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Re: The SSL license offer.

2004-09-02 15:02:22

In <792DE28E91F6EA42B4663AE761C41C2A02CEB896(_at_)cliff(_dot_)bai(_dot_)org> 
"Ryan Malayter" <rmalayter(_at_)bai(_dot_)org> writes:

[Hallam-Baker, Phillip]
The patent is held by Netscape (AOL) and covers transport layer 
security. The terms are considerably more vague than in the SenderID
case. Netscape does not promise to offer a sublicensable patent or
even to offer reasonable or non discriminatory terms.

The terms "reasonable" and "non descriminatory" of RAND are almost
meaningless.  



Very interesting. If OpenSSL can be included in Linux distributions, why
can't SenderID? 

The SSL license would seem to have tproblems with the GPL similar to
those that the SenderID license does.

The problem isn't the patents, the problem is the license.  It is the
terms of the licenses that make the SenderID patent license
incompatible with the GPL and causes folks like sourceforge need a
license in order to redistribute the senderid-milter.


The OpenSSL TLS patent and license dates 1996 or 1997.  It is hard to
even dig up information to refresh my memory about this issue.


I think this is all a red herring though.  The question before this
working group is not what has been done in the past, but whether the
costs associated with the SenderID license are more than offset by the
benefits of using the patented PRA algorithm when compared with other
proposals that are not encumbered.  Since I believe that there are
unencumbered alternatives to the PRA algorithm that are *better*, the
cost of the license would have to be negative.



-wayne



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