Why the OpenSSL license can't change

Posted Feb 17, 2011 23:39 UTC (Thu) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510)
Parent article: PostgreSQL, OpenSSL, and the GPL

Eric A Young was compelled to sign an agreement that he would not touch the software again. So, he can't change the license on his contribution.

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Why the OpenSSL license can't change

Posted Feb 18, 2011 2:58 UTC (Fri) by pabs (subscriber, #43278) [Link] (3 responses)

Do you have any references to back that up or more details? Why would he agree to sign such a thing?!

Why the OpenSSL license can't change

Posted Feb 18, 2011 3:36 UTC (Fri) by BrucePerens (guest, #2510) [Link] (2 responses)

He was compelled, it's not something that he wanted to do. And he's not allowed to talk about it. I'm not sure of the reason.

Why the OpenSSL license can't change

Posted Feb 18, 2011 4:43 UTC (Fri) by foom (subscriber, #14868) [Link] (1 responses)

Now you've gotten me interested. :) I can't find any other references on the internet. People around Dec 1998 say Eric Young won't be working on it anymore, but there's no more details...

http://www.mail-archive.com/openssl-users@openssl.org/msg...
http://marc.info/?l=apache-ssl&m=91399607525631&w=1
http://marc.info/?l=ssl-users&m=91399693926181&w=1

Perhaps it was a condition of his employment by RSA, working on a commercial SSL implementation, that he never again touch his open source SSLeay project. Or maybe Australia decided to prosecute him for dealing in "weapons" (crypto) afterall, like the first link said, and it was a condition of dropping the case that he never work on it again.

Why the OpenSSL license can't change

Posted Mar 24, 2017 23:42 UTC (Fri) by eay (guest, #114767) [Link]

When the RSA patent existed, software patents did not apply to Australia, but
contributory patent infringement did.
https://www.wadesonip.com.au/patent-attorney-services/pat...

As for 'weapons', Australian law, at the time, only applied to software that was being sold, not distributed for free, unlike the USA.

eric (going back into lurking mode :-)

Why the OpenSSL license can't change

Posted Feb 18, 2011 4:29 UTC (Fri) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link]

That's interesting. But... changing the license on his contribution doesn't require changing the software, does it? If he gives verbal approval, someone else could edit LICENSE.txt, surely?