[18669] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: NSA Suite B Cryptography
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steven M. Bellovin)
Sat Oct 15 12:27:01 2005
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From: "Steven M. Bellovin" <smb@cs.columbia.edu>
To: Sidney Markowitz <sidney@sidney.com>
Cc: cryptography@metzdowd.com
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 15 Oct 2005 19:52:56 +1300."
<4350A748.6000007@sidney.com>
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2005 11:05:56 -0400
In message <4350A748.6000007@sidney.com>, Sidney Markowitz writes:
>
>The possible twist that I see is if the NSA declares that any freely
>available open source software that interoperates with Suite B is by
>definition "in support of US national security interests" and therefore
>automatically gets one of their sublicenses. That would effectively
>remove the patent encumbrance for GPL code. There would still be patent
>restrictions on the code, but they would not apply to open source freely
>redistributable code, therefore would not get in the way of the GPL.
I strongly suspect that Certicom would sue if NSA tried that.
>So it still comes down to what I think is the important point: BSD
>licensed Suite B code may be possible, GPL'd Suite B code is not
>possible unless Certicom makes appropriate free license to the patents
>available for software licensed under GPL.
>
I think that that's a fair summary.
--Steven M. Bellovin, http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~smb
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