Re: Squeak in Debian?
Don Armstrong <don@donarmstrong.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Apr 2004, Lex Spoon wrote:
> > The clause does not mean it must go into non-US, but the opposite:
> > US servers are already bound by this clause anyway due to federal
> > law. Thus we should distribute it from US servers which already
> > have to be careful about exports.
>
> You've got it totally backwards. We used to distribute software like
> this from servers outside of the US because those servers are not
> bound by US federal law at all.
They are bound if the distribution license says they are bound. You are
probably thinking of stuff like cryptography software, but that is not a
license issue.
> Currently we apply with applicable US federal law for servers inside
> the US, but the specific method that we use applies primarily to free
> software works. [Someone who is slightly more familiar with the export
> control regulations would have to say if something in non-free could
> go through the same process.]
I'd be curious to hear. It seems like we *must* follow these laws
anyway for all of our US-based servers. Further, it may not be
acceptible to follow them only on US-based servers, either; if servers
outside the US do automatic mirrors of the US servers, and they then
distribute to places that US citizens are not allowed to, then this could
well be viewed as a different form distribution.
In sum, I am not certain we should be disobeying US export law, anyway,
except in the non-US system. As long as there is mirroring to and from
servers in the US, it seems we need to follow US export law.
-Lex
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