[51] in Cypherpunks
HELP! Some nut is threatening to sue!
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (E. Dean Tribble)
Fri Apr 30 06:12:06 1993
Date: Thu, 29 Apr 93 13:01:39 PDT
From: tribble@memex.com (E. Dean Tribble)
To: anton@hydra.unm.edu
Cc: thesegroups@tic.com, sci-crypt@cs.utexas.edu,
In-Reply-To: Stanton McCandlish's message of Wed, 28 Apr 93 21:31:10 MDT <9304290331.AA18264@hydra.unm.edu>
From: Stanton McCandlish <anton@hydra.unm.edu>
Date: Wed, 28 Apr 93 21:31:10 MDT
this is a real threat? Last I heard PGP *MIGHT* violate a patent, but
PGP does violate patents. Several people, particularly in the
cypherpunks community, are trying to alleviate the RSA vs. PGP
problem. The controversy is counterproductive (and all sides seem to
be mostly good guys), so let's not stir the pot further. Two of the
solutions are 1) PGP could be reimplemented to use RSAREF, and 2)
RSAREF (or something like it) could be extended to include all the
functionality of PGP, but without the patent problems. (RSAREF is a
copyleft implementation of RSA stuff).
From: jim@RSA.COM (Jim Bidzos)
I don't think you're aware of our position on pgp. Unfortunately, you
may leave us no choice but to take legal action, which we will unless
you cease promotion adn distribution of pgp. The next message will
state our position.
I encourage you to cease public promotion (because the RSA claim is
legit), and send a message to Jim asking him what you can do to
encourage a freely (and easily) useable and legal general encryption
tool.
dean
