[openssl-users] ECC patent status questions

[Kyle Hamilton]

On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 3:43 PM, Salz, Rich <rsalz at akamai.com> wrote:

> > The existence of the NSA agreement is a partial answer to the first
> question,
> > though it seems unclear if this license is recursively sublicensed
> through 3rd
> > parties or not.
>
> They knew they were licensing an open source toolkit.
>

So, it looks as though the only way for any one of us to be able to have a
patent license under the NSA's license to OpenSSL Software Foundation is to
get a separate license from you that doesn't allow us to redistribute or
resell it.  (I'm not a lawyer, but it appears to be the only way that we
would be able to qualify under the "End User" definition 1A, as referenced
in the grant under section 2.)

Is such a license available?  Could such a license be granted severally to
the same people who also receive the standard BSD license, such that each
individual actually receives two separate licenses for the same code (i.e.,
one granted with extremely limited rights solely for the purpose of
qualifying to receive the NSA ECC patent license, the other being
separately granted to permit redistribution and resale of integrated
components but not granting any ECC license transitively)?

If such a severed license were possible, I would think that such would
require that the recipient of the first (limited) license obtain the code
directly from openssl.org.

-Kyle H
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