Re: Future FreeS/WAN users?

[Ray Shaw <ray@media.umbc.edu>]

> > Slashdot reports the NSA have let a contract for a security-enhanced
> > Linux.
> be. Unless the NSA never distributes their work to any other agency or
> organisation they cannot close the source. Do you suggest that they will never

They may not intend to distribute it.  They can't be accused of being
open and giving in the past :)

If they have a 3rd party develop it for them, then the 3rd party must
release the full source of their modifications to whoever they allow
binaries.  If the NSA doesn't let them distribute binaries, then no
source, either.

I'm also very unclear as to exactly what is meant by
"security-enhanced Linux".  If they mean to include crypto, then they
can't feasibly distribute it anyway...I don't think that NSA qualifies
to use RSAREF2, so they'd have to get a license from RSA, but nobody
else (inside the US) would be allowed to use it.  Unless, however,
they worked out something where they could sell this product, like
RedHat selling their "Deluxe" package with SSL-Apache, and have a
licensing agreement.  It would be cool if someone would sell a Linux
distro w/ licensed SSL (stunnel, mod_ssl, etc.); companies would
really go for that.

--Ray

--------------------------------
Soto la panche, La capra crepa
Sopra la panche, La capra campa
-
Securedistros: A common list for all secured Linux distributions
Archive:       http://humbolt.nl.linux.org/lists/