Re: "non-US/main" section
milenium moon wrote:
>I come from Indonesia. I want ask you about
>licensing/limitation of use from "non-US/main" section
>that include in Debian 2.2 Official CDs. If in my CDs
>contain "non-US/main" section (application/software)
>is legal or ilegal if I instal to my computer (on one
>computer) and how if I want install to more than one
>computer, is this legal or ilegal ?
>Please explain to me, this section confiusing for me.
non-us contains software in two categories:
1. software containing encryption; the US government wants to control the
export of such software, presumably because they believe that foreign
spies are far too honest to download stuff against the will of the US
government! Recently, US controls have been greatly
relaxed, but we maintain this software in the non-us section because we
don't trust the US government not to reimpose the restrictions.
2. software that is restricted by US patents; the USA has been notorious
for issuing patents on all kind of software operations, which would not
be patentable in most of the world. The RSA algorithm was an example,
though its patent has very recently expired.
As far as Debian is concerned, you can do what you like with this
software. It is up to you to judge whether any item of software is legal
within your own country. The point of the non-us archive is that it
contains software that would be illegal for us to export from USA or
to supply for use in USA.
--
Oliver Elphick Oliver.Elphick@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
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GPG: 1024D/3E1D0C1C: CA12 09E0 E8D5 8870 5839 932A 614D 4C34 3E1D 0C1C
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"No man can serve two masters; for either he will
hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold
to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve
God and mammon." Matthew 6:24
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