07.04.07
Novell, AppArmor, and the Linux Kernel
Amid talks about Red Hat’s role in the Linux kernel, there is further discussion about Novell, AppArmor and whether they can gain acceptance from the kernel hackers.
SELinux offers strict but sometimes difficult-to-manage security. Will a simpler approach, championed by SUSE, make it into the mainstream kernel?
Novell has got Greg Kroah Hartmann doing some excellent work at the core of the Linux world, but some others just muddy the waters. One of Justin Steinman’s tactless statements was a whine about Red Hat’s lack of contribution to Linux (it’s truly quite a saga). No wonder. Controversial, poorly-researched statements come from this direction quite often. Marketing people often miss the technical details completely.
Will the news mentioned above enable Novell to boast more contributions (if this ever materialises)? Some fairly knowledgeable people already doubt it.
After all I read about AppArmor and SELinux even Novell’s comparison of the two systems doesn’t help giving me a better opinion about AppArmor. The information shown there isn’t what I had expected, they’re repeating themselves to fill the page and the point about SELinux’ low adoption rate is a joke.
Just like Novell’s distros AppArmor is targeted at the normal user.
Remember that some Novell/SUSE developers are being exposed to Microsoft code (visibility), so involvement in mainstream packages such as the kernel might be considered a grey area by some. Remember what SCO alleged several years ago.
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.
gpl1 said,
July 4, 2007 at 2:06 am
AppArmor apparently has some very big flaws, like symbolic links and paths. I’m not sure why they think SELinux is so hard since Fedora 7 and Red Hat 5 deals with it very nicely out of the box.