Re: lynx-dev Alert: this client does not contain support for HTTPS urls.

[Doug Kaufman]

On Tue, 11 Aug 1998, Jacob Poon wrote:

> Shouldn't Lynx support https via externals (from the lynx.cfg settings),
> to produce cleaner code without breaking the law?  What I mean is, if Lynx
> contains only code for handling data via existing https connections, but
> uses only a third-party executable to negotiate https connections via an
> executable configured by Lynx's 'EXTERNAL:' settings, will the Lynx source
> still be legal and GNU free? 

I think that this is what lynx does now via the proxy method. On my
SunOs account I run lynx with the eassl daemon. This gives https access
without having any SSL code in lynx itself. The code is available both
in the US and in the Netherlands, so it should be usable by anyone. In
the US, I think that the license for the RSAref library restricts its
use to noncommercial uses. Commercial users would have to buy the
appropriate license. Outside of the US, there shouldn't be a problem
(but I am not sure of the situation in Canada). Anyone in the US would
be required to make sure that their binary was not available to those
who are not US or Canadian citizens.

The following shell script works for me. The sed script probably isn't
optimal. This assumes the lynx binary has been renamed to lynx1 and
eassl is set to use port 5010 in eassl.conf. My proxy environment
setting is:
"https_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:5010/";

#!/bin/sh
eassl 2>/dev/null &
trap "kill `ps -x |sed -n -e '/eassl$/s/^ *//' -e  '/eassl$/s/[^0-9].*$//p'`; 
exit \$?" 1 2 3 4 5 6 9 13 15
lynx1 $*
kill `ps -x |sed -n -e '/eassl$/s/^ *//' -e  '/eassl$/s/[^0-9].*$//p'`

                             Doug
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Doug Kaufman
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