Further Policy Issues

2005-09-26

• We have the offcial go ahead from Alan Gay of the Oxford University Computing Services to use LionShare as part of a limited research project in the department for Continuing Education. The next step is to get LionSHare accepted for the whole university.
• Oxford produces specific  policy for Peer-2-Peer systems in which LionShare appears to be excempt. We are in the process of checking this.

2005-07-07

• One of the major challenges of this project will be influencing the policy within Oxford University to allow the use of Lion Share. Currently users without Oxford authentication are not allowed to use the Oxford network.
• See  rule 13.(6)(a):

"No computer connected to the university network may be used to give any person who is not a member or employee of the University or its colleges access to any network services outside the department or college where that computer is situated.".

• In theory a Shibboleth authenticated user from a trusted institution using Lion Share would not fall foul of this ruling because it falls under the 'exceptions' outlines in the next rule.

"Certain exceptions may be made, for example, for members of other UK universities, official visitors to a department or college, or those paying a license fee."

We are investigating further.

2005-07-15

• We are allowed to connect to the Universities Kerberos Realm and get started! This is good news, although there is alot of technical work to be done to get up and running (see Technical below).
• We suspect that the central IT services are not yet aware that we are working with a peer-2-peer system. However, as we don't have it working yet it is not a problem.