On Mon, Oct 04, 1999 at 07:49:04AM +0200, Richard Braakman wrote:
> > Encumbered by patents should be non-us, not non-free. And even there,
> > only for cases where someone makes an issue of it.
>
> Depends on what kind of "encumbered". Currently we put packages with
> problematic _distribution_ in non-us, and packages with problematic
> _use_ in non-free.
>
> I agree with the latter point, though. There's no clean way to deal with
> patents, we will have to judge real-world effects in each case.
I think the author's license is the only reasonable measure of use
restrictions. Outside the US I'm free to use LZW, RSA, mp3, etc to my
heart's content. Inside the US all crypto should be considered non-free
by the above definition because the US crypto controls are essentially to
prevent US citizens from having access to it without directly banning it.
And they'd like to ban it if they could.
> > Reason? Everything is encumbered by patents. At least in the U.S.,
> > you're presumed to be guilty of patent infringement until proven innocent.
>
> To support this: As an excercise, try writing any program that you can
> *prove* does not infringe on any patents.
hello world maybe?
> > I propose that the above language be changed to:
> >
> > `Non-free' contains packages which are not compliant with the DFSG.
>
> This will put all GIF-creating packages in main. Is that what we want?
non-US/main actually, given the scope of the LZW patent. I have no
problems with this at all and if I didn't second the proposal yet (I'm
pretty sure I did but it's been a long week and it's only Monday) I'm
doing so now. =>
--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> Debian GNU/Linux developer
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<Knghtbrd> "The currency collectors are offline." "I'm rerouting though
the secondary couplings. If we re-align the phase manifold we
should be able to use the plasma inductor matrix to manually
launch a new cheesy spinoff series."
* ShadwDrgn sighs
<Phase> you leave my manifolds alone
<Phase> !
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