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

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From: Brad Hards <bhards@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2003 06:56:42 +1000
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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
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