Re: [TCLUG:19127] SSH Clients

[Peter Lukas <peter@math.umn.edu>]

Far be it for NTS to actually venture into the "real world" and RTFM, but
if they'd actually pull their heads out of their configs  and point their
browsers to the real Internet, they would discover the following
information maintained by Anne Carasik (anne@ssh.com) and Steve Acheson
(satch@employees.org) at:
http://www.ayahuasca.net/ssh/ssh-faq.html

"1.10.1 Licensing
The licensing for SSH2 as of the 2.1.0 release has been completely
revised. You can use Secure Shell for free if you are a university user
(student, professor, staff, etc) or if you are using it for non-commercial
use (playing games, checking personal email, etc.). For any commercial
use, you need to have the appropriate license for Secure Shell. Click here
for the current licensing information and click here for an FAQ on the
licensing from SSH Communications Security. "

This essentially lets them off the hook for a good portion of the
application.  The next hurdle is to overcome patent issues.  Building
against the RSA reference libraries may avoid legal entanglements (at
least until September of this year *and* adding the --without-idea to
their configure script (yes CSCi, "configure" can handle args!) will
absolve the IDEA folks from seeking damages.

"1.10.3 Patents on Cryptographic algorithms

The algorithms RSA and IDEA, which are used by ssh, are claimed as
patented in different countries, including the US. Linking against the
RSAREF library, which is possible, may or may not make it legal to use ssh
for non-commercial purposes in the US. You may need to obtain licenses for
commercial use of IDEA; ssh can be configured without IDEA and works
perfectly fine without it.

For information on software patents in general, see the League for
Programming Freedom's homepage at http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/. "

If the UofM is still a nonprofit organization, they're free to use the
software.

My apologies for the sarcasm, but my years as a PLA at the Universe of
Minnesota provided me with a degree, not in Arts but cynicism.  :-)

Peter Lukas

On Mon, 26 Jun 2000, Karen A Swanberg wrote:

> 
> Peter Lukas <peter@math.umn.edu> wrote
> >Universities and non-profit orgs are exempt from the patent and copyright
> >issues in SSH (and SSH2).
> 
> >Peter Lukas
> 
> Er, are you absolutely sure about this? I don't mean to doubt you, but SSH
> is a frequent topic at the netpeople meetings, and this has never come up.
> SSH is highly recommended by NTS, but they've been clear in saying that
> the patented versions are still illegal to use here. If they're incorrect,
> I'm sure we'd all be thrilled to know we can go with the patented versions
> and be legal. We do have a site licence for the commercial version
> (http://www1.umn.edu/adcs/site/list.html)
> 
> Can you post some links about who's legal to use the patented versions?
> 
> (sorry for the slow response, I'm on digest...)
> 
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