Re: Irony of RSA Encryption

[Paul Serice <serice@bigfoot.com>]

David Starner wrote:
> 
> On Sat, Sep 16, 2000 at 01:48:00AM -0500, Paul Serice wrote:
> > So, that's the "case in point": Under the RSA example, the current
> > legal regime, for all its imperfections, results in software and ideas
> > that are freer than what you would have under a pure GPL legal regime.
> 
> Like what? Free software people don't patent software, so if RSA had
> been under this pure GPL "regime", it would never have been patented,
> and hence would have been in the public domain for the last decade. The
> RSA people didn't release any software to the public domain, so that's
> irrelevant. Your example is totatlly bogus.

Your argument that RSA would have been in the public domain for the
last decade is impossible.  Under a GPL-based legal regime there is no
public domain.  There can't be.

Nicolás Lichtmaier made an observation similar to yours.  If you have
the time, take a look at my reply.  It is more detailed only because I
didn't want to post the some thing twice.


Thanks,
Paul Serice