Lucas Wiman writes:
I'm forced to agree with Aaron, aparently at gunpoint :-) (and I
said this a while ago, BTW). Even if they (George and Scott) did
this, then there would still be MacLucasUNIX, or everything else in
the mers package, as well as Ernst's program, and good ol' lucas.c.
MacLucasUNIX, mersenne1, etc., of the mers package can indeed be used
to find such large Mersenne primes, right now, and someone out there
is probably already doing it. But, if they are, they haven't told me
and they are thus looking at exponents for which I have known factors;
noone but me - and I mean noone, not even George - has all of my data
for these large exponents.
Any of these could be used. We've really got to put our feet back
on the ground here. If we did put a license change on all of
George's program derivitives, we would still have to get Will and
Ernst to change their copyrights, and Richard Crandall.
It's actually worse than this. I never intended to copyright any of
the code I distribute, in part because some of it is already covered
by copyright and/or patent for commercial purposes. Is trying to
claim the EFF prize a commercial purpose? Don't ask me; I'm not a
lawyer.
Will
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