Sun donates elliptic curve code to OpenSSL?

Ulf Möller - Mailing Lists ulf.m at wel.de
Tue Sep 24 14:29:52 EDT 2002


> *In addition* to that, *if* you have software patents and you
> promise not to sue Sun over them because of an infringement you
> find in the donated code, then Sun promises that it won't sue
> you either.  Sun does not forbid people from using the donated
> code on the basis of whether or not they make this promise.

By the way, OpenSSL has always included patented algorithms such as RSA and
IDEA, together with warnings about patent issues in the documentation and
compile time switches to disable algorithms that are known to be patented.

In that sense, OpenSSL as a whole has never been "free software". The
licensing terms for IDEA actually are way more restrictive than those for
Sun's ECC code, and nobody has complained about that so far - because many
people find that code useful, and the others just disable it.

--
Ulf Möller * Munich, Germany * E-Mail: ulfm <AT> epost.de


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