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SCC Statement on SELinux Patent Issues

Posted by michael on from the patent-leather dept.

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.

1 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Nor.... by Alan+Cox · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Its actually useless. It allows them to sell it to a friend, sue everyone and buy their patent back one afternoon. The exemption excludes authorizing applicaitons or protocols (ie everything NSALinux does)

    Utterly cynical. However it demonstrates how bad the US patent problem is. Even the NSA, the US ultimate investigative and spook agency can't get patent stuff sane. So now the US government has written a security system that only foreign governments can profit from due to bad USSA law and poor planning.

    Its a pity Americans don't understand irony...