<b>History</b>
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Even though SILC were released in summer 2000 to the public the idea and
the protocol itself is quite old. I got the idea about SILC in its
current form in the year 1996 and first lines of codes were written in
the RNG written in 1997. The RNG written in 1997, on the other hand, were
based on the SSH's random number generator. The RNG has been rewritten
twice since the first version.
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I stopped writing the SILC later in 1997 when I got busy at school and in
work. The pause lasted several months. The development resumed in 1998
when my friend (Juha Räsänen) and I implemented ElGamal algorithm. I
but at that time it seemed like a good idea. Again, in the winter 1999 I
got very busy writing my thesis and was forced to stop the development
again. I also, started a new job in the spring.
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Later, in 1999, I decided that this time I'm going to make it the right
way. C++ was obviously a bad choice so I decided to fall back to plain C
language. I also decided to do complete rewrite and started doing more
everytime I had some spare time. I also started a new job but I didn't
let that get to my way. The result of this development effort is the
release now in public.
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I've learned a lot by doing the SILC. I guess, when I started it I wasn't
that good of a C programmer. That alone was a reason why SILC hasn't seen
the day of light before now. My programming style has also changed
since this last rewrite as well. However, the code style of current SILC
release is quite consistent (actually the coding style SILC has been
written now I've learned in my current job).
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There is probably over 85% of new code in this third rewrite. Rest has
just been copied from the old versions and only minor changes has been
made (like changed function names and overall coding style). I've
preserved the dates of the old files (dating back to 1997) that has
existed in some forms in the old versions. There is a lot of new code but
already I see a lot that needs rewriting. The development continues.
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