On Sat, Jul 16, 2005 at 05:03:13PM +0200, Francesco Poli wrote: > 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
That was my original understanding that got confused by posts in this thread. The fact that http://www.debian.org/distrib/packages is not updated to reflect the obsolescence of non-US did not help. Thanks for the info Diego -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
