1994-05-05 - Re: Text of MIT PGP Announcement

Header Data

From: markh@wimsey.bc.ca (Mark C. Henderson)
To: Hal <cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: e6cfe6f8a9b81c561fd756d4c8e20e4bff6ce8cb5c2680f8f6b309d815a740fd
Message ID: <m0pzAtM-0000auc@vanbc.wimsey.com>
Reply To: N/A
UTC Datetime: 1994-05-05 21:27:12 UTC
Raw Date: Thu, 5 May 94 14:27:12 PDT

Raw message

From: markh@wimsey.bc.ca (Mark C. Henderson)
Date: Thu, 5 May 94 14:27:12 PDT
To: Hal <cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: Text of MIT PGP Announcement
Message-ID: <m0pzAtM-0000auc@vanbc.wimsey.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----

Subject: Re: Text of MIT PGP Announcement

>    PGP 2.5 strictly conforms to the conditions of the RSAREF 2.0 license
>    of March 16, 1994.

Hmm... This version of the RSAREF 2.0 licence agreement did not have the 
definition of published interface that was included in later 
versions. (e.g. April 15, 1994) 

In particular, if you interpret "published interface" to be "all the 
routines one can call from an unmodified version of RSAREF 2.0", you 
would probably be able to build a version of PGP based on these. 

Here are some extracts from the March 16 1994 licence agreement 

>      d.    Prior permission from RSA in writing is required for any
>           modifications that access the Program through ways other
>           than the published Program interface or for modifications
>           to the Program interface. RSA will grant all reasonable
>           requests for permission to make such modifications.
>... 
> 7.   RSAREF is a non-commercial publication of cryptographic
>      techniques.

My bet is that this involves some legal funny stuff with this version 
of the licence agreement. Another possibility is that PGP 2.5 will 
use triple DES. 

All just speculation. I don't have any inside information.

Mark

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: 2.4

iQBVAgUBLcljyWrJdmD9QWqxAQG4ywIAnXtDP6aKPP5VGtPuKxOiSWiKryP7qeHJ
7jfMkXC9QQJttzujStPXNl8UlDFf7CErfeNHleo+CCtOCOpqiz76SA==
=aHYn
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-- 
Mark Henderson markh@wimsey.bc.ca - RIPEM MD5: F1F5F0C3984CBEAF3889ADAFA2437433
ViaCrypt PGP key fingerprint: 21 F6 AF 2B 6A 8A 0B E1  A1 2A 2A 06 4A D5 92 46
low security key fingerprint: EC E7 C3 A9 2C 30 25 C6  F9 E1 25 F3 F5 AF 92 E3
cryptography archive maintainer -- anon ftp to ftp.wimsey.bc.ca:/pub/crypto





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