On Saturday, Mar 8, 2003, at 01:07 US/Eastern, Peter Gutmann wrote:
Werner Koch <wk(_at_)gnupg(_dot_)org> writes:
Implementing IDEA is trivial but as it is now, it is not possible to
use any
software without paying royalities to Ascom.
I've been using it for years without paying royalties to Ascom, and so
has
most of the rest of the PGP-using world. It's only if you're selling
it for
more than $10K (from memory) that you need to talk to Ascom.
That would have had to be non-commercial use then[*]. Unfortunately (at
least) people who run a business are considered commercial users and
required to pay a licensing fee to the IDEA patent holder. This has
nothing to do with the revenue you make off selling PGP software.
Unless things have changed of late, Werner's argument still holds. I'd
add that a standard cannot be considered truly open when it is
patent-encumbered. (Encumbered meaning that you need to pay for the
patent license. CAST-5 obviously is not encumbered in this context.)
Please deprecate any and all uses of IDEA. And while we're at it, let's
make the standard as lean as possible to increase the chances of
interoperability. Another IPsec debacle should be avoided. (Though I
have to admit that OpenPGP is easier to deploy than IPsec ;-p)
Cheers,
-J
[*] I mean, civil disobedience is encouraged, but hardly realistic for
most commercial users.