On 03/28/2013 10:31 AM, Matt Caswell wrote: > On 27 March 2013 21:03, Ben Laurie <[email protected]> wrote: >> The OSF is not actually the one that would benefit from such a >> licence, so the whole idea that it (or we) should pay for one seems >> weird to me. >> > Well, I wasn't actually suggesting that the OSF should pay for it > itself, merely that the OSF could be the conduit for organising the > licensing (in much the same way as it has been the conduit for > organising the FIPS certification). The licensing only impacts US > users of OpenSSL (as I understand it the patents under discussion here > are only applicable within the US), and therefore the benefits would > be largely felt by its customers -although in reality we all benefit > by removing a blocker from integrating a mode into the code base with > some significant advantages (OCB is supposedly significantly faster > than GCM). > > If it comes to paying for it then I would hope that it may be possible > to achieve sufficient corporate sponsorship to cover the costs (as I > said in my original email). However, at this stage, all that is > required is for someone to open a discussion with Phil Rogaway to see > what can be achieved (maybe he will grant OpenSSL a waiver without any > money changing hands at all). My suggestion is that that discussion > could be initiated by the OSF (it seems a natural fit to me)...but > really it could be anyone from the core dev team who can claim to > speak for the project.
I've sent Prof. Rogaway a note on this topic, but from his web site his intent seems pretty clear. It won't hurt to ask, though. As Ben noted we're not in a position to fund external costs for a product we give away for free. We have enough overhead expenses already for our modest budget. We can and do work with commercial or government sponsors that fund such expenses, but in this case I suspect money won't be the deciding factor. -Steve M. -- Steve Marquess OpenSSL Software Foundation, Inc. 1829 Mount Ephraim Road Adamstown, MD 21710 USA +1 877 673 6775 s/b +1 301 874 2571 direct [email protected] [email protected] ______________________________________________________________________ OpenSSL Project http://www.openssl.org Development Mailing List [email protected] Automated List Manager [email protected]
