Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language

Terms of Use

Copyright ® 2002-2024, The MITRE Corporation.
Except as permitted below, all rights reserved.

Introduction

OVAL is an open standard developed by the information community as represented by the OVAL Board and the OVAL discussion lists, and maintained by the MITRE Corporation on this public OVAL Web site.

The OVAL Language and any resulting OVAL content based upon the language that is stored in the OVAL Repository are free to use by any organization or individual for any research, development, and/or commercial purposes, per below.

MITRE has copyrighted the OVAL Language for the benefit of the community in order to ensure it remains a free and open standard, as well as to legally protect the ongoing use of it and any resulting content by government, vendors, and/or users. MITRE has trademarked ® the OVAL acronym and the OVAL logo to protect their sole and ongoing use by the OVAL effort within the information security arena.

Please contact oval@mitre.org if you require further clarification on this issue.

Open Vulnerability and Assessment Language (OVAL®) License

Your use of OVAL is conditioned upon acceptance of the following terms and conditions:

OVAL is comprised of the OVAL Language, OVAL Content, and the OVAL Repository each is defined below:

• The OVAL Language serves as the framework and vocabulary of OVAL. The Language covers the three steps of the assessment process: an OVAL System Characteristics schema for representing system information, an OVAL Definition schema for expressing a specific machine state, and an OVAL Results schema for reporting the results of an assessment.
• OVAL Content is content written in the OVAL Language. All content written in the OVAL Language is considered OVAL Content.
• The OVAL Repository is a collection of OVAL Content hosted by The MITRE Corporation. It is the central meeting place for the OVAL Community to discuss, analyze, store, and disseminate OVAL Definitions. Each definition in the OVAL Repository determines whether a specified software vulnerability, configuration issue, program, or patch is present on a system.

The MITRE Corporation (MITRE) hereby grants you a non-exclusive, royalty-free license to use OVAL for research, development, and commercial purposes. Any copy you make for such purposes is authorized provided that you reproduce MITRE’s copyright designation and this license in any such copy.

The OVAL Language is the copyrighted work of MITRE. No ownership or other proprietary interest in the OVAL Language is granted to you other than what is granted in this license.

OVAL Content, whether already in the OVAL Repository hosted by MITRE or developed by you and sent to MITRE via the discussion forums or any other means to be deposited into the OVAL Repository, is fully available for public use free of charge. In addition, to the extent that contributed OVAL Content involves pre-existing copyrighted works, you hereby grant to MITRE an irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, license, for the duration of the copyright, to do the following:

1. to reproduce such OVAL Content, either alone or as part of a collective work;
2. to translate, adapt, alter, transform, modify, or arrange such OVAL Content, thereby creating derivative works ("Derivative Works"); and
3. to distribute, display, or communicate copies of such OVAL Content to the public free of charge.

ALL DOCUMENTS AND THE INFORMATION CONTAINED THEREIN ARE PROVIDED ON AN "AS IS" BASIS AND THE CONTRIBUTOR, THE ORGANIZATION HE/SHE REPRESENTS OR IS SPONSORED BY (IF ANY), THE MITRE CORPORATION, ITS BOARD OF TRUSTEES, OFFICERS, AGENTS, AND EMPLOYEES, DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY WARRANTY THAT THE USE OF THE INFORMATION THEREIN WILL NOT INFRINGE ANY RIGHTS OR ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

You understand that any export of the OVAL Language, OVAL Content, or OVAL Repository may require an export license and you assume full responsibility for obtaining such license.

This License shall be construed, governed, interpreted and applied in accordance with the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia without regard to Virginia conflict of law rules and you agree to submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the Virginia courts.

Page Last Updated: 2013