Bug#745454: Libgcrypt CRC function and RFCs

[Werner Koch]

Hi,

I just stumbled upon this.  The code in question and the comments are
here for 11 years.  Thus it _would_ not only affect Libgcrypt 1.6 but
all versions of Libgcrypt.

The code to implement a CRC is a pretty standard programming pattern and
there are not many other ways to express it.  You can find a bunch
of code which does exactly the same; it is a textbook implementation.

The fact that there is sample code in an RFC to describe an algorithm
does not mean that code fragment if copyrightable and subject to the
IETF license for the respective RFCs.  It is a bit unfortunate that back
in 1996 the IETF did not explicitly stated the copyright status of code
fragments.  However, the code snippet in question is

a) not copyrightable
b) similar to code in GnuPG
c) adapted by us

We merely added the comments and copyright notices to describe from
where we took the algorithm description.  As an exercise you may want to
grep the entire Debian source archives for similar CRC code; with the
reasoning of this bug I would bet that you need to open an RC bug for
many packages.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner

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