Joseph Ashwood wrote: > Uhhhh, no. The NSA only licensed the right to use (and sublicense under > special circumstances) the patents [...] > [snip the rest, it was based on a failed assumption]
Poor phrasing on my part. Exactly as you said, the patent sublicense cannot be passed on even if the code is released under, say a BSD copyright license. People would have a right to copy the source code but would have to obtain patent rights either from the NSA if they are eligible, or as you said under alternative arrangements from Certicom. Since the GPL excludes distribution of code with patents that limit their distribution other than by specific country, the patent encumbrance that would accompany the code would prevent it from being released under GPL. 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. Oh, no, that would not be strictly true. GPL allows you to do anything at all with the code if you use it for yourself without distributing it. Patent restrictions still apply to such uses. They could be uses that are not "in support of US national security interests". Therefore you still could not distribute the code under GPL as the people you give it to would not have the patent rights to modify the code for their own private modified use if they do not distribute the changes. 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. -- Sidney Markowitz http://www.sidney.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Cryptography Mailing List Unsubscribe by sending "unsubscribe cryptography" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]