[Sussex] Lurking

[Dominic]

<snipped location="the_Debian_lists">

non-us contains software in two categories:

1. software containing encryption; the US government wants to control
the 
   export of such software, presumably because they believe that foreign
   spies are far too honest to download stuff against the will of the US
   government!  Recently, US controls have been greatly
   relaxed, but we maintain this software in the non-us section because
we
   don't trust the US government not to reimpose the restrictions.

2. software that is restricted by US patents; the USA has been notorious
   for issuing patents on all kind of software operations, which would
not
   be patentable in most of the world.  The RSA algorithm was an
example,
   though its patent has very recently expired.

As far as Debian is concerned, you can do what you like with this
software.  It is up to you to judge whether any item of software is
legal
within your own country.  The point of the non-us archive is that it
contains software that would be illegal for us to export from USA or
to supply for use in USA.

</sniped>

Regards,

Dominic

-----Original Message-----
From: sussex-admin at mailman.lug.org.uk
[mailto:sussex-admin at mailman.lug.org.uk] On Behalf Of Rob Clegg
Sent: 25 April 2003 11:48
To: sussex at mailman.lug.org.uk
Subject: [Sussex] Lurking


I suppose it's about time to say hello as I've been lurking around these
parts now for some time. It's not that I enjoy my full time lurking
status it's just that my knowlege of computers never mind linux is in a
state of infancy and most of whats said is quite simply over my head. On
that note I wondered if anyone could tell me (or point me towards some
reading) what 'non-US' means, I went to download tripwire today and
noticed it was 'non-US' yet you could download it from North America,
and does it have anything to do with not being able to apt-get install
tripwire? Hope you all enjoyed the meet, I supposed knowone noticed me
in the shadows.....

Rob Clegg

"work to live, don't live to work" --me I think.



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