On Fri, Apr 19, 2002 at 06:06:59PM -0700, Walter Landry wrote: > Stephen Zander <gibreel@pobox.com> wrote: > > >>>>> "Walter" == Walter Landry <wlandry@ucsd.edu> writes: > > Walter> The patent issue is not a problem specific to the license. > > Walter> Rather, it depends on what algorithms are implemented. > > Walter> What algorithms are used? A usual suspect is IDEA, which > > Walter> is patented in many countries. > > > > According to <URL:http://www.eskimo.com/~weidai/algorithms.html>, the > > potentially patented algorithms are: > > > > * DSS > > * LUC > > * IDEA > > DSS and IDEA are both patented in Europe, so putting it in non-us > won't help. If I'm right, patents on software aren't legal in Europe. Current European law (European Patent Convention article 52) says you can't patent programs for computers. The problem is the EPO (European Patent Office) does not obey that law. They exists however, and nobody knows how threating they are until you come back from court. > There is also the minor problem that non-us is going the > away. This won't happen, non-US has more than crypto. > It sounds like the patent holders are charging to use DSS. Since it > isn't very good anyway, I would recommend just removing it. IDEA, on > the other hand, is a good algorithm, but only free for non-commercial > uses. You could split that out and put that library in non-free. The > rest goes in main. Speak-freely is in non-free for the same reason. I don't see why it fails the DFSG. Patens are only legal in the US, why can't it go into non-US/main? Jeroen Dekkers -- Jabber supporter - http://www.jabber.org Jabber ID: jdekkers@jabber.org Debian GNU supporter - http://www.debian.org http://www.gnu.org IRC: jeroen@openprojects
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