On Sat, 16 Jul 2005 13:04:47 +0200 Diego Biurrun wrote: > On Tue, Jul 12, 2005 at 01:49:17PM -0300, Humberto Massa Guimarães > wrote: [...] > > I was under the impression that Debian *did* have a policy: if the > > patent is enforced, towards it, then the software will go to non_US > > -- to the benefit of the sane jurisdictions (as is the EU, in > > principle). > > And to what extent is that policy followed? Neither libdts nor the > many multimedia players available in Debian appear to be in non-US. > > How can I get an overview of all the packages in non-US? Looking on > Debian mirrors just reveals empty packages files: > > http://non-us.debian.org/debian-non-US/dists/sarge/non-US/main/binary-i386/Packages
Actually, AIUI, this is not (and never was) the role of non-US. non-US was used to distribute software that couldn't be exported from the USA to other countries. This prohibition was due to some (absurd) US laws regarding strong cryptography (seen as a *weapon*). However US laws didn't forbid anyone from *importing* the same software into the USA from abroad. The consequence was that a server placed outside of the US homeland could distribute these export-restricted software tools to anyone everywhere. non-us.debian.org was such a server. The only necessary precaution was that US citizens had to remember to *not* redistribute any package got from non-us.debian.org to people outside USA. Now that those US laws have been heavily relaxed, there's no point anymore in having a non-US section. As you can read in Sarge release notes[1], non-US is now obsoleted. [1] http://www.debian.org/releases/sarge/releasenotes -- :-( This Universe is buggy! Where's the Creator's BTS? ;-) ...................................................................... Francesco Poli GnuPG Key ID = DD6DFCF4 Key fingerprint = C979 F34B 27CE 5CD8 DC12 31B5 78F4 279B DD6D FCF4
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