Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 15:49:25 -0500 
To: lomac-users@lists.tislabs.com 
Subject: farewell to lomac-users (for now) 
From: "Tim Fraser" <tfraser@tislabs.com>

Hi!

The recent v1.1.2 release of LOMAC for Linux kernels will be
the last one organized by me at NAI Labs.  On 4 March 2002 I will be
leaving NAI Labs for another firm.  However, despite my move, I am
confident that both the Linux and FreeBSD versions of LOMAC will
remain in good hands.

Due to the intellectual property agreement that was part of
the conditions of my employment, NAI has always held the copyright on
LOMAC.  Consequently, control of the original LOMAC for Linux will
remain in NAI's hands.

NAI Labs has always been a good steward of its Open Source and
Free software projects, and I expect this admirable tradition will
continue.  Thanks to Brian Feldman, the FreeBSD version of LOMAC has
already been integrated into the early stages of the FreeBSD project's
development process.  I'm hopeful that I'll see an official FreeBSD
CD-ROM with LOMAC on it someday.

NAI Labs (formerly Trusted Information Systems) has a long
history of supporting Open Source software, stretching all the way
back to its contributions to important Internet infrastructure such as
{Net|Open}SNMP, BIND and gated.  (Yes, the mainstream gated was Open
Source at the time.)  When I first released LOMAC back in June of
1999, it was far from the Labs' first Open Source project.  However,
it was the Labs' first Free software project released under the GNU
General Public License.  I was happy to note that many others
followed.

As I leave, the various versions of LOMAC have experienced
over 4000 uniq(1) downloads from the NAI Labs web and FTP sites, and
the lomac-users mailing list has about 50 members.  It's interesting
to graph the curve of cumulative downloads over time:

06/15/1999:  (6)
01/01/2000:  ***** (514)
06/01/2000:  ****** (645)
01/01/2001:  ********(841)
06/01/2001:  *********************** (2308)
01/01/2002:  *************************************** (3900)

Authors of new and somewhat obscure projects should take heart -
attention from the community will grow as the word gets around.

I always viewed LOMAC as an experiment: could a Mandatory
Access Control (MAC) mechanism achieve broad deployment if it was made
sufficiently compatible and easy to use?  Admittedly, this wasn't a
very well-controlled experiment, since any result short of widespread
adoption would provide little evidence one way or the other.
Widespread adoption hasn't happened yet, so the jury is still out.  I
still haven't given up the hope of seeing LOMAC or some other simple,
compatible, configuration-free mechanism on a mainstream GNU/Linux
distribution CD-ROM someday.

I encourage others to try their own ideas for painless MAC
mechanisms.  As for myself, I haven't yet decided what my relationship
with LOMAC will be in the future.  Certainly, getting up to speed with
my new job will preclude me from doing much recreational programming
for a time.  Eventually, I may fork off my own version of LOMAC, or I
may submit patches to the original LOMAC project, in care of whoever
succeeds me at NAI Labs.  LOMAC is Free software; it will live for as
long as people find it useful.

I send my sincere thanks to all who have offered help and
encouragement over the years.  Good luck, and farewell for now.

- Tim Fraser (tfraser@alum.wpi.edu)  22 February 2002