RE: [avr-chat] µC/avr crypto lib

[Weddington, Eric]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: address@hidden 
> [mailto:address@hidden
>  On Behalf Of Daniel Otte
> Sent: Sunday, July 20, 2008 2:11 PM
> To: address@hidden
> Subject: [avr-chat] µC/avr crypto lib
> 
> hi list,
> I'm the author of the micro-crypt/avr-crypto-lib 
> (http://www.das-labor.org/wiki/Crypto-avr-lib/en) and I'm 
> interested in moving 
> this project from it's current location 
> (https://roulettee.das-labor.org/svn) to 
> the nongnu.org server to merge it with the avr-super-project.

Hi Daniel,

Your project looks very interesting. I've only been aware of TomCrypt. So this 
will be a very useful addition.

However I see a small problem. According to your wiki, you're using the GPLv3 
license. Most embedded developers will stay away from the GPL license unless 
there is an exception to allow linking to proprietary code without the 
proprietary code becoming GPL. See, for example, the license used for libgcc in 
the GCC project. AVR-LibC is licensed under the modified BSD license, which is 
a very liberal license and allows the user to do anything with the code. This 
allows users to use the AVR GCC toolchain, including the libraries, in 
commercial products.

As it stands, if you keep your library as GPLv3, this will effectively limit 
the potential set of users of your library to those people who just want to 
play around with the code, but not make any serious products from it.

If you are willing, I would suggest that you reconsider how you license you 
code to gain a wider audience.

Do you have any documentation on how you have verified your code? Do you have a 
publicly available test suite? It's easy to get bugs in writing any Crypto 
algorithms, so any reassurance that you can give users of your code will be 
extremely beneficial.

> Currently there is a lot of documentation missing, but I'm 
> working on it (the 
> aim is to have a doxygen generated documentation as nice as 
> that for avr-libc).

That will be great!
 
> I'm not much aware of the state of svn on nongnu.org as I'm 
> currently using svn 
> I would like it very much to stay with svn.

You should ask the people who run Savannah.

Eric Weddington