On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 9:06 PM, Joerg Sonnenberger <[email protected]> wrote: > On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 09:02:35PM -0400, Ted Unangst wrote: >> On Mon, Jul 19, 2010 at 8:22 PM, Joerg Sonnenberger >> > Side note: the complain is also pointless because a modified algorithm >> > wouldn't be interoperable anyway, making the point mood as well. >> >> Bullshit. If blowfish had come with such retarded no-modification >> terms, we wouldn't have the bcrypt password hashing scheme we use >> today. > > And where excatly does bcrypt modify the Blowfish algorithm? Of course, > it greatly helps to prove your point that the description of the > algorithm in the source is generic for any ECB algorithm...
It calls Blowfish_expand0state multiple times, which is not what the stock keying procedure does. The modified blowfish is not interoperable with the standard implementation, but it is useful, so that is definitely not a moot point. I don't particularly care whether the patents are about the algorithm, or the keying procedure, or how one pads to block length. A free software project should not have to consider what kinds of modifications they can and cannot make. Nobody should have to decide whether Camellia with a different keying scheme is still Camellia. OpenBSD is a free operating system. It is not a free except for the parts that aren't operating system.
