LWN: Comments on "SELinux and patents"

SELinux and patents

spirogyra — Thu, 31 Jul 2003 03:25:24 +0000

Basically, SCC has weakened but probably not broken the enforcability of their patent and wasted a lot of peoples time.

SELinux and patents

abredon — Fri, 14 Jun 2002 01:27:24 +0000

Since SCC released under the GPL, they effectively have to license their patent for free use by any derivative. Section 7 of the GPL:

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. ...

if SCC intends to not permit royalty free redistribution of the program, they are not allowed to distribute. They distributed, therefore they can be held to have permitted royalty free distribution under the GPL. Since they are both the patent holder AND the distributing party, if they try to charge for use of the patent, they are violating the GPL contract they signed by making a derivative work, and thus lose all rights they have to make said derivative work.

End result: If they do decide to charge for the patent, there is effectively no such thing as SELinux, and both SCC and the NSA must stop distributing it - a public relations land mine that SCC should not want to step on, not to mention that the NSA would not like to find out that they can not distribute SELinux due to SCC having broken a contract, after having announced the release of SELinux QUITE publicly.

SELinux and patents

olilo — Thu, 13 Jun 2002 12:27:31 +0000

The page can be retrieved on Web Archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/20011101160243/http://www.securecomputing.com/archive/press/2000/nsa_faq_secure_linux.html
for the Nov 01, 2001 version

Other versions:
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.securecomputing.com/archive/press/2000/nsa_faq_secure_linux.html

SELinux and patents

forthy — Thu, 13 Jun 2002 11:12:31 +0000

Definitely. The GPL says - in the preambel - "To prevent this, we have made it clear that any patent must be licensed for everyone's free use or not licensed at all." If the patent is only valid in certain countries (like RSA was in the USA only), a GPL'd software could be restricted to those areas where the patent is null and void.

Unfortunately, the GPL doesn't say what "everyone's free use" really is. Is it ok if the patent is limited to GPL'd programs (Free Software)? Is it ok if the patent is limited to OpenSource programs? Can these patents be used as defensive weapon against evil empires that try to sue free software programmer with their patents (while at the same time using patents granted by shipping GPL'd source)?

SELinux and patents

morhippo — Thu, 13 Jun 2002 09:25:59 +0000

Hmm, if they gave out GPLed software with their questionable software patent didn't they give me a license of the patent already?

SELinux and patents

tompoe — Thu, 13 Jun 2002 05:18:15 +0000

Hi: This points out just exactly why we need to take the W3.org folks to task on their "RAND" policies. There just can be no room for such poor ethics [they call it "business"] in the Open Source arena.
Thanks, Tom Poe, Reno, NV, http://www.studioforrecording.org/ , http://www.ibiblio.org/studioforrecording/