[gentoo-dev] Patches for MPPE/MPPC

[Cory Visi <merlin@gentoo.org>]

Hi all. I am working on some ppp bugs and I noticed there is an excellent 
kernel patch for MPPE/MPPC available for both 2.4 and 2.6 kernel versions:

http://www.polbox.com/h/hs001/

There have been existing patches similar to this one available for a long 
time. However, the author of this patch effectively differentiates his 
patches here:

"Some day, digging in the Net, I found MPPE implementation at 
http://mirror.binarix.com/ppp-mppe/. I thought that it would be good to 
complete that code with MPPC and make it freely available. So I wrote MPPC 
part and added support for 56 bit keys in MPPE."

There may be some copyright issues with this patch. Here is another 
relavent quote from the above website:

"Although the module's source code is completely free, MPPC itself is 
patented algorithm. Patent for *Microsoft* PPC is holded by the Hifn Inc. 
This is obvious ;-). Furthermore, MPPE uses RC4 encryption algorithm 
which itself isn't patented, but RC4 is trademark of RSA Data Security 
Inc. To avoid legal problems, US citizens shouldn't use this module."

I have two questions for everyone:
1. Can I include the ppp patch in the ppp ebuild? How do I do it legally?
2. Can we include the kernel patch in the gentoo-sources base patch set? 
How do we do it legally?

Thanks,
Cory

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