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Re: lynx-dev Lynx and SSL-encrypting
From: |
mattack |
Subject: |
Re: lynx-dev Lynx and SSL-encrypting |
Date: |
Tue, 15 Dec 1998 10:54:43 -0800 (PST) |
On Mon, 14 Dec 1998, David Woolley wrote:
>> The patent isn't the problem, is it? Isn't it export restrictions upon any
>> encryption above a certain level of complexity?
>
>It is both. Lynx is distributed under the Gnu General Public Licence.
>There is an explicit clause in that licence that says that any
>patent which requires royalties to be paid by any class of potential
>user is incompatible with the GPL and such a patent voids the
>right to redistribute under that licence for all classes of user.
>
>As royalties must be paid by commercial users (e.g. an ISP who
>installs Lynx for their customers) there would be no right to copy
>SSL Lynx in the USA (the rest of the world case is more fuzzy becuse
>of another clause in the licence (the USA is possibly the only
>country that permits patents on pure software).
>
>The interpreation being put on this is that it is still legal to
>construct an SSL Lynx for personal use, but you may not pass it on
>to others.
This has probably been covered a zillion times in the past, and I saw someone
mention that they thought that even making it easy to make Lynx do SSL through
hooks would be disallowed. I really don't get that.. Let's talk just in
the US for example.
Why couldn't Lynx code contain the following..
#ifdef DO_SSL
#include "SSLStuffHeaderFile.h"
#endif
#ifdef DO_SSL
CallTheSSLStuff();
#endif
and CallTheSSLStuff would be implimented in a package you got separately and
unpackaged on top of your existing Lynx package, so it plopped sources in the
right places?
Re: lynx-dev Lynx and SSL-encrypting, Henry Nelson, 1998/12/16