lynx-dev HTTPS and Hotmail (was: [URL of Lynx web site])

[David Woolley]

> Please help me for the following message
> when i try to access hotmail account, during login i get the following message
> Alert: This client does not contain support for HTTPS URLs.

The good news is that, as you are not in the USA or Japan, there are no
software patents to worry about, and it might even be legal to distribute
copies of SSL enabled version of Lynx, although the licence isn't clear
on the point.

The bad news is that, I don't know of any SSL interfaces for Lynx which
weren't written in the USA.  It is a serious criminal offence (arms 
smuggling) to make an unlicensed export of encryption software from the
USA), and the current belief is that code to support encryption, even
if it requires you to supply the actual encryption software yourself,
would fall under this rule.

Also, Hotmail is not in the business of supplying email services, it
is in the business of selling advertising space, so it is not going
to be particularly interested in supporting users who "can't afford"
to run current generation GUI browsers, or who live in low wage 
countries.  It is therefore unlikely that you can effectively use
market forces to get them to support non-encrypted access.
(The one reason they might want to have people of low value to
advertisers is to establish an environment where people need to
have access to hotmail to effectively communicate, e.g. by having
private hotmail forums; the idea is the high value users will have
to use those forums, because that is were their subject is discussed.)

(Actually, Lynx use tends to be correlated with some of the more 
expert software people, although even then, they don't have direct
buying power.)

The commercial browser suppliers can get away with supplying SSL
enabled products because their export versions have encryption that
is weak enough to be easily broken by the US security services
(common versions can be broken in around 1 month of fast PC time,
and the Electronic Frontier Foundation has publised a design for a
US$100,000** machine that can break the strongest export version in
a week) and they only supply binary versions, so it is very difficult
to remove the restrictions.

(Of course this doesn't really stop such software being illegally
exported and then illegally copied.)

NB Even if you got a US built binary of SSL Lynx, you would not
be licensed to use it, as it will contain code which is subject
to a non-freeware type copyright.

** Might have been US$10,000.