goingware@roadrunner.nf.net said:
> I'm a big fan of cryptography (see http://www.goingware.com/
> encryption) but I don't think that including encryption in all kernels
> by default would serve the purpose of promoting it.
> Part of the problem is that those folks who live in countries where it
> is forbidden would either have to stop using it or face the heavy
> bootheel of the law.
There are few of these countries now, and they could be served by someone
downloading the 'official' kernel and removing the crypto from it, then
putting the new tarball up for FTP. Nobody is suggesting that crippled
versions shouldn't be made available - only that the one that Linus
sprinkles with penguin pee should be fully functional, for the benefit of
the majority of Linux users.
There are technical reasons for including the various patches which have
until now been kept separate - it's difficult to keep a large set of such
patches completely up to date with the latest kernel, and to ensure that
new drivers and kernel API changes take into account the requirements of
the crypto patches.
As I see it, there are only marketing reasons for keeping the crypto
separate - it would make it slightly harder for a small number of people to
use Linux.
Lets see what Linus decides.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jun 07 2000 - 21:00:12 EST