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From: hrubin@pop.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: RSA public-key source?
Keywords: RSA
Message-ID: <11895@mentor.cc.purdue.edu>
Date: 5 May 91 15:38:41 GMT
References: <1401@nih-csl.nih.gov> <1412@nih-csl.nih.gov>
Sender: news@mentor.cc.purdue.edu
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In article <1412@nih-csl.nih.gov>, frost@helix.nih.gov (James P. Goltz) writes:
> Following up on my original query:
> 
> In article <1401@nih-csl.nih.gov> frost@helix.nih.gov (James P. Goltz) writes:
> >
> >Does anyone know of source code for an implementation of the RSA
> >public-key encryption algorithm?  
> 
> I find that RSA is a patented algorithm and therefore any
> implementation w/source would involve all that pesky licensing.  |-)

Source CODE might possibly require licensing, but even this is 
questionable.  The source ALGORITHM, or enough to produce it easily,
muct be public, however.  The word "patent" means open, and a patent
is not supposed to issue unless the publicly revealed patent is adequate
for someone "skilled in the art", and with the necessary resources, to
be able to produce whatever is patented.

Anyone who cannot produce an adequate source code, possibly slow, from
the algorithm description does not understand how to compute with large
integers.  This has been the situation since the first description of 
the algorithm.
-- 
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
Phone: (317)494-6054
hrubin@l.cc.purdue.edu (Internet, bitnet)   {purdue,pur-ee}!l.cc!hrubin(UUCP)