My computer alleges that Derek Atkins[SMTP:warlord@MIT.EDU] wrote:
The big issue I see with GPL and Crypto software is that with the GPL you cannot add any redistribution restrictions. The problem is that due to the United States export rules, I cannot export Crypto software, which means I must legally put a restriction on any Crypto code I write. But, this is a "further restriction" as far as the GPL is concerned. This, in turn, means I cannot use the GPL for Crypto software.
Surely the way round this is to take the "batteries not included" route? Just use GPLed libraries or standalone modules. Or write your code in such a way that some modules are GPLed and some aren't. Sell your modules & tell people that they will need to get the GPL stuff through "normal channels". Of course, once outside the USA you are safe. Nobody *outside* the US cares much about your export restrictions or absurd ideas about patenting software anyway - although in many European countries, and certainly in UK, we take copyright a lot *more* seriously than you. Copyright is widely seen as a right, something that naturally belongs to the author or artist. In French law they even talk about right of "paternity" in a text (part of "Droit Moral") even if you assign copyright to another person you are still allowed to veto changes in it, your right is seen as inalienable, like the rights you have to your own person - copyright is part of personality, not property. (This has been partly imported into English law as a a right to be identified as the author, which has to be asserted, which you now nearly always do). In France but not in England they also recognise the right to withdraw a work (although for some reason Stanley Kubrick seems to have been able to withdraw the Clockwork Orange film in England, I don't understand how) and the right of access to a work (an artist is allowed access to a painting which has been sold to someone else). These things are seen as part of personality. Just as in the US the law won't allow you to sell yourself permanently to someone else (i.e. no slavery, even voluntary slavery) but only rent yourself out (employment) so in most of Europe you can't really "sell" copyright, only rent it out. But patents are to some extent seen as government interference, as licensed monopoly. They tend to be unpopular with everyone (except lawyers, inventors and pharmecutical companies of course). I suspect there are a lot of people who would have moral problems with breaking someone else's software copyright but wouldn't give a dam about breaking a software patent. An algorithm is an idea, and how can anyone own an idea? (I'm talking morals here, not law - intersecting universes of discourse, but not identical ones :-) Ken Brown (and not his employers who respect patents greatly and would sack me if I broke them at work. After all they own an awful lot of them...)