From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Thu, 10 May 2007 16:31:43 -0700 From: Lyndon Nerenberg To: Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs <9fans@cse.psu.edu> Subject: Re: [9fans] crypto licensing In-Reply-To: <4643A897.2040208@gmail.com> Message-ID: <20070510162441.H83614@orthanc.ca> References: <4643A4C2.90009@gmail.com> <9ab217670705101612r365df1abw2be7f99c021d1d30@mail.gmail.com> <4643A897.2040208@gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Topicbox-Message-UUID: 63d1c624-ead2-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 > Right, that's what I understand but I can't *prove* it. Are there places > online where I can find a verified current status for algorithm > specific licenses? Like, is there someplace that RSADSI says "yes, we've > let go of MD5 and RSA for public use."? RSA was restricted by patent, since expired. The top item when I Google "rsa patent" is a CNN story about RSA corp releasing the patent. Similarly, a Google search on "cryptography idea patent" returns a first hit on Wikipedia that lists the US patent number (5,214,703) along with a note that the patents expire in the 2010-11 time-frame. You get the idea ... You need to track down the relevant patent numbers, then see when they expire(d). --lyndon I think 3B2 code deserves its own place in hell. Poring over the ESS#5 code, someone found that there were lots of strcmp(p, "f(") == 0 checks (I may have gotten the exact string wrong but it's close). It took us a while to figure out why. Apparently, location 0 on the 3b had the 3 bytes 'f' '(' '\0', someone noticed that when programs blew up they were pointing to "f(", and the worlds most amazing kludge for detecting nil pointers was born. -- Dave Presotto