At 04:01 PM 12/27/99 , Dr Stephen Henson wrote:
>Michael Sierchio wrote:
> >
> >
> > Re: the dependence on RSAREF in OpenSSL -- this will continue to be a
> problem
> > even after the patent expires. Of course, it's no longer available on
> their
> > ftp site, and no one at RSA (including dimwitted corporate counsel) seems
> > to know anything about it. Is any work being done on a replacement?
> >
>
>Why would a replacement be needed? My understanding, albeit not as a
>lawyer and outside the US is that after patent expiry any implementation
>can be used including OpenSSL's internal one which everyone outside the
>US uses currently.
Sorry to be nitpicky, but - it's helpful to identify which IP rights are in
question here - after the patent expires, the RSA method will not (to my
knowledge) be patent-protected anywhere. Existing code - like the code in
RSAREF, or in OpenSSL or SSLeay or BSAFE or whatever - will continue to be
subject to whatever limitations are placed on it by copyright, and any
licenses which control use of the copyrighted code. People who want to use
RSAREF after 9/20/2000 will still need to comply with the terms of its
license (or licenses, as the case may be) because of the copyright issue.
I don't know of a reason why people would want to use RSAREF instead of the
OpenSSL internals after the patent expiration, but perhaps there are
reasons which are not visible to me.
--
Greg Broiles
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
PGP: 0x26E4488C
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