At 09:07 PM 7/17/95 -0400, tim werner wrote:
... I was talking to one of the sys admins at A-B, and he said that we weren't allowed to use PGP to encrypt our mail, because Viacrypt owned the commercial rights.
Actually, it's less clear than that. It's pretty clear what you can do with ViaCrypt code; just read the license to see who can use it, and you can send any kind of messages you want over it, even for money. On the other hand, the definitions of "non-commercial use" for RSAREF and IDEA are far less clear (and they're clearer for RSAREF than for IDEA, and I got the impression from what I read somewhere on the net or in the PGP docs that the initial permission from Ascom-Tech for use of IDEA with PGP was pretty informal, and that they've been trying to tighten up what's covered.) (Also RSAREF licenses have changed from version to version, and the license PKP uses to distribute versions of RSAREF may also have changed?) Selling software containing the code is pretty clearly commercial. Non-commercial messages from your personal non-business machine are clearly non-commercial. Providing a service of encrypting and decrypting messages for people for money sounds like it's _very_ probably commercial. Encrypting and decrypting messages to/from your business that deal with money are a very gray area. # Thanks; Bill # Bill Stewart, Freelance Information Architect, stewarts@ix.netcom.com