Slashback: Encumbrance, Silence, Internalization

Slashback with two different updates on the donation by Sun of elliptic-curve cryptographic techniques to the OpenSSL project, the state of Microsoftization of the U.S. Department of the Interior, and the strange outcome of Batt vs. the Cage Trust. Read on below for the details.

Different folks, different contributions Dr. Sheueling Chang-Shantz writes:

"Hello, I am the lead researcher/developer of the ECC project at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. I appreciate very much the news you posted on Slashdot regarding 'OpenSSL Gets Cryptography Gift From Sun.'

However, your wordings "Sun Microsystems has donated ... developed by Whitfield Diffie ..." seems to be causing some confusion on Slashdot forum. It gave the wrong interpretation that Whit has invented ECC. Sun is definitely making no attempt to claim that Whitfield Diffie has invented the Elliptic Curve Cryptosystem. Technically, neither has Whitfield Diffie developed the ECC technology that Sun has donated to the OpenSSL project recently.

I would appreciate it if you could correct the news before too late.

For clarification, Elliptic curve cryptography was independently invented by Neal Koblitz, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Washington and Victor Miller who was then at IBM.

Whitfield Diffie is Sun's chief security officer who co-invented Diffie-Helman public-key cryptography."

We now go north of the border ... And further on the topic of that donation by Sun, friscolr writes "In a recent post on misc@, OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raadt states...

OpenSSL is becoming a non-free software project, because the code from Sun contains licenses which invoke patent litigation; the licence on the new code basically builds a contract that says "if you use this code, you cannot sue Sun".

He goes on to say, 'once again, i think it is time to fork OpenSSL.' Thank you, Theo, for always making sure we will have 100% free software at our disposal and for standing by your stated goals."

[Headline redacted] Dotnaught writes "The question of whether British composer Mike Batt's "A Minute's Silence" on the "Classical Graffiti" CD (by The Planets) violated the copyright of John Cage's silent composition " 4'33" " has been resolved in an out-of-court settlement. Batt reportedly paid the John Cage Trust an "adequate sum" (whatever that is). On his site, Batt writes, 'We have now settled the matter of my artless plagiarism of John Cage's silence, by his publishers caving in and us winning! Why didn't I think of that before! We could have saved a lot of time and buggering about, although I must say, the struggle was one of the most amusing disputes I've ever , er, disputed.' Batt may yet have the last laugh. According to the New Yorker, Batt has been busy copyrighting chunks of silence of various lengths other than the four minutes, thirty-three seconds of silence owned by Cage."

Hey, does this guy really work for the government? In response to broadly worded news that the U.S. Department of the Interior was switching to an all-Microsoft computing infrastructure, security architect (and oftc.net honcho) D. Clyde Williamson fired off a well-phrased mail to Hord Tipton, Acting Chief Information Officer for the Department of the Interior. asking for clarification, and urging that the DOI consider advantages of not tying themselves completely to proprietary systems. Tipton's response (posted with his permission) is informative:

"Thanks for your views on the DOI's attempts to standardize operating systems. Whereas it is true we are moving towards enterprise approaches to desktops and operating systems, there will be as you suggest a heterogenous mix at the server level. We have not decided at this point to be 100% Microsoft although that discussion has been entertained. There are certain risks and efficiencies that must be considered regardless of the path taken.

Our major concern is interoperability and our current situation is all over the map. Thus standardization is an important step forward for us.

Thanks again for your views.

Hord Tipton
Department of the Interior"

Why relying on a single vendor for such an important aspect of the modern workplace is still considered an "enterprise approach" I'm not sure, but it is certainly true at many companies.