Re: [PROPOSAL] Allowing crypto in the main archive
Placing crypto software in any part of the main
archive still has a very important legal problem:
Even though the US may have lifted its restrictions
on crypto stuff, some other countries might not
(China?, Russia?). This means three subproblems:
1. Placing crypto stuff in the "us" archive will
immediately put the mirror sites in restrictive
countries at significant legal risk. The owners
or sysadmins of the mirrors may suddenly face
prosecution for possession, spreading or exporting
of crypto stuff.
2. Placing crypto stuff in us/main, us/contrib or
perhaps also us/non-free makes it go onto Debian
cd-roms, which may thus suddenly become the subject
of all sorts of restrictions, because they contain
cryptography and are not given away free of charge.
3. Placing crypto stuff in us/main may fool users
in restrictive countries into accidentally installing,
possessing and using crypto technology, thus placing
users at legal risk. (example: A user uses
apt to upgrade fetchmail for non-encrypted use and
suddenly finds himself arrested for having the crypto
version on his system without government permission).
Sorry, to be putting down a nice idea, but I would
hate to see the project getting in trouble from
checking only US laws.
--
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