A 'Statement of Assurance' on SELinux patents [LWN.net]

A 'Statement of Assurance' on SELinux patents

Posted Aug 1, 2002 16:44 UTC (Thu) by leonb (guest, #3054)
In reply to: A 'Statement of Assurance' on SELinux patents by loening
Parent article: A 'Statement of Assurance' on SELinux patents

From the GPL preamble:

 Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by software
 patents.  We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free
 program will individually obtain patent licenses, in effect making the
 program proprietary.  To prevent this, we have made it clear that any
 patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all.

From clause 7:

 For example, if a patent
 license would not permit royalty-free redistribution of the Program by
 all those who receive copies directly or indirectly through you, then
 the only way you could satisfy both it and this License would be to
 refrain entirely from distribution of the Program.

It seems that SELinux is already illegal.

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A 'Statement of Assurance' on SELinux patents

Posted Aug 7, 2002 22:29 UTC (Wed) by ejhuff (guest, #3150) [Link]

There was a fair amount of discussion on the SELinux mailing list. See for example, this message and replies on the SELinux list. These are all old patents. They expire in a few years.

          Publication   / Filing        / Likely expiration
US4713753 Dec. 15, 1987 / Feb. 21, 1985 / Feb. 21, 2005
US4621321 Nov.  4, 1986 / Feb. 16, 1984 / Feb. 16, 2004
US4701840 Oct. 20, 1987 / June 20, 1986 / June 20, 2006

Please note that the GPL does not required that patent licenses be explicit or irrevocable. I can distribute and use SELinux under the GPL until such time as some successor of SCC actually revokes the revocable patent license which SCC has implicitly granted.

It appears to me that SCC was paid a lot of money by the NSA to develop the initial implementation of SELinux. One would assume that the contract the NSA negotiated would include provision for a royalty-free patent license, but it might not require that SCC admit that it grants such a license. See also this message on the SELinux list.

I claim SCC has in fact granted a royalty-free revocable license to use the patents with SELinux and derivative works under GPL (all that the GPL requires), but they would rather that everyone think they have not granted such a license. They don't want anyone to work on SELinux. They don't want anyone to use SELinux. They just want to keep the money the NSA paid them. To achieve these goals, they need to use FUD, but probably they can't actually revoke the license without first repaying the NSA.