Re: New licence for cryto++ code-base

[Jeffry Smith <smith@missioncriticallinux.com>]

Stephen Zander said:
> 
> Please cc me, I'm not on debian-legal...
> 
> >>>>> "Jeffry" == Jeffry Smith <smith@missioncriticallinux.com> writes:
>     Jeffry> Nope, non-free (discriminates against non-americans).  If
>     Jeffry> I read this right, unless someone can show prior written
>     Jeffry> approval from the US Government to distribute this, Debian
>     Jeffry> couldn't put it on ANY server, period, since non-US folks
>     Jeffry> have access to them.  Why do they place laws into the
>     Jeffry> licenses?  Anyone bound by the law is bound by the law,
>     Jeffry> regardless of the contract, anyone not bound by it by law,
>     Jeffry> now is bound by it by contract.
> 
> The clause you're reffering to is standard ITAR/BXA legalese required
> due to the US gov'ts fear of it's own people.  If the code is already
> outside the US, then Debain can put it in non-US.
> 

Yes it's legalese but two things:
1.  If you're governed by the law, you have to abide, contract or no contract.  No need for it in the license.  It is NOT required (AFIAK) in the license, because it is (or was) law.
2.  The laws are changing.  This isn't.  So, do we have US Government permission to distribute?  Note that this is not code developed outside the US, but code developed inside the US, and subject to export at some point.
(this point is why you should never include law inside the license - now someone has to go back to the original developers and ask them to change the license to conform to the current law.  If they'd done it right to begin with, with a simple NOTE (not in the license, but a separate README) that people were responsible for following the law in their area, no problem would be resulting.

jeff