Re: US Encryption Policy Change Now Official!
On 13 Jan 2000, Siggy Brentrup wrote:
> Erik Andersen <andersen@xmission.com> writes:
>
> > Looks like it is now official!!! It looks like we
> > can now export Open Source encryption without a license!
> > The only restriction seems to be:
> >
> > "The exporter must submit to the Bureau of Export Administration a copy of the
> > source code, or a written notification of its Internet location, by the time of
> > export. Foreign products made with the unrestricted source code do not require
> > review and classification by the U.S. Government for reexport."
> >
> > http://linuxtoday.com/stories/15034.html
>
> I followed the links on that page and found in the summary of
> http://www.epic.org/crypto/export_controls/regs_1_00.html
>
> <cite>
> Restrictions on terrorist supporting states (Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya,
> North Korea, Sudan or Syria), their nationals and other sanctioned
> entities are not changed by this rule.
> </cite>
>
> IMHO this isn't DFSG compliant!
Well, this is sort of orthogonal. The DFSG speaks to licenses. This is a
"local" federal regulation. It seems pretty clear to me that these things
are unrelated, sort of like the statement that the GPL is not Y2K
compliant (because it speaks of constructing all dates using 19 as the
first two characters). As it isn't software, it is not relivant.
These rules aren't a license, so they can not be judged under the DFSG.
However, this _does_ bring up a point of interest. Do we have any Debian
developers who _are_ residents of either Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, North
Korea, Sudan or Syria? (No wonder we can't get any agreements from North
Korea or Syria, if we keep putting them on lists like this ;-)
If we don't have any developers or servers in these countries, it doesn't
seem to effect the new parts of the rules. Those listed countries are
simply excluded from the agreements, and are not allowed to access US
servers (I can't see any way to enforce this edict, but it seems to be
implicit in the statements above)
So, do we have any developers, (donors) or hardware in these countries?
Waiting is,
Dwarf
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