Re: SSH never free
Joseph Carter wrote:
> I think the author's license is the only reasonable measure of use
> restrictions. Outside the US I'm free to use LZW, RSA, mp3, etc to my
> heart's content. Inside the US all crypto should be considered non-free
> by the above definition because the US crypto controls are essentially to
> prevent US citizens from having access to it without directly banning it.
> And they'd like to ban it if they could.
The problem is, I don't know if it's legally safe to ignore use
restrictions when distributing. I also think that packages which are
known to have encumbrances should be marked in some way, because we
make a number of promises about what people can do with stuff in main.
> > To support this: As an excercise, try writing any program that you can
> > *prove* does not infringe on any patents.
>
> hello world maybe?
Prove it :-)
> > > I propose that the above language be changed to:
> > >
> > > `Non-free' contains packages which are not compliant with the DFSG.
> >
> > This will put all GIF-creating packages in main. Is that what we want?
>
> non-US/main actually, given the scope of the LZW patent. I have no
> problems with this at all and if I didn't second the proposal yet (I'm
> pretty sure I did but it's been a long week and it's only Monday) I'm
> doing so now. =>
But currently, all of non-US/main is free for use and distribution inside
the US. Putting GIF-creating packages in there would change that.
I think we need some kind of map of which packages should go where,
and what kinds of subdistributions we want.
Richard Braakman
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