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[Ryan Russell]

>>  That problem
>> goes away after September 29th.

>Maybe. that is if the Senators haven't been convinced otherwise by large
>injections of cash into their re-election campaign funds.

Here's a relevent article:

http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2425610,00.html?chkpt=zdhpnews01

Do I have the date wrong?  The article says the 20th.  Anyway, the article
certainly doesn't make it sound like RSA is planning to put up a
fight over the patent thing.

I agree, though.  The government has repeatedly show it's ability to do really
stupid
things.  Clinton could declare a state of emerygency to prevent evil Hax0rs from
using the patented algorithm or something.

>Nope, you can't. What is available for USA people is libcryp/libssl based
>on RSAREF. This is legel within the US for ONLY NON-COMMERCIAL use. So if
>you're a company, you can't use it. Therefore, we're in a
>bind. Technically, Nobody (in the US) unless they are private citizens can
>use
>OpenBSD's crypto. So what about the hundreds of corporate users who use
>it (ssh, VPN, SSL) within the united states? They are in
>violation of Patent and could arguably find themselves in legel trouble
>with RSA labs.

What I meant by "patent-free" was that you could get a copy of OpenBSD
without the appropriate crytpo at all, not that one could get a version
with different algorithms... seems to me that one had to download the
libs separately.  Maybe that was pre-2.6?  You'd know better than I.

>I think it would make sense for a company like ourselves to be the
>distribution point (if you will) of the reworked libcrypt/libssl libraries
>and to sell a US Corporate distribution of OpenBSD for that very purpose.

I think that's a very reasonable business model, but the timing is really
unfortunate.  Sure, I'd probably buy a couple if they were available
right now, but I'd be waiting until September to see what happens
before I do any kind of mass deployment.  (I'm thinking more of
OpenSSH rather than OpenBSD for "mass deployment", but same
idea.)

                              Ryan

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