Richard Stallman on RSA, Zimmermann, crypto

Hallam-Baker hallam at ai.mit.edu
Wed Jun 5 20:09:15 PDT 1996


Deranged Mutant wrote:
> 
> Not to defend or condemn RSA folx or patents, etc., but sometime ago
> (recently) I read or was told or perhaps hallucinated that PGP3 was
> going to include non-RSA algorithms that didn't suffer the patent
> stickiness (El Gammel based on DSA?)

DSA is based on El-Gamal, not the other way round. Although it is likely 
that a future version of PGP will include these algorithms the problem 
arises from the Diffie-Helleman patent and not the RSA patent. When this 
expires in 1997 it is certain that many products using public key 
cryptosystems will be avaliable in an unrestricted fashion.

	Phill






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