Red Hat Opens Lobbying Office Near DC

wiredog writes "From Government Computer News comes this story about Red Hat's new lobbying office near Washington DC, and mentions that RHEL 4 will have Common Criteria Evaluation Assurance Level 4 certification."

Comments

Re:Just Redhat??

[danheskett]

You assuming that OSDL, IBM, and RedHat share the same goals, which I believe, is totally incorrect.

RedHat is campaigining in part to replace big old Unix boxes, many many many of which are AS/400 boxes manufactuered, maintained, serviced and supported by IBM.

Most Common Criteria evaluations are worthless

[Wesley Felter]

For example, consider the tale of the Windows 2000 EAL4 evaluation.

Re:Most Common Criteria evaluations are worthless

[Isao]

CC Evaluations are widely misunderstood, but are actually relevent and valuable if you know how to use them (which it seems most don't).

The key to the CC is the Security Target or Protection Profile. The EAL number indicates how rigorously the claims in these documents have been verified. (The article linked covers this.) If the claims in an ST or PP are important to you, higher EAL's provide more assurance that what is claimed is in fact true. If you require something that isn't in the ST or PP, then even an EAL7 means nothing to you.

It seems that most people think of the EAL as a simple "security score," which isn't the case.

I work for a DoD contractor

[wiredog]

Getting ready to install RHEL3 on my box, getting a workstation in next week which we will install RHEL3 on, and the Zaurus should be in on Tuesday.

There's lots of Linux in government, but it's mainly on the server side. Or with agencies that don't want to leave a paper trail of what they've bought 9and from whom) and who consider protecting their data to be the highest priority.

Re:Still Not Right

[LWATCDR]

Depends on what those special "favors" are. Sometimes it is as simple as educating the official. Think of it this way. Microsoft says. "If you do not stop Open Source software you will loose thousands of high paying jobs in you state."
Red Hat says. "If you should demand open and documented file formats so that your data can not be held hostage." Imagine if Microsoft went out of business like Eastern Airlines, or American Motor Corp, or "former large employer from that state goes here". Think of all those documents that could be lost be cause you can not read them on you new software!"