Re: Non-US CD sales
On Mon, Nov 04, 2002 at 07:01:53PM -0800, Terry Hancock wrote:
> 2) The other potential reason is patent violation (Unisys LZW patent,
> primarily).
AIUI, this is the cause why non-US continues to exist; the crypto code
is no longer a problem these days.
> In fact, I know of at least one US supplier which *does* sell Debian
> Non-US, so I'm just wondering whether they are doing so legally, or
> just bucking an admittedly very stupid law. We are thinking of also
> carrying the CDs, and I'm trying to decide how to handle these.
I'm afraid the ultimate decision will have to be yours alone. ;) IMHO,
shipping the non-US CDs is pretty low-risk because even non-US doesn't
contain really controversial software (like, say, libdvdcss). With the
ridiculous patent system in the US, I'd even go as far as saying that
a lot of programs in the main distribution are affected by US patents.
OTOH, *if* someone thinks that a non-US program uses their patent, I
think it'll be much more likely they'll sue you as the commercial
vendor rather than Debian...
BTW, AFAIK the NONUS CDs may stop being generated starting with 3.0r1
for purely practical reasons - the machine used for the CD generation
happens to be in the US.
Cheers,
Richard
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|_) /| Richard Atterer | CS student at the Technische | GnuPG key:
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