC, and I believe that they are diligently working on resolving the issue.

NAI is a separate issue: the DTE module would appear to be subject to 
the NAI DTE patent (separate from SCC's TE patent). Unlike SCC, NAI has 
(to my knowledge) not made any statements about how they intend to treat 
their DTE patent. People considering using DTE should be very concerned, 
and anyone with pull inside NAI should encourage NAI to make their 
position clear.

>That said, I do not have the luxury of time to wait for an answer. I
>can't spend resources iplementing some of the TE policies that I would
>need for my project, and then have a new licensing requirement to deal
>with, one that I might not be able to deal with.
>
>I'd much rather work with a known situation.
>
Well then, let me introduce you to Immunix and SubDomain. It has a known 
situation: it's proprietary to WireX :)

    * Immunix is our security-hardened Linux system.
    * SubDomain is the mandatory access control component. It is less
      expressive than SELinux, but is also smaller and easier to configure.

If interested, reply off-line, as this list is for LSM, not for WireX 
spam :)

Crispin

-- 
Crispin Cowan, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist, WireX Communications, Inc. http://wirex.com/~crispin/
Security Hardened Linux Distribution:       http://immunix.org
Available for purchase: http://wirex.com/Products/Immunix/purchase.html

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