IDEA

[David K. Trudgett]

On Thursday 2001-09-13 at 00:14:39 -0400, Michael H. Warfield wrote:

> On Thu, Sep 13, 2001 at 11:12:09AM +0800, Edward Khoo wrote:
> > G'day mate,
> 
> > >Note that I am not in Europe and the European patent on IDEA does 
> > >not apply here.
> 
> 	???
> 
> 	I thought Europe was one place where you could use it.  US and
> Switzerland are the backwaters where software patents are crippling

The patent is apparently valid in Europe (as much as software patents
can be valid, which in my opinion is not at all in regard to mathematical 
algorithms). I read on a Spanish language page (so I may have
misunderstood) that there is a patent also pending in Japan. I don't
believe the patent is valid anywhere outside of Europe, including the
US.



<snip>

>  It was last modified Sat Jun  9 16:43:53 2001 - 95 days ago.
>  
> 250 Current directory is now /pub/gcrypt/contrib/.
> ftp> pwd
> 257 "/pub/gcrypt/contrib/" is current directory.
> ftp> dir i*
> 200 PORT command ok (209.134.176.37 port 44345)
> 150 Opening ASCII mode data connection for /usr/bin/ls
> i*: not found
> 226 Transfer complete.
> 
> 	Looks like something happened on August 18.  Anyone care to
> elaborate on WTF is going on????  I thought that was suppose to be
> a contrib directory.  Now we have the politically correct police
> stepping in on contrib directories?

Has that look about it. (Although, I can't even access the site, for
some reason. Perhaps it doesn't do passive FTP, I don't know.)


> 
> 	Retrieved README.idea and this is what is has to say:
> 
> ] idea.c - The GnuPG IDEA plugin.
> 
> ] Due to patent problems we do not keep the idea.c file any longer here on
> ] this server.   If you are in a country where the distribution is allowed,
> ] you might want to get it from its new distribution server; however we
> ] suggest to avoid this algorithm entirely due to interoperability problems.
> 
> ] For information on the dangers of softwarepatents, please visit the website
> 
> ]         http://www.noepatents.org
> 
> ] The new URLs are:
> 
> ]   http://www.gnupg.org/contrib-dk/idea.c
> ]   http://www.gnupg.org/contrib-dk/idea.c.sig
>     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> 	Apparently not.
> 
> ] Thanks.
> 
> 	Looks like he went one step further than you and slammed into
> a brick wall.  I get the same error he encountered when trying the same
> URL referenced in the README file in the directory you recommended.  He
> even STATES that he got the link from the ftp directory.

Did indeed. :-)


> 
> 	Fortunately (for me) I already had a copy of the file before the
> GPL fanatics removed it from the site.  I have no clue where it may be
> available from.

Perhaps someone would be kind enough to email a copy of idea.c and
idea.c.sig (make sure you don't live in a country with dumb export
restrictions, though).


Thanks.


David Trudgett