[Cryptography] What do we know? (Was 'We cannot trust' ...)

[Donald Eastlake]

On Tue, Dec 24, 2013 at 3:28 AM, James A. Donald <jamesd at echeque.com> wrote:
> ...
>
> Not when you are selling to government agencies.  If they want a customized
> product, you produce a fork or a skew for that government agency and charge
> them extra.

Large customers, government or otherwise, that know what they are
doing realize that if a custom extension/addition is incorporated in a
product *just for them*, then they will be paying forever for it to be
maintained and included with every future upgrade of the product.

On the other hand, if you can get what you want included in the base
product *for everyone*, then likely it will be maintained and included
in future versions at no cost. So it makes a lot of sense to pay for
what you want to be included in the base product, unless you don't
want it to be available to others. This logic applies whether what you
want included is a great feature or a backdoor.

Thanks,
Donald
=============================
 Donald E. Eastlake 3rd   +1-508-333-2270 (cell)
 155 Beaver Street, Milford, MA 01757 USA
 d3e3e3 at gmail.com