Re: Questions about libntru license/ntru patent status

[Ian Jackson <ijackson@chiark.greenend.org.uk>]

Nick Mathewson writes ("Questions about libntru license/ntru patent status"):
> I'm a developer on the Tor Project.  We're thinking of adding a new
> cryptographic algorithm to Tor in order to improve our security
> against possible advances in quantum computation.
> 
> Many Tor servers run on Debian, and we'd like to make sure that
> everything we do in Tor can be distributed under the DFSG.

I think if you start with the GPL'd NTRU implementation, you get a
patent licence too.  The statement here
  https://github.com/NTRUOpenSourceProject/ntru-crypto/blob/master/LICENSE.md
is clear that this is a patent as well as a copyright licence.  (It
talks about `NTRU cryptographic IP'.)

So this is fine from a DFSG point of view.

But note that the whole program would effectively be GPL'd: certainly,
binaries of Tor+NTRU would have to be released under GPLv2+.

Are there any parts of Tor which currently have GPL-incompatible
licences ?  (Hopefully not.)

Ian.