On Thu, 1 Jun 2000, David Schwartz wrote:
>
> > Unfortunately, the law being "unjust and evil" (IYHO) doesn't stop it
> > being the law. Breaking it still has unpleasant consequences for the
> > culprit. If you make using Linux illegal in that country, you're just
> > surrendering that chunk of Linux's potential audience/market - for what?
>
> Suppose Scotland banned the ext2 file system. Would you advocate that
> it be removed from the Linux kernel?
If the ext2 file system were illegal in a significant enough proportion of
the world, I would expect there to be an ext2-free kernel available. Why
Scotland, though? I know the Scottish parliament is a rather expensive bad
joke, but I don't think they've started trying to regulate OS
development...
> Or, put another way, should Linux be dumbed down to make it legal in
> the most restrictive possible environment? Or should Linux follow it's
> natural development path?
Linux should be available to as many people as possible. If keeping the
encryption as an optional component, rather than the MS approach of
welding everything irrevocably into the kernel (insmod vi.o...), results
in a significant improvement in Linux's versatility, then there's no
contest.
> IMO, it would be the greatest possible victory for totalitarian and
> restrictive regimes if they got to dictate to the entire rest of the
> planet what features everyone else's software would come with.
They don't. This is NOT a question of whether or not Linux should HAVE
encryption, but whether that encryption should be "integrated".
James.
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Wed Jun 07 2000 - 21:00:13 EST