Some people that need to interoperate with PGP 2.x users need support for
IDEA with GnuPG. These users have to find the correct IDEA source module,
compile and the module install by hand.
This is because the use of IDEA is restricted by patents held in Europe
and the USA.
This package aims to make installing the IDEA module a little easier (my definition of easier anyway). After building, it provides a Debian package that you can install on your machine.
The steps to build and install this package are:
- put the following line in your /etc/apt/sources.list:
deb-src http://arthurdejong.org/gnupg-idea ./ - apt-get update
- apt-get --only-source build-dep gnupg-idea
- apt-get --only-source -b source gnupg-idea
- dpkg -i gnupg-idea_version_i386.deb
During the package build the IDEA source files are retreived from their location. I cannot distribute the IDEA source with this package as the IDEA source code license does not allow distribuion in The Netherlands.
The above steps can also be done by downloading this file, extract is and build the Debian package from that.
Note about idea.c
I do not and cannot distribute the idea.c file needed
because the license of the IDEA source does not permit distribution
in Austria, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the US.
Don't ask for it because I'm not going to give it to you. If you need it
it's currently located
here.
Copyrights
gnupg-idea
The gnupg-idea package (without the IDEA source code) is based on gpg-rsaidea-2.1 by Tom Lees <tom@lpsg.demon.co.uk> and Josip Rodin <jrodin@jagor.srce.hr>.
Arthur de Jong <arthur@arthurdejong.org> stripped out the RSA stuff and pgp wrapper examples that are obsoleted by inclusion of RSA in gnupg and the pgpgpg package and added functions for downloading the idea source at build time.
Copyright © 1999 Josip Rodin.
Copyright © 1999 Tom Lees.
Copyright © 2002, 2004 Arthur de Jong.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
idea.c
Version 1.11 of idea.c (the one that can be used for gnupg-idea) is distributed under a BSD-like license with an additional notice about distribution in certain countries.
Patents
Software patents are bad. Look here for more information on software patents.
The IDEA patent
IDEA has a horrible software patent on it that is not scheduled to run out any time soon.
| where | number | application | issued | expiration |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USA | 5'214'703 | 1991-05-16 | 1993-05-25 | 2010-05-25 |
| Europe | 0482154 | 1991-05-16 | 1993-06-30 | 2011-05-16 |
| Japan | 508119/1991 | 1991-05-16 | 2001-08-31 | ????-??-?? |
(The european patent only covers Austria, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and The United Kingdom.)
The IDEA patent license can be aquired without cost for "non-commercial" use. The conditions are very unclear and don't seem to be constant and currently require registration. Details may be found on http://www.ascom.ch/ or http://www.mediacrypt.com/.
TODO
- fix this list up a bit
- make a news section
- get copyrights clear in source
- find more url's for idea.c.{gz,Z}
- make better version checks for gnupg and idea
- find and fix bugs
- make gnupg-idea-tracker package ala pine