[p2p-hackers] Online Codes

[Antoine Pitrou]

> I was thinking of 
> releasing it under the GPL, but now that I've discovered patents are 
> involved that seems like a very bad idea. So I was wondering if the 
> Online Codes project broke up because of this, and whether I would get 
> sued into oblivion if I ever made this code available? IANAL, but is it 
> illegal to write such code and distribute it as a library on the net 
> (after all, it is straight from their papers) to elucidate how the 
> algorithm works, or only illegal to include the library in any working 
> software program?

If you are European then it's still legal ;)
(given your e-mail address I guess you are not...)

On the other hand, if software patents are valid in your country, then
you can't distribute any code that infringes the patent without a
license for that patent, even if you are doing it for research purposes,
etc. Indeed, one of the problems with patents is that they are not
subject to the traditional limits of copyright (fair use, etc.).

Regards

Antoine.

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http://solipsis.netofpeers.net/