IDEA

[Mark H. Wood]

On Tue, Jan 29, 2008 at 09:33:59PM +0200, Alon Bar-Lev wrote:
> On 1/29/08, Werner Koch <wk at gnupg.org> wrote:
> > On Fri, 25 Jan 2008 20:59, alon.barlev at gmail.com said:
> >
> > > Gentoo is providing this only if a user specify build from source and
> > > ask idea explicitly.
> > > Also Gentoo enforces dropping idea when binary redistribution is made.
> >
> > This has nothing to do with binary vs. source distribution. The GPL
> > clearly states that you can't distribute it as part of it.  We all know
> > that IDEA is patented because it was the main motivation to write gpg.
> 
> Gentoo does not distribute gnupg or IDEA.

That is not precisely correct.  A source kit for GnuPG can be found in e.g.

  /usr/portage/distfiles/gnupg-2.0.7.tar.bz2

while the IDEA patch is found in e.g.

  /usr/portage/app-crypt/gnupg/files/gnupg-2.0.4-idea.patch

It would be correct to say that Gentoo does not distribute GnuPG
binaries, with or without IDEA.  The package management system
(portage) gathers tarballs, patches, etc., constructs a source tree,
and compiles it on the target system.

> Gentoo provides the instructions of how to build these components from source.

The "instructions", to be clear, are the ebuild file that portage uses
to automagically build the software for you.

I can state that I have GnuPG built by portage on my Gentoo systems,
and it does not include IDEA.

  mwood at mhw ~ $ gpg --version
  gpg (GnuPG) 2.0.7
  Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
  License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
  <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
  This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
  There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

  Home: ~/.gnupg
  Supported algorithms:
  Pubkey: RSA, ELG, DSA, ELG
  Cipher: 3DES, CAST5, BLOWFISH, AES, AES192, AES256, TWOFISH
  Hash: MD5, SHA1, RIPEMD160, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512
  Compression: Uncompressed, ZIP, ZLIB, BZIP2

A quick look at the 2.0.7 ebuild suggests that portage will apply the
IDEA patch but not enable IDEA.  But I'm nothing like a portage
expert, so don't give my analysis of ebuilds too much weight.

-- 
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer   mwood at IUPUI.Edu
Typically when a software vendor says that a product is "intuitive" he
means the exact opposite.

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