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> okay, i understand that, but does that prevent a service from using a copy of
> lynx as a part of their system that has been compiled with ssl?
> for example, delphi, has an acceptive,though dated, copy of lynx as part of
> the telnet side of their service. if they wanted to make ssl a part of
> their lynx construction, could they?
Subject to reading the exact terms of the royalty waiver on RSA, I would
say that that would be commercial use and require them to use a commercial
and royalty paid version of RSA. However, if they never provided access
to the binary code other than by executing it, they would not fall
foul of the GPL as it only restricts re-distribution not internal use;
before I lost the USENET feed at work, providing access to GPL code as
a proprietory service was one of the areas of discussion.
Note. If the patent holders have any discretion on licensing, and
realised the intended purpose, I would expect them to refuse such
a licence. I would also expect many SSL sites, particularly banks,
to refuse to accept SSL connections from such a service. The reasons
in both cases are that the service effectively defeats the security
provided by SSL.
> as to the government, i for one would gladly phone a few people on the
> subject. my guess is that the government decision is based on a lack of
> information as to the program's use, as are so many such decisions.
What decision? The current US government position seems to be that,
providing they are notified of the location of the source code, and it
is legal in civil law to distribute that source code, free
distribution would be permitted. The position has been relaxed at
least twice in the last year, and is actually surprisingly favourable
to open source software, given that they are also promoting international
recognition of software patents which is very much a threat to free
software.
They even have gone as far as to say that, although you may not knowingly
export to a "terrorist state", simply making the code freely accessible
on a web server, without any measures to prevent such states downloading
it, does not constitute making it knowingly available! (Please check
the original source documents before doing this.)
If you mean the decision to enforce software patents and petition other
countries to do so, they are doing it because they think it benefits the
US economy by making commercial software companies more profitable.
