Subject: RE: IETF and an RF Patent Policy

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 14:49:07 -0500

> I don't care whether you recognize me, but I will be heard!  In this
> forum I represent my own opinion as well as the opinions of my clients
> in the open source community.

Nonsense, Larry represents himself, and it's in his clients' best
interests for him to be encouraging those clients to voice their own
opinions rather than allocating that role to himself.

> Quite simply, if IETF allows royalty-bearing industry standards, the
> open source community ultimately will not recognize IETF standards. 

IETF's been there, done that, among other things with the RSA patent.
Larry might want to consider that he's preaching to the choir.  None
of us like royalty-bearing patents, but the alternative of no usable
public key crypto until the RSA patent expired (which thankfully, it
has) would have been far worse.  Somehow, that patent didn't stop
open source usage of RSA.

This is not just academic - there are at least two areas of security
technology that are currently mired in patent messes and being
largely avoided for that reason ... BUT a "scorched earth" policy
of no use of technology that might involve patents or royalties
in any way shape or form is an exercise in poor judgment that
limits the possible solutions to address the situations.

Thanks,
--David
----------------------------------------------------
David L. Black, Senior Technologist
EMC Corporation, 176 South St., Hopkinton, MA  01748
+1 (508) 293-7953             FAX: +1 (508) 293-7786
[email-masked]        Mobile: +1 (978) 394-7754
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From: [email-masked] (Bruce Perens)
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 12:42:38 -0800 (PST)

From: [email-masked]
> Somehow, that patent didn't stop open source usage of RSA.

PGP was never Open Source licensed, if that is what you are thinking of.
There was some sort of free-as-in-cost version of PGP from MIT.

The patent did indeed prevent Open Source implementations of RSA from
happening until it expired. We did develop some other algorithms.

	Thanks

	Bruce

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From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Feb 2003 13:10:54 -0800

> There was some sort of free-as-in-cost version of PGP from MIT.

OpenSSL comes to mind. 

-Ekr

-- 
[Eric Rescorla                                   [email-masked]]
                http://www.rtfm.com/
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From: Bruce Perens <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 16:30:49 -0800

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
> OpenSSL comes to mind. 

You mean SSLeay. OpenSSL happened close to the end of the RSA patent term.
And look what the SSLeay legal FAQ says: "merely FTPing SSLeay into the USA
is a breach of various patents". Read it at
http://www.columbia.edu/~ariel/ssleay/ssleay-legal-faq.html .

	Thanks

	Bruce

---

From: Eric Rescorla <[email-masked]>
Date: 18 Feb 2003 16:59:41 -0800

> You mean SSLeay. OpenSSL happened close to the end of the RSA patent term.
I mean both. But since OpenSSL is the name that most people know,
I used it for convenience. OpenSSL started in 1998, when the RSA
patent term was still in force.

> http://www.columbia.edu/~ariel/ssleay/ssleay-legal-faq.html .
I'm sorry, but I don't see what your point is here.  Mr. Black's
assertion was that the patent status of RSA didn't stop it being
incorporated into Open Source software. SSLeay and OpenSSL are pretty
good examples of that. Moreover, even inside the US OpenSSL was pretty
widely used (albeit illegally) prior to the expiration of the RSA
patent.

-Ekr

---

From: Bruce Perens <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 18 Feb 2003 17:37:47 -0800

On Tue, Feb 18, 2003 at 04:59:41PM -0800, Eric Rescorla wrote:
> incorporated into Open Source software.

And I'm saying that the patent did indeed stop incorporation of the
RSA algorithm in nations where the patent was held to be legal.

Eric A. Young, the developer of SSLeay, lived in a nation that did not
hold software patents to be legal. Thus, the RSA algorithm could have been
incorporated into Open Source there.

In the USA, there was a way to compile RSA out of SSLeay and use another
algorithm not covered by the patent.

Uses of the RSA algorithm in Open Source software within nations
where the patent applied were infringement. That software was not
distributed in those countries by law-abiding Open Source entities.

	Thanks

	Bruce