Re: Non-EU?
On Saturday 30 November 2002 12:11 pm, Brian Nelson wrote:
> Nathanael Nerode <neroden@twcny.rr.com> writes:
>
> > So how about that non-EU section?
>
> The fundamental difference between the non-EU section you propose and
> the non-US section is that most (all?) of the packages in non-US were
> legally usable everywhere; however, due to draconian crypto laws, they
> could not be *exported* from the US. I'm not sure if Debian would
> support a section that could not legally be used by such a large portion
> of its target audience.
But the claim now is that it is due to US software patents laws, which indeed
makes some of the software illegal to use in the US. Surely the US is of a
similar population to the EU?
> However, you are correct in that many (nearly all?) of the wordlists
> included in Debian right now are of questionable legal status in the EU.
> It would be much more ideal to correct the EU's brain-dead laws, but I
> doubt that will happen anytime soon...
Yeah, well, I'd like to see a lot of laws struck down that don't belong --
including the aforementioned software patents. It's wonderful that the
LZW patent is going to expire soon, but there's more out there. I understand
that strong encryption can't be used for financial transactions in the US
without paying royalties to somebody. I never got around to finding out
who, because I can always use a service and not have to mess with it, but
it's pretty annoying anyway (I still haven't figured out if I can use to
assure privacy to my customers for non-financial uses).
Cheers,
Terry
--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks http://www.anansispaceworks.com
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