3.2. May I legally run ssh?
Description
This article is from the SSH - Secure Shell FAQ, by Thomas Koenig Thomas.Koenig@ciw.uni-karlsruhe.de with numerous contributions by others.
3.2. May I legally run ssh?
The UNIX version of ssh 1.2.20 may be used and distributed freely, but
must not be sold commercially as a separate product, as part of a
bigger product or project, or otherwise used for financial gain
without a separate license.
Earlier versions of ssh had a less restrictive license; see the file
COPYING in the accompanying source distributions.
Tatu Yloenen's MS-Windows version of ssh is a commercial product,
which requires licensing.
In some countries, particularly France, Russia, Iraq, and Pakistan, it
may be illegal to use any encryption at all without a special permit.
If you are in the United States, you should be aware that, while ssh
was written outside the United States using information publicly
available everywhere, the US Government may consider it a criminal
offence to export this software from the US once it has been imported,
including putting it on a ftp site. Contact the Office of Defence
Trade Controls if you need more information.
The algorithms RSA and IDEA, which are used by ssh, are claimed as
patented in different countries, including the US. Linking against the
RSAREF library, which is possible, may or may not make it legal to use
ssh for non-commercial purposes in the US. You may need to obtain
licenses for commercial use of IDEA; ssh can be configured to work
without it. Ssh works perfectly fine without IDEA, however.
For more detail, refer to the file COPYING in the ssh source
distribution.
For information on software patents in general, see the Leauge for
Programming Freedom's homepage at http://lpf.org/.
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