[4613] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Bernstein Opinion Up
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Lenny Foner)
Thu May 6 19:12:09 1999
Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 19:05:30 -0400
From: Lenny Foner <foner@media.mit.edu>
To: karn@qualcomm.com
Cc: jya@pipeline.com, cryptography@c2.net
In-Reply-To: <199905062253.PAA28169@servo.qualcomm.com> (message from Phil
Karn on Thu, 6 May 1999 15:53:27 -0700 (PDT))
Cc: foner@media.mit.edu
Date: Thu, 6 May 1999 15:53:27 -0700 (PDT)
From: Phil Karn <karn@qualcomm.com>
I don't see the term "assembly" anywhere in the opinion, and in
context I don't think this court would have a problem classifying an
assembler implementation of DES as "source code" for the purposes of
First Amendment protection. After all, both C and assembler are
"source code" written so humans can understand it.
Precisely. (And yes, they don't use the term "assembly" anywhere; I
was interpreting "low-level" the way programmers do, which may not be
what the court would do.)
it would be a simple manner to distribute a makefile (and
possibly a compiler) with the source so a user could generate object
code as needed.
Akin to a self-extracting archive---in this case, self-compiling.
Java, or languages such as Scheme, would presumably also fall into
this interpretation.
Perhaps it would actually be a blessing to have such a restriction to
source code. It would help boost the Open Source movement, and it
would also help make distributed encryption code easier to examine for
bugs and trojan horses...
...er, uhm, assuming we're -not- also shipping a compiler with that
source, given the problems of trusting that compiler, etc.
