Re: Exporting Issues related with US laws
On Tue, 21 Aug 2007, Ben Finney wrote:
> Dererk <dererk@madap.com.ar> writes:
>
> > The developer of a software I'm about to package, faced the problem
> > of exporting cryptography libraries outside the US, he finally
> > turned out his view and he will make his main repository available
> > outside the US, punctually in the U.K.
>
> On reading the whole message, I'd like to summarise for those who
> (like me) believe they already know the answer:
>
> Daniel Drake (a UK citizen currently living in the USA) wants to
> release, under the GNU LGPL, software that involves fingerprint
> recognition algorithms. This, according to Daniel's research into the
> laws, falls foul of US munitions export regulation under a category
> separate from cryptographic algorithms — and does *not* have an
> exception allowing export of free software.
>
> I don't have an answer, but I hope for a successful conclusion that
> allows free release of this software.
Yeah, this is something that will be hard to answer. Could Daniel
Drake write up a brief summation of what he's found so Debian can
either get an SPI-hired laywer or the SFLC to determine what needs to
be done in addition to what we're already doing so that it can be
distributed from main? [It'd give us a starting point to figure out
the right questions to ask a lawyer.]
Don Armstrong
--
The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing
that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot
possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to
get at or repair.
-- Douglas Adams _Mostly Harmless_
http://www.donarmstrong.com http://rzlab.ucr.edu
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