The APSL and Export Controls

[Joey Hess <joey@kitenet.net>]

Hi Seth, I just saw http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/apsl.html on slashdot and
read your point that the license says:

         13.1 Export Law Assurances. You may not use or otherwise export or
	      re-export the Original Code except as authorized by United
	      States law and the laws of the jurisdiction in which the
	      Original Code was obtained. In particular, but without
	      limitation, the Original Code may not be exported or
	      re-exported (a) into (or to a national or resident of) any
	      U.S. embargoed country or (b) to anyone on the U.S. Treasury
	      Department's list of Specially Designated Nationals or the
	      U.S. Department of Commerce's Table of Denial Orders. By using
	      the Original Code, You represent and warrant that You are not
	      located in, under control of, or a national or resident of any
	      such country or on any such list.

And your note that:

      -- but, since many persons and groups of persons cannot (truthfully)
      do that, the APSL discriminates against all of them. Therefore, as I
      see it, the APSL is not an Open Source license and the OSI should
      reconsider its decision about the current version of the APSL, asking
      Apple to fix this problem with its license.

I think you're quite right, this is another thing that makes the APSL
non-free. There's even precedent; IIRC packages have been kicked out of
debian in the past for having copyrights that explicitly said they couldn't
be used in embargoed countries.

Good spotting, and I'll be interested to hear what the rest of debian-legal
thinks about this and the rest of your analysis.

-- 
see shy jo