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.