LWN on the Patent Encumbrence of SELinux

Anonymous Coward writes "LWN has a story about patents in SELinux. The article says: "Much of the actual work in the implementation of SELinux was done by Secure Computing Corporation (SCC). SCC, in its implementation of SELinux, used a technology that it calls type enforcement. As it turns out, SCC has a patent on this technology." Sigh.

Comments

My IANAL conclusion

[autocracy]

Basically, patenting something in software and then GPLing it means you're the only one who can write the code that does that, but anyone can modify and redistribute what you've done. Kind of confusing, but basically it means that a certain method of doing something in software can now only be done if it's under the GPL - interesting.

I think that this also falls under the class of submarine patents. Either way, if I'm right in my conclusion, they can't do anything about it - you can't "unlicense" a GPL license; and it's non-exclusive, so anybody that has it can keep it going even after you stop offering it...

Summary: Chill out in the walk-in freezer!

Legal implications of this ?

[o'reor]

This, along with the RedHat patents in the Linux Kernel, rises a series of good questions :

• how are those patents going to benefit the companies that filed them ? It's mainly a closed-source word out there, how are they to prove that a competitor used the same technology in a closed-source product ?
• it does not appear to harm the free software community for the moment, but what later ? What if those components are no longer distributed under a free license ? SE Linux raises the problem with the explicit mention being removed from their pages, as mentionned by LWN.
• isn't it just a problem with the US patent office, who are overloaded with work, who do not always check the validity of a patent with regards to prior art, and the US legal system which allows lawyers of big companies to blackmail and racket smaller companies on unfair patent claims ? See this site which refers to a previous /. post on the subject. I personnaly think that kind of situation is an incentive for RedHat and SELinux to spend big bucks on patents.

I clearly don't see the free software community benefiting from this situation. Individual programmers will have to face both the possiblity that a rogue company sues them unfairly for patent infringement, and the possibility that another company, owning patents on parts of free software, changes its attitude towards the GPL and decides to un-GPL their code and go proprietary.

Say "thanks" to US lawyers and Powers That Be for allowing that nightmare to come true.

OPEN Patents!

[Compulawyer]

I've said it before, but it seems particularly appropriate in this thread. If Open Source code is novel, then it should be patented. Then a patent license similar to the GPL copyright license can be used to ensure that Open Source users can use the functionality in the code. If an Open Source patent License (OK, I'll coin a term -- the OPL - Open Patent License) is used in conjunction with the GPL, think what a remarkable impact it would have on code development.

All it would take is one killer app license under the OPL to create public demand. Then if anyone wanted to duplicate that functionality, the OPL would allow it -- BUT the corresponding GPL (or the OPL itself if properly worded) would require developers to release source code with their implementation.

I submit that this would have an even GREATER impact than the GPL. Developers would be free to try widely disparate approaches to achieving the patented functionality. The different algorithms and approaches could be compared with the best methods prevailing because the best code would be that actually used. Think of the contribution to computer science possible with widespread comparison of designs. I think the industry-wide effects would result in much higher-quality code in general.

Don't tell me that Open Source cannot get patents. If someone bothered to look, they could find a patent attorney who would be thrilled to get a patent for Open Source code as long as someone paid the filing fees (for small entities, about $350). I am a registered patent attorney and I would be thrilled to prosecute one of these applications. I'm sure I am not alone.

Re:OPEN Patents!

[Phil Hands]

Patents on software are a moronic idea.

As a lawyer, how would you like to have to check each tactic you were planing to use in defending one of your clients, before actually using it, in order to check that it had not been patented by another lawyer?

That what the patent industry is trying to do to us. They (you?) pretend they're are doing us a favour (chanting "Innovation", "Protection of Property" etc), but in fact you are burdening us with the extra workload of (if anyone could be bothered) having to check every line of code against a patent database, or in the absence of that, getting sued for thinking of an idea after (of sometimes several years before) someone else.

Not only that, but the patents are worded to ensure that they provide almost no information whatsoever to someone interested in the technique they describe, so the claimed goal of driving forward the state of the art is total nonsense (can you cite a single instance of a Computer Scientist referring to patents in order to learn a novel technique? I doubt it).

Software patents are a government authorised tax on the software industry to make monopolistic corporations and patent lawyers rich. They have no positive effect on the state of the art in the field of computing whatsoever.

Unfortunately the patent lawyers are in charge of the patent offices, and those arms of government that are supposed to regulate them, so we're likely to end up as thoroughly shafted in Europe as is the current situation in the USA.

Having said all that, patents on other, material inventions seem totally fine to me, so I'm not saying patents or patent lawyers are evil per se, just the ones that try to take my (software) toolbox away, when I made my toolbox myself.

Re:Opposing views

[Chris Johnson]

No, no, no, no, no. Intent is nothing! It's down to the wording of the actual license. Nobody is going to care about the 'since they came to play in our sandbox they must have MEANT to do XYZ'. Treachery is not itself against the law, just certain implementations of it are.

The outcome to watch for is (4) SCC blows away their license to distribute Linux and then shuts down all Linux distribution that involves their patented stuff, until the patented stuff is completely removed. The reason to watch for this is as follows: while destroying your own product (a Linux distribution) is bad business, there is enough outside interest in doing great damage to Linux that it WILL become rewarding to do so, to the extent that the patent becomes indispensable. If the patent becomes completely indispensable to Linux, the value of buying out or subverting the patent holder becomes astronomical to a competitor- some of whom claim to have rather a lot of money.

This holds for ANY patent being licensed into Free software, not just the SCC.