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SCC Statement on SELinux Patent Issues
Hawke writes "Secure Computing has
announced a
Statement of Assurance that they will not use the patents in question to limit the availability of SELinux. They continue to say: 'However, Secure Computing does not extend the Assurance to software that merely interoperates with SELinux, or is merely included with a distribution of SELinux.'" The original story was here.
http://www.securecomputing.com/index.cfm?sKey=738
As it turns out, this is the problem child. SCC has a patent on this technology, and seems to have used it in SE Linux
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
(Further to my previous post) Quoting from the preamble of the GPL:
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.
Now you think that would be pretty clearcut, wouldn't you? Nonetheless, in the case of RTLinux, RMS did publicly state the patent holder could enforce his patent against users of non-GPL applications running under a modified Linux system containing code subject to the patent, without violating the GPL. Go figure. That doesn't sound like 'everyone's free use'.
In the case of the RTLinux patent, luckily a workaround was found, which is even superior to the patented method, so the question of whether the patent holder really was violating the GPL became moot. But, not too surprisingly, here is almost the same thing come up again. RMS needs to take a position.
Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.