uclibc and selinux

uclibc and selinux

[Debian User]

Works very well. Are there legal problems if I merge libsecure into 
uclibc? Its easier incorporating selinux into embedded linux.

How about incremental policy updates? So the policy does not have to 
contain all possible policies needed in a system?
Also whats the best way to isolate users from each other when the passwd 
file contains only "root" and "user" accounts?


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What is the story on patents and SELinux?

[Robert Hartley]

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Can code be freed by the GPL, but still tied up in patent stuff?

I guess everyone saw this article referenced on slashdot:
http://lwn.net/Articles/2376/

(Sorry if I missed previous posts on the subject.)

While working on Eclipse for an IBM partner, I was warned that anything we
release into the open source community causes us to relinquish all rights to it,
so we had to be careful not to let out, even accidently, any code or other
proprietary information lest we lose all claims over it due to the wording of the
GPL.

Robert

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Re: What is the story on patents and SELinux?

[Russell Coker]

On Fri, 14 Jun 2002 15:57, Robert Hartley wrote:
> Can code be freed by the GPL, but still tied up in patent stuff?
>
> I guess everyone saw this article referenced on slashdot:
> http://lwn.net/Articles/2376/
>
> (Sorry if I missed previous posts on the subject.)
>
> While working on Eclipse for an IBM partner, I was warned that anything we
> release into the open source community causes us to relinquish all rights
> to it, so we had to be careful not to let out, even accidently, any code or
> other proprietary information lest we lose all claims over it due to the
> wording of the GPL.

Any patent rights that the NSA had were given away by the GPL release.

If the NSA release is determined to be in breach of their contract with 
secure computing then it would have to be withdrawn.  Now we are still 
waiting to hear about what the contract allowed.

-- 
I do not get viruses because I do not use MS software.
If you use Outlook then please do not put my email address in your
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>From field.

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Going OT (was Re: What is the story on patents and SELinux?)

[James Griffin]

Robert Hartley wrote:
> 
> Can code be freed by the GPL, but still tied up in patent stuff?
> 
> I guess everyone saw this article referenced on slashdot:
> http://lwn.net/Articles/2376/
> 
> (Sorry if I missed previous posts on the subject.)
> 
> While working on Eclipse for an IBM partner, I was warned that anything we
> release into the open source community causes us to relinquish all rights to it,
> so we had to be careful not to let out, even accidently, any code or other
> proprietary information lest we lose all claims over it due to the wording of the
> GPL.
> 
Robert,

It sounds like you were seriously misinformed.  Whoever told you what
you describe above was (and probably still is) incorrect.

First, phrases such as "relinquish all rights" imply the placing of
"intellectual property" into the "Public Domain".  In doing so, the
owner of the intellectual property (the copyright holder) is
surrendering "all claims over it".

Second, the "open source community", to the extent that such a thing
exists and is legally defined, has many different licenses that creators
of intellectual property can use to define their rights with respect to
their property.  For example, BSD and BSD-like, GPL, Apache, and others.

Third, the underpinning for such licenses is the Copyright law which
provides the legal basis for the concept of "ownership" for so-called
"intellectual property" (as contrasted, for example, with real estate
(property)).

Fourth, by failing to include a copyright notice in your work, you may
allow it to slip into the Public Domain. (Check with a competent lawyer
for your jurisdiction.)

When you create a copyrightable work (not everything is copyrightable),
you, as the creator, have certain rights under the law (copyright law). 
The copyright holder (the owner, you - in this paragraph) can make your
work available to others for their use subject to terms and conditions
specified by you in the form of a license.  You get to determine the
terms and conditions; you might even choose to apply an already written
license to your work.  You can even make your work available to
different groups or for different uses under different terms and
conditions.  Note that when you make your work available under license,
you are not transferring ownership.  Your work is still your work and
any unauthorized use is most likely to be unlawful.  One thing you can
do with your work is to transfer ownership (of the copyright) to another
party.

There is much confusion about Open Source Licenses.  Some of this
confusion has been generated by inaccurate characterizations of GPL by
senior executives of Microsoft(R), a convicted abusive monopolist whose
conviction was unanimously upheld on appeal.

I would encourage members of this list to do a little home work of their
own rather than relying on what they hear (or read in newsgroups).

Check out some of the following.  In particular do a search for papers
by Professor Eben Moglen, Columbia University Law School.  If you work
for an organization with its own in-house legal staff, ask to see their
Law Dictionary.

The Open Source Definition
   http://www.opensource.org/docs/definition.html
The GNU General Public License [and other GNU license information]
   http://www.fsf.org/licenses/licenses.html
Frequently Asked Questions about the GNU GPL
   http://www.fsf.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html
Why the FSF gets copyright assignments from contributors
   http://www.fsf.org/licenses/why-assign.html

Please do not blindly accept what I have written.  Check the facts for
yourself.

Regards,
Jim

> Robert

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Re: What is the story on patents and SELinux?

[Russell Coker]

On Fri, 14 Jun 2002 21:30, forrest whitcher wrote:
> On Fri, 14 Jun 2002 18:52:05 +0200 (unchecked - local sync NTPstrat4)
>
> Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> did inscribe thusly:
> > Any patent rights that the NSA had were given away by the GPL release.
>
> I rather doubt this is the inevitable outcome. GPL is clear that where
> there is a conflict between patent and GPL - which are unrelated areas
> of the law - the requirements of GPL are essentially a disjoint set
> wrt patent requirements and each must be separately addressed.

