Jay Potter wrote:
Can a PKCS#11 module be proprietary?
Yes. As far as I know most if not all PKCS#11 modules for real-life hardware tokens are distributed under proprietary licenses in binary form only. The Mozilla source code used in, e.g., Firefox is made available under the Mozilla Public License, which allows proprietary components to be included in the resulting products. (This is a first-order approximation of the actual licensing situation, but sufficient for the purpose of answering your question.)
To my knowledge there is only one Mozilla-related case in which using a proprietary license for a PKCS#11 module would not be possible: If you distribute a Mozilla-based product under GPL terms *and* you include a PKCS#11 module as part of the distributed product (as opposed to having users install the module on their own). (The Mozilla code, including NSS, is available under GPL or LGPL terms in addition to the MPL terms.) In that case you would be required to distribute the PKCS#11 module under a GPL-compatible open source / free software license, and as a consequence you would have to provide source code for it.
I would not want to publicize the intricacies of the USB device, but rather provide a mechanism where others could utilize its capabilities within their own projects.
You certainly have a right to do that. However note that if you don't provide source code for the module (and a corresponding open source / free software license for that source code) then some open source / free software projects won't be able to use your module. As noted above, having a proprietary PKCS#11 module isn't an issue for typical Mozilla-based products, but that's not universally true.
Frank -- Frank Hecker [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ dev-tech-crypto mailing list dev-tech-crypto@lists.mozilla.org https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/dev-tech-crypto
