Re: lynx-dev Lynx and SSL-encrypting

[mattack]

On Mon, 14 Dec 1998, David Woolley wrote:
>> The patent isn't the problem, is it?  Isn't it export restrictions upon any
>> encryption above a certain level of complexity?
>
>It is both.  Lynx is distributed under the Gnu General Public Licence.
>There is an explicit clause in that licence that says that any 
>patent which requires royalties to be paid by any class of potential
>user is incompatible with the GPL and such a patent voids the
>right to redistribute under that licence for all classes of user.
>
>As royalties must be paid by commercial users (e.g. an ISP who
>installs Lynx for their customers) there would be no right to copy
>SSL Lynx in the USA (the rest of the world case is more fuzzy becuse
>of another clause in the licence (the USA is possibly the only
>country that permits patents on pure software).
>
>The interpreation being put on this is that it is still legal to 
>construct an SSL Lynx for personal use, but you may not pass it on
>to others.

This has probably been covered a zillion times in the past, and I saw someone
mention that they thought that even making it easy to make Lynx do SSL through
hooks would be disallowed.  I really don't get that..  Let's talk just in
the US for example.

Why couldn't Lynx code contain the following..

#ifdef DO_SSL
#include "SSLStuffHeaderFile.h"
#endif


#ifdef DO_SSL
                        CallTheSSLStuff();
#endif

and CallTheSSLStuff would be implimented in a package you got separately and
unpackaged on top of your existing Lynx package, so it plopped sources in the
right places?