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 at ssh.com) and Steve Acheson (satch at 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 at 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...) > > * * > Karen Swanberg | > Network Admin. | Error: Sector not found-- > Dept. of Geology/Geophysics |search behind couch? (Y/N) > 206 Pillsbury Hall | > 310 Pillsbury Ave. SE | > University of Mn | Enter any 11-digit prime > Minneapolis, MN 55455 | number to continue... > (612) 624-6541 | > * * > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: tclug-list-unsubscribe at mn-linux.org > For additional commands, e-mail: tclug-list-help at mn-linux.org > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: tclug-list-unsubscribe at mn-linux.org For additional commands, e-mail: tclug-list-help at mn-linux.org