Oh,
I missed the word patented.
I am totally against patented protocols. Hopefully no one will ever use them
and Ethereal should
definitely not assist people in using them.
Patented protocols or algorithms are an abomination.
Patented protocols are NOT compatible with ethereal or GPL.
Patented protocols that restricts what users can do with the protocols or
who can implement them
or are distributed in binary only form with special licence agreements or
costs for using
shall not be part of any code i contribute to.
A much better solution is to either use
1, Sniffer Pro
2, NetMon
3, something else
4, write your own protocol analyzer which allows patented protocols and
restrictions on use.
Please do not use ethereal for these projects.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Sharpe"
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2003 12:50 PM
Subject: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Licensing/Distribution Question
> On Mon, 8 Sep 2003, Pia Sahlberg wrote:
>
> > In case the protocol is so secret that the source code can not be
> > distributed, there is no need to distribute protocol dissectors to third
> > parties or customers either.
>
> I don't think that patenting a protocol is intended to keep it secret.
> Rather, it is intended to allow the patent holder to charge anyone for
> using the protocol.
>
> Think of being charged everytime you use SMTP, or POP, or whatever, or, at
> least, paying a few cents to the patent owner for every app that uses the
> protocol.
>
> In my view, everyone should avoid the protocol like the plague.
>
> There is speculation that Microsoft will do two things with the successor
> to the SMB/CIFS protocol so they can control it totally and thus gouge
> their customers for more:
>
> 1. Patent the protocol(s) to allow them to go after reverse engineers
> with the big hammer of the law.
>
> 2. Use end-to-end enctyption to make reverse engineering that much
> harder.
>
> Regards
> -----
> Richard Sharpe, rsharpe[at]ns.aus.com, rsharpe[at]samba.org,
> sharpe[at]ethereal.com, http://www.richardsharpe.com
>
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