Did MS Lobbying Stop NSA Work On SELinux?

inquisitive points to this CNET story on how George Wash Univ. may help Linux gain certification under the Common Criteria, certification required for software to be used in some sensitive government roles. In the same story, though, is an interesting quote from another effort at bringing GPL'd software to the public sector: "'We didn't fully understand the consequences of releasing software under the GPL (General Public License),' said Dick Schafer, deputy director of the NSA. 'We received a lot of loud complaints regarding our efforts with SE Linux.'" Sources familiar with events said that aggressive Microsoft lobbying efforts have contributed to a halt on any further work. 'Microsoft was worried that the NSA's releasing open-source software would compete with American proprietary software,' said a source familiar with the complaints against the NSA who asked not to be identified."

Comments

"American"?

[Wolfier]

Have anyone noticed this buzzword used by every Microsoft lobbying effort after 9/11 just to trying to give the probably fake impression of Microsoft being "patriotic"?

Somebody has to wake up.

Re:No.

[FreeUser]

Shouldn't it be the other way around?

No.

Correct. The NSA shouldn't be telling anyone what to do. Their mandate is to collect information and provide security advice to other agencies and, where authorized, the private sector. They are not a governing body. Ditto on the last sentence for the FBI, the CIA, and various other black-op agencies running around grabbing people out of their homes in the middle of the night and confiscating their material wealth without due process in the name of the ongoing War on [insert your favorite cause here].

On who pays the fiddler orders the tune..

Only partially correct. If we truly believe in democracy and "one person, one vote", then the amount of influence we wield on our government should be proportional to the number of people we represent, not the amount of taxes we pay or, more commonly, the quantity of bribes, relabelled "campaign contributions" we stuff into the pockets of our so-called representatives.

But, even if it were 100% correct that the amount of taxes we pay should dictate the amoutn of influence we wield on our government, it should be pointed out that Microsoft almost never declares a profit on their tax returns (last year it was a 19 cent/share loss IIRC, as for tax purposes they do report those stock options which, conviniently, don't appear on the SEC filings), so Microsoft actually doesn't pay any taxes at all.

Given your reasoning, I should have much more influence on the NSA than Microsoft does. Unfortunately, that is not the case and one of the main reasons, perhaps the main reason, that democracy in the United States is falling to pieces.

Not the whole story....

[giminy]

I sort of work on SE Linux. Our group is unsponsored by the NSA (thus far). Since we are unofficially working on it, though, we hear birds chatter sometimes. The rumor mill around our office has been saying that it is not the case that Microsoft has done anything. What happened? A party, whose name shan't be mentioned, because we have not been told their name (we shall call them the Party), was given an SE Linux contract by the NSA. The NSA it seems didn't understand the GPL so well (or some lawyer of theirs who hammered out the contract didn't). The NSA contract said that the Party working on the contract could have propietary code, and could patent ideas used to achieve goals on the project. Much work was done on SE Linux in the mean time by the Party, but patents/etc are held on certain parts of the code by the Party, and therefore cannot be released under GPL. The quotes you see in this article heading make perfect sense to me in this context. The NSA didn't understand the GPL. And yeah, I would complain too if I couldn't have the complete source to my kernel...

Yes I hate Microsoft, but this article is kind of ridiculous...it uses some vague quote to make microsoft look bad. This is not the way to win the war.