> understand why lynx is restircted. if i understood previous explanations,
> it is because the program is given away. however, one can download internet
The reason that absolutely prevents its being distributed is that US
commercial users (and probably now Japanese ones) of it are required to
pay royalties. That is a conflict with the licence terms and voids the
right of any possessor of the program to redistribute it to anyone at all.
Netscape and MS will have paid royalties, or otherwise come to some deal
with the patent holder (e.g. to treat the licence on the browsers as
a loss leader).
(The versions normally built in the USA are either illegal to use there
(no RSAREF) or only legal to use for non-commercial purposes.)
The export controls issue has changed recently, but in the past it is
reasonable to assume that Netscape and Microsoft paid significant amounts
of money to get a generic export licence (they may not charge for the
program, but it is worth money to them, otherwise they would not distribute
it at all). Almost certainly that export licence only permitted export
of the compiled binaries; the Lynx licence requires that source be provided,
more or less on demand, to anyone who has been supplied with an executable.
However, the export controls regulations have now been changed to reflect
what is, in practice enforceable, and probably just require that the
US government be informed of the download sites (please check the source
documents - I don't guarantee that this summary is legally sound).
This still leaves two issues:
- the patent on RSA is still valid and still requires royalties, voiding
the GPL and therefore any right to redistribute;
- the export controls contain a restriction on exporting to a list of about
six countries, and it is not clear whether that restriction would invoke
the same GPL clause as the patent does, or whether it is possible to add
that restriction to the licence without permission from all those who
contributed to the source code.
