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How Will Applications Change with RSA Unpatented?

Posted by Cliff on from the free-at-last dept.

theholyboot wrote in asking: "Now that the RSA algorithm has been released, are there any new applications, or updates that will incorporate it? I'm specifically curious about mod_ssl and RSAREF." Interesting thought. Now that RSA is out in the open, what will we see happen in terms of cryptography in free software?

1 of 6 comments (clear)

  1. Will RSA expiry change the world? No. by rjh · · Score: 3

    Simply put, there already existed other alternatives to RSA, provably just-as or more secure than RSA, which were unencumbered by patents. (The most notable would be El Gamal, which went into the public domain in 1997.)

    While we'll see legal Free Software versions of SSL in the near future, I really don't think the expiry of the RSA patent is going to make that much of a sea change in the Free Software community. In the commercial community it'll make a big change, but not so much in the Free Software sector.