GnuTLS missing SRP functions

Richard W.M. Jones rjones at redhat.com
Wed Dec 12 11:11:14 UTC 2007


After much messing around working out why this function: 
gnutls_srp_base64_decode_alloc
is declared in <gnutls/gnutls.h> but not actually present in 
libgnutls.so, I have discovered that GnuTLS in Fedora uses a "special" 
version of the library with all the SRP functions removed.

Apparently this is because of some patent issue, see this posting and 
its follow-ups:
http://lists.gnupg.org/pipermail/gnutls-dev/2005-January/000812.html

I really think this should at least be documented.  Nothing in 
/usr/share/doc/gnutls-1.6.3 mentions it.  The functions ought to be 
removed from the header file if they are not in the library.

There are questions about whether the SRP code really infringes on any 
patent.  And as an example Debian's GnuTLS ships with the SRP functions 
intact.

Rich.

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