CDR: Re: RC4 - To license or not?
On Sun, Oct 08, 2000 at 03:12:20AM +0200, Stefan Arentz wrote:
Real-To: Stefan Arentz <stefan.arentz@soze.com>
Applied Crypto says this about RC4.
So what's the deal with RC4? It's no longer a trade secret, so presumably anyone can use it. However, RSA DSI will almost certainly sue anyone who uses unlicensed RC4 in a commercial product. THey probably won't win, but they will certainly make it cheaper make it cheaper for a company to license than fight.
This was in '96. I do not want to buy a complete BSAFE license. It is too expensive and I only need RC4.
Anyone experienced with this? Will they sue?
No, they almost certainly won't. Over the past few years they've moved away from their former pugilistic stance and their marketing/sales strategy seems to focus more on code quality and diversity of platform support rather than fear. -- Greg Broiles gbroiles@netbox.com PO Box 897 Oakland CA 94604
At 09:27 AM 10/8/00 -0700, Greg Broiles wrote:
On Sun, Oct 08, 2000 at 03:12:20AM +0200, Stefan Arentz wrote:
Real-To: Stefan Arentz <stefan.arentz@soze.com>
Applied Crypto says this about RC4.
So what's the deal with RC4? It's no longer a trade secret, so presumably anyone can use it. However, RSA DSI will almost certainly sue anyone who uses unlicensed RC4 in a commercial product. THey probably won't win, but they will certainly make it cheaper make it cheaper for a company to license than fight.
This was in '96. I do not want to buy a complete BSAFE license. It is too expensive and I only need RC4.
Anyone experienced with this? Will they sue?
No, they almost certainly won't. Over the past few years they've moved away from their former pugilistic stance and their marketing/sales strategy seems to focus more on code quality and diversity of platform support rather than fear.
Redhat 7 Deluxe contains an offer for a "free" BSafe SDK for Linux. (Redhat 7 contains a number of crypto tools, including OpenSSL, Kerberos 5 (real, not the damaged version MS ships), OpenSSH, GnuPG, and a bunch of other stuff. A good sign, if they did not ship with a beta version of GCC.) As for RSA marketing... i think they have some serious personal issues they need to seek counselling for. (What is it with the psycho-chick in their ads anyways? Ex-girlfriend? A stab at Dourthy Denning? Some latent BSDi fetish?) --- | Terrorists - The Boogiemen for a new Millennium. | |"The moral PGP Diffie taught Zimmermann unites all| Disclaimer: | | mankind free in one-key-steganography-privacy!" | Ignore the man | | | behind the keyboard.| | http://www.ctrl-alt-del.com/~alan/ |alan@ctrl-alt-del.com|
participants (2)
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Alan Olsen -
Greg Broiles