On Sun, Apr 21, 2002 at 12:52:53AM +0200, Arnoud Galactus Engelfriet wrote: > Jeroen Dekkers wrote: > > On Fri, Apr 19, 2002 at 06:06:59PM -0700, Walter Landry wrote: > > > 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 > > That's not entirely accurate. First of all, there is no > uniform European patent law. Every European country has its > own national patent law, and has its own interpretations and > case law regarding software-related inventions. > > Second, "Europe" in this case should be read as "member states > to the European patent convention" or as "countries in the > continent of Europe". The EC has yet to regulate patent law > in this regard. The upcoming directive will establish a common > law - explicitly legalizing the current EPO's interpretation > of article 52 EPC. I meant "members of the Europen Union". Not all I hope the upcoming directive will be stopped, at least France is against software patents. > > > 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? > > IDEA is also covered by a European patent (since it was > invented by a Swiss company). It's even worse as I thought. :((( 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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