&nbsp;<br />
<b><big>History</big></b>
<br />&nbsp;<br />
SILC was released in the summer 2000 to the public, but the idea and the 
protocol itself is quite old. The SILC was designed by Pekka Riikonen in 
the year 1996 and first lines of codes were written in the early 1997. The 
SILC has been rewritten three times since its very first version in 1997.  
The first version included SILC client, very preliminary SILC server, RSA 
implementation and 3DES implementation. The server actually was not 
usable but the client looked pretty much the same as the first client 
released in the summer 2000. The first version had also random number 
generator which were based on the SSH's random number generator. The 
current RNG is based on the first RNG but has been rewritten twice since 
the first version.
<br />&nbsp;<br />
The development of SILC was suspended in 1997 when Pekka got busy at 
school and in work. The pause laster several months. The development 
resumed in 1998 when Juha Räsänen and Pekka implemented the ElGamal 
algorithm. However, for the same reasons as previously the development 
stopped again, and was resumed again later in 1998 by doing rewrite of 
ther SILC in C++. This was obviously a mistake but at that time it seemed 
like a good idea. Again, in the winter 1999 the development suspended when 
Pekka got busy writing his thesis and was forced to stop the development.
<br />&nbsp;<br />
Later, in 1999, it was decided that this time SILC will be rewritten from 
scratch in the right way. C++ was obviously a bad choice so plain C 
language was selected again. The protocol itself faced some rework by 
redesigning some core parts of the protocol. The protocol was also fully 
documented and the protocol specifications were submitted to the IETF.  
The result of this development effort is the release now in public. Since 
the release in the summer 2000 several other people have contributed to 
the project as well. And, the development continues.