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Re: [ox-en] Open Source and Denied Parties



On Sun, Sep 07, 2003 at 05:29:04PM [PHONE NUMBER REMOVED], Per I. Mathisen wrote:
I don't know US license law, but I have never heard that US export
controls are in conflict with the GPL or other open source
licenses. Do you have contrary information from a legal counsel?

Distributing freely licensed strong encryption from the US used to
violate US export control laws. As a result, the Debian project
distributed all crypto from a separate set of archives called "non-US"
that were located outside of the US. Now, as the list of off-limits
countries has been reduced to only 7 (I think that's the right
number), we have integrated most non-US software but we may be asked
to take steps to block people from these "bad' countries from
obtaining the software. We had to send a notification to the
government that would be distributing crypto outside of the US, IIRC.

Now of course, free software licenses don't typically (and based on
your interpretations of free software's fundamental documents might
not even be able to) compel anyone to distribute software to anyone;
the GPL's requirement to distribute source is tied to a distribution
of binaries.  As a result, if you follow export law and don't give out
crypto at all, the fact that's its free software is a non-issue.


the answer may be to admit the software is not free or to move your
point of distribution to somewhere we it is not constrained by law.

There is no such place. As you point out yourself, all licenses operate
within a context of national license law, and there is no longer any place
in the world not governed by any law or treaty.

The Havenco folks will probably try to claim otherwise.

Regards,
Mako


-- 
Benj. Mako Hill
mako debian.org
http://mako.yukidoke.org/



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