[SSL] new SSLeay & OpenSSL, repeating *BSD history

Alicia da Conceicao (alicia@cyberstation.ca)
Sat, 26 Dec 1998 05:54:42 +0000

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Merry Boxing Day:

Okay, several people on this list have expressed a need to continue
development of SSLeay. Evolution is necessary, or we risk losing out
to "commerical" software. Remember Microsoft is just around the
corner, I'm sure waiting to come up with its own crypto standard.

Also, some have mentioned that Eric Young and Tim Hudson are no longer
spearheading developement of SSLeay. Is this true? Has anyone
actually confirmed this with them? If it is, would they be willing to
hand our control of future SSLeay to some type of committee? We all owe
so much to Eric & Tim for giving us SSLeay. Unless they have dropped
off the face of the planet, or decided to abandon SSLeay, let us at least
calm down and wait for a week or two to hear what they have to say. We
all owe them that much.

However, no matter what, we should all support the continued development
of an OPEN SOURCE SSLeay-like product, which should be governed by open
commitee, and not by individuals (sorry Eric, Tim, Ben, Ralf, etc.) or by
companies (sorry AOL-Netscape, C2Net, etc.). I am sick and tired of
seeing many of you extremely talneted guys letting history or egos get in
the way of what is best for the cryptographic community. I feel that I
am seeing the *BSD history repeat itself, and divide up developer effects
into multiple camps (NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, etc.). We need to remain
unified!

Lets completely scrap all previous new SSLeay and OpenSSL announcements,
and start again from scratch. Lets sit back and enjoy the holidays,
giving Tim and Eric a chance to reply, within the next week or two.
After that, lets talk about building an inclusive, open source commitee
based on consensus, that includes all of the key crypto developers, and
is not ruled by any company or individual developer, and does not reside
in any country with cryptographic restrictions.

I would be willing to donate resources including a free server computer,
hosted on a free T3 Internet connection in Canada, with full root access
by the commitee, and no advertisements. The commitee can have complete
control of the server, including web, ftp, source trees, mailing lists,
etc. If anyone else is also willing to donate any resources for this
worthy cause, I hope that they also are willing to equally hand over
complete control to the commitee. It does not really matter who does
the hosting, as long as the commitee has complete control.

Lets not repeat *BSD history. Yours truly, Alicia.

PS. If a non Wassenaar country is required, I also have an E1 Internet
        feed in the Caribbean. :-)

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