At 1:48 PM on 4/26/96 , David Mazieres <dm@amsterdam.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
After many many messages, I got bounced around from RSA to Consensys Corp. and back to RSA.
Just an FYI, Consensus Development (not Consensys) can only offer a commercial licenses to RSAREF. Some such licenses we can grant waivers to user lower-level routines -- to date we've granted waivers for SSL and PGP compatible software.
Conclusion: You can't use the RSA algorithm in free software. The RSAREF interface is too restrictive, and when RSA says in the license that "RSA will grant all reasonable requests for permission to make such modifications" to the interface, it is either an outright lie, or something that only happens after so much delay that they might as well not give you such permission.
The problem is that only RSA Labs (not RSA Data Security) can offer this permission (as they have all the non-commercial rights) and they are not set up to handle such requests. I'll see what I can do as the commercial licensee to influence making this happen. RSAREF was released "to support standards" and SSH is a beginning of a standard, so I think it should be possible. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ..Christopher Allen Consensus Development Corporation.. ..<ChristopherA@consensus.com> 1563 Solano Avenue #355.. .. Berkeley, CA 94707-2116.. ..<http://www.consensus.com/> o510/559-1500 f510/559-1505..