GNU libc, crypt and legal stuff..
Hello,
Finally I have had some time again to work on the Alpha port. Sorry for
everybody I've kept waiting, but it was a good thing as part of the libc
interface has changed and a lot of stuff had to be rebuilt again.
One of the things that has changed is that "crypt()" is now not part of
glibc anymore; it is a seperate add-on for glibc. The source does
have to be extracted into the glibc-source however to build it (and it
then builds a seperate libcrypt.a and libcrypt.so).
Until now, the Linux community has always ignored the problem with the crypt()
function; it is part of the Linux library, both the source and binary releases
but _officially_ you are *not* allowed to export this from the US! In
other countries there is no problem but master.debian.org is inside the US so..
What are we going to do about this? I can see 3 possible solutions:
1. Ignore it and distribute crypt() as source and binary just as we've
always done.
2. Distribute libcrypt (source and binary) seperately and let the user get
it from an European or US based site (impossible for CDs).
3. Include a MD5 based crypt with the base distribution and create a
des-crypt package that can be installed as an extra which replaces
libcrypt.a and libcrypt.so (this is what FreeBSD does).
I'd prefer (1), but then I'm outside of the States..
Mike.
--
Miquel van | Cistron Internet Services -- Alphen aan den Rijn.
Smoorenburg, | mailto:info@cistron.nl http://www.cistron.nl/
miquels@cistron.nl | The truth is out there. 42.
--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
debian-devel-REQUEST@lists.debian.org . Trouble? e-mail to Bruce@Pixar.com
Reply to: