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RE: Commercial Mixmaster
[email protected] (Russell Nelson) wrote:
> There *will* always be a free version of the client with source
> code, but the proprietary improvements will probably not be merged
> into the free version. Lance, and only Lance, as copyright holder,
> has the publish the code under a different copyright. It's the same
> thing that Phil Z. did with ViacryptPGP.
It's not the same thing, though. PGP 2.6.2 and PGP 2.7 are
compatible. You can compile 2.6.2 from the sources and have it
interoperate with Viacrypt 2.7.
The concern is not "commercialization", per se, but rather the use
of "commercialization" as an excuse to build in "proprietary"
features (Back doors?) for which no corresponding source code is
involved.
Since no one has made a good case for there even being a COMMERCIAL
market for Mixmaster, could there be other motives? Without
building an anonymous e-$ infrastructure first, there's no way to
even charge for the use of a remailing service without sacrificing
anonymity, even if people were willing to pay to have messages
anonymously remailed.
No, I'm not accusing Lance. But if he no longer has the time to
support Mixmaster, then perhaps some other crypto-friendly group
should take over the task and keep it an OPEN system, with source
code available. In fact, even freezing Mixmaster as is would be
preferable to "improvements" that people don't/can't trust.
True, they *COULD* provide source code, but how many commerical
products come with complete source code?