I don't think that there is actually a license published. All that
Netscape provided was an offer to provide a license on terms that
were not defined except with regards to cost.
I don't know which parties if any executed such an agreement, but
a patent certainly was issued.
Since we are talking about security we should be talking about
probabilities, not possibilities. Sure it is possible that Microsoft
would decide to drop $5 million on a patent infringement lawsuit,
but it is not very likely that they would recover their legal
costs let alone expenses and in the process would cost themselves
a huge amount in bad PR.
[Guillaume Filion]
I may be talking throught my hat, but reading the SSL patent
license, I see
no restriction on redistribution.
I thought that all rights were reserved unless specifically
granted. If
so, it would seem the SSL license grants NO rights to redistribute
whatsoever. Perhaps I am wrong.
In any case, I cannot seem to find an "official" version of
this license
on the netscape or AOL sites, so who the hell knows.