Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Licensing/Distribution Question

[Brad Hards <bhards@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Mon, 08 Sep 2003 23:41 pm, Ashok Narayanan wrote:
> Putting your (and my) distaste for patented protocols aside, it is not
> clear to me that patented protocols are incompatible with Ethereal. I
> can see why an implementation of a patented protocol would be
> incompatible with the GPL (without the author waiving patent rights),
> but I don't see why a sniffer for this protocol would be incompatible
> with Ethereal.
There is a difference (that I should have put in my previous email) between a 
patented protocol and a dissector that requires patented material.

So if the patented part was in producing a particular datagram, but there was 
no patent on decoding it, then there is no conflict. Or perhaps we can do 
part of it - the laplink protocol that I'm decoding has a patented 
compression scheme (with clear, patented prior art and probably some other 
prior art, mind you). I just plan on flagging that content, not decoding it.

Brad
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQE/XO0KW6pHgIdAuOMRAswaAJ9uxvhOcBf5kivzaP5BeBMAzwHaEwCdEiSP
DFgsfJbZbXc52EMeRIophNI=
=7tv9
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----