From: Christopher Allen <ChristopherA@consensus.com>
Date: Sun, 28 Apr 1996 07:28:24 +0800
To: David Mazieres <dm@amsterdam.lcs.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: Fwd: RSAREF dos not give you access to RSA
In-Reply-To: <960427060855_76703.407_CHN32-1@CompuServe.COM>
Message-ID: <v03006601ada81036cb69@[157.22.240.191]>
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At 1:48 PM on 4/26/96 , David Mazieres <dm@amsterdam.lcs.mit.edu> wrote:
>After many many messages, I got bounced around from RSA to Consensys
>Corp. and back to RSA.

Just an FYI, Consensus Development (not Consensys) can only offer a
commercial licenses to RSAREF. Some such licenses we can grant waivers to
user lower-level routines -- to date we've granted waivers for SSL and PGP
compatible software.

>Conclusion:  You can't use the RSA algorithm in free software.  The
>RSAREF interface is too restrictive, and when RSA says in the license
>that "RSA will grant all reasonable requests for permission to make
>such modifications" to the interface, it is either an outright lie, or
>something that only happens after so much delay that they might as
>well not give you such permission.

The problem is that only RSA Labs (not RSA Data Security) can offer this
permission (as they have all the non-commercial rights) and they are not
set up to handle such requests.

I'll see what I can do as the commercial licensee to influence making this
happen. RSAREF was released "to support standards" and SSH is a beginning
of a standard, so I think it should be possible.

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..Christopher Allen                  Consensus Development Corporation..
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