Hi David, Simon, all-- In a very general context, there have been well-founded warnings before about taking legal advice from a public mailing list, e.g. whether a license permits this or that, etc.
Speaking for myself, to address the weird crux of the current technical issue (and again: I am not a lawyer.): The licensing effort by NIST was intended to provide patent-free commercial access to NIST standards. It seems odd, to me, to see this turned around some years later, to question the intentions of the NIST licenses about whether one can hash this way or that and be compliant with the license that NIST has granted, for free, gratis, to the world. Anyway, perhaps this is a question better asked on the NIST PQC Forum than the (very specific) TLS WG mailing list. --Daniel On Sun, Jul 12, 2026 at 3:11 PM David Stainton <[email protected]> wrote: > > The NIST Kyber patent license only grants you a license to use ML-KEM > > when implemented according to NIST specifications. > > > > If you deviate, such as by taking the defense-in-depth approach to hash > > m to improve robustness against a compromised PRNG, the NIST patent > > license does not cover your usage. > > Hi Simon! > > I appreciate the warning and I am well aware. Maybe you providing this > information is helpful for others on the list but it is simply not > relevant to Katzenpost since we have no commercial pursuit, we are not > titans of the industry, and furthermore we do not force users to use > any particular KEM. Any KEM can be used via specifying it in > configuration files. Novel KEMs can also be created via our KEM > combiner. In light of all of this, I am merely stating that pretty > soon when I get around to it, I will make a modified Kyber that hashes > m. And this will be made OPTIONALLY available for use in Katzenpost if > users choose to use it; and in this context "users" means mixnet > operators. > > Best regards, > David > > > People in the IETF used to prefer patent un-encumbered technology, but > > things are different today. > > > > > https://csrc.nist.gov/csrc/media/Projects/post-quantum-cryptography/documents/selected-algos-2022/nist-pqc-license-summary-and-excerpts.pdf > > > > /Simon > > _______________________________________________ > TLS mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] >
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