GPL makes it clear that anyone can use the software for any cause without 
payment or license conditions.  It is incompatable with anything that 
prevents that (including patents).  So if you own a patent that covers some 
software and then later release the software in question under the GPL then 
the patent will not be enforcable.  If you don't own the patent in question 
and you don't have the right to re-license it then you have breached the 
terms of the patent, and you may be forced to withdraw the software.

> > If the NSA release is determined to be in breach of their contract with
> > secure computing then it would have to be withdrawn.
>
> More exactly I think if patent restrictions pertaining to SELinux cannot
> be separately addressed then GPL - based license and distribution is void.

True.

> Although I think this is a secondary point, and I think all who use this
> work are hoping for (expecting) a more positive outcome, the SELinux effort
> could agree to re-license the work under Artistic, BSD or other licenses.

If everyone who has contributed code to SE Linux agrees to a re-licensing...

-- 
I do not get viruses because I do not use MS software.
If you use Outlook then please do not put my email address in your
address-book so that WHEN you get a virus it won't use my address in the
>From field.

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Re: What is the story on patents and SELinux?

[richard offer]

* frm russell@coker.com.au "06/14/02 22:27:48 +0200" | sed '1,$s/^/* /'
*
* On Fri, 14 Jun 2002 21:30, forrest whitcher wrote:
*> On Fri, 14 Jun 2002 18:52:05 +0200 (unchecked - local sync NTPstrat4)
*> 
*> Russell Coker <russell@coker.com.au> did inscribe thusly:
*> > Any patent rights that the NSA had were given away by the GPL release.
*> 
*> I rather doubt this is the inevitable outcome. GPL is clear that where
*> there is a conflict between patent and GPL - which are unrelated areas
*> of the law - the requirements of GPL are essentially a disjoint set
*> wrt patent requirements and each must be separately addressed.
* 
* GPL makes it clear that anyone can use the software for any cause without 
* payment or license conditions.  It is incompatable with anything that 
* prevents that (including patents).  So if you own a patent that covers
* some  software and then later release the software in question under the
* GPL then  the patent will not be enforcable.  

If you use the exact text from the GPL this is true, but it is possible to
have patents release code that uses them as GPL and still limit it (I
think). This is the text in XFS

/* 
 * Further, this software is distributed without any warranty that it is
 * free of the rightful claim of any third person regarding infringement
 * or the like.  Any license provided herein, whether implied or
 * otherwise, applies only to this software file.  Patent licenses, if
 * any, provided herein do not apply to combinations of this program with
 * other software, or any other product whatsoever.
 */

I read that as, if the code is patented, then you can use in in this
product. If you take the code and re-use it in another product, you then
need a patent license.


According to http://oss.sgi.com/projects/GenInfo/SGIGPLNoticeExplan/, this
has FSF approval.


richard.


-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Richard Offer                     Technical Lead, Trust Technology, SGI
"Specialization is for insects"
_______________________________________________________________________


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Re: uclibc and selinux

[Stephen Smalley]

On Fri, 14 Jun 2002, Debian User wrote:

> How about incremental policy updates? So the policy does not have to
> contain all possible policies needed in a system?

Do you mean a reduced form of the security_load_policy call to permit
loading new domains into an existing policy rather than performing a
complete reload of the policy?  Or something else?  You can certainly
reload the policy to add new domains as necessary.

> Also whats the best way to isolate users from each other when the passwd
> file contains only "root" and "user" accounts?

You can't isolate users from each other using the SELinux policy without
maintaining separate user identities and roles in the policy.

--
Stephen D. Smalley, NAI Labs
ssmalley@nai.com





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Re: uclibc and selinux

[Russell Coker]

On Thu, 20 Jun 2002 16:57, Stephen Smalley wrote:
> > Also whats the best way to isolate users from each other when the passwd
> > file contains only "root" and "user" accounts?
>
> You can't isolate users from each other using the SELinux policy without
> maintaining separate user identities and roles in the policy.

... when you are using the currently supplied patches for login programs.

It would not be difficult to write new patches for sshd and login to use SE 
Linux identities only to differentiate the different users.  Of course 
there's the issue of whether that would be sane.  ;)

My current project is to give the same end-result as you get with Linux/390 
on VM but using SE Linux for partitioning.  I'm almost done.  ;)

-- 
I do not get viruses because I do not use MS software.
If you use Outlook then please do not put my email address in your
address-book so that WHEN you get a virus it won't use my address in the
>From field.

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Re: uclibc and selinux

[Admissions Office]

Did anyone ever decide the copyright issues? Or is that gone to the
"darkside"?



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Re: uclibc and selinux

[Russell Coker]

On Thu, 20 Jun 2002 23:58, Admissions Office wrote:
> Did anyone ever decide the copyright issues? Or is that gone to the
> "darkside"?

It seems that we are never going to get a clear answer from SCC, and the NSA 
haven't answered it either.

However I think that as the NSA released it freely without restrictions, any 
patent issues are between them and SCC.  So I'll trust the NSA on this one, 
whenever anyone asks me whether a license for commercial use of SE Linux is 
required I'll tell them that the NSA requires no such license.

I consider the following text from the NSA site to be the only applicable 
license condition for SE Linux:
> All source code found on this site is released under the same terms and
> conditions as the original sources. For example, the patches to the Linux
> kernel, patches to many existing utilities, and new programs and libraries
> available here are released under the terms and conditions of the GNU
> General Public License (GPL). The patches to some existing utilities and
> libraries available here are released under the terms and conditions of the
> BSD license. 

If someone (either SCC or others) believes that is false then they can sue 
the NSA and try and get them to recall their release of SE Linux.

Unless/until such a decision is reached in a relevant court I will accept the 
NSA license conditions to the exclusion of all other claims, and quote the 
NSA statement of license whenever the matter comes up for discussion.


Russell Coker

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