David Weinehall (tao@acc.umu.se) writes:
> Well, even if/when the crypto-patches goes into the kernel it'll be dumbed
> down, because it won't have those crypto-algorithms that are patented in
> the US. Most of the rest of the world has no algorithm-patents but the US
> has...
>
> It's a pity Linus lives in the US, imho.
Why? Just because Linus lives here means nothing. Someone submits the patches
to him, all he does is approve them, he doesn't have to resend them out, so
he isn't breaking any laws. If Alan Cox wants to roll out an "official"
kernel with crypto in it, legally that means nothing in terms of Linus'
liability.
Linus approves the patches, Alan (or someone else) rolls them into the kernel,
uploads to the usual places, and volia! US law means little when the kernel
is spread all over 10,000 different servers all around the world, and in any
event, since the crypto patches didn't start in the US, there's nothing anyone
can do.
It's similar to what happened with PGP, except that PGP started here. But once
the genie was out of the bottle, tehre was little the US could really do, and
in this particular case, it's easy to structure the deal where no one is
breaking any laws.
-- Ed Carp, N7EKG erc@pobox.com 940/367-2744 cell phone http://www.pobox.com/~erc- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jun 07 2000 - 21:00:13 EST