Date: Thu, 6 Jul 2000 07:54:58 -0400 (EDT) From: Robert Watson <rwatson@FreeBSD.ORG> To: cjclark@alum.mit.edu Cc: Kris Kennaway <kris@FreeBSD.ORG>, Susie Ward <sward@voltage.net>, freebsd-security@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: SecureBSD (Was: Re: Firewalls and the endless story!) Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1000706074516.46768A-100000@fledge.watson.org> In-Reply-To: <20000705230111.D795@dialin-client.earthlink.net>
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On Wed, 5 Jul 2000, Crist J. Clark wrote: > You can't copyright a concept. So I ask, did they get some patents? I > did not see specific mention in the license of any new patents. 2.3 Ownership. Except for the FreeBSD software, versions 3.4 and 4.0, included in the Program, if any, 2 Cactus will retain all rights, title and interest in and to the patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret and any other intellectual property rights in the Program and any derivative works thereof, subject only to the limited licenses set forth in this Agreement. Customer does not acquire any rights, express or implied, in the Program other than those rights expressly granted under this Agreement. Due to the vaguarities of patent law in the US, the authors of SecureBSD may publish their patentable ideas, and file for patents within one year of the publication date. This was the case, for example, with the RSA patent, and usually does not hold for international patents. That said, a patent in the USA has in the past proven sufficient to restrict the distribution of software implementing the patented invention. This license specifically allows for that eventuality, claiming ownership of any intellectual property (copyrights, patents, ...) currently or in the future covering the body of work. Personally, I do not want to risk the TrustedBSD work by agreeing to a license such as this. You are welcome to agree to the license, and I am not in any way criticizing the usefulness of the SecureBSD work: it sounds like a number of the features described to me (syscall masking, improved logging, immutable processes of some sort) are very useful, and in fact will be covered by the TrustedBSD project in some form or another (least privilege, auditing, integrity protection). The license merely leaves me in a position where I'm unwilling to inspect the software, or recommend it since I cannot inspect it. It also leaves me in a position where I cannot feel qualified to answer questions about it or derived works in standard BSD forums, including freebsd-security. :-) Robert N M Watson robert@fledge.watson.org http://www.watson.org/~robert/ PGP key fingerprint: AF B5 5F FF A6 4A 79 37 ED 5F 55 E9 58 04 6A B1 TIS Labs at Network Associates, Safeport Network Services To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-security" in the body of the message
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