cvs commit: src/bin/ed Makefile src/gnu/usr.bin/cvs/cvs Makefile src/kerberos5 Makefile.inc src/lib/libfetch Makefile Makefile src/lib/libpam/modules/pam_ksu Makefile ...

[Paul Richards]

On Fri, 2004-08-06 at 21:23, Paul Richards wrote:
> On Fri, 2004-08-06 at 20:36, Colin Percival wrote:
> > At 11:52 06/08/2004, Paul Richards wrote:
> > >On Fri, 2004-08-06 at 08:27, Colin Percival wrote:
> > >>   Join the 21st century: Cryptography is no longer an optional component
> > >>   of releases.
> > >This might not be as dead an issue as people think. From information
> > >I've received recently it seems that exporting crypto from the UK now
> > >requires an export license.
> > 
> > When I asked DTI about crypto a couple years ago, their response
> > was "it's open source?  In that case, go right ahead".  Of course, the
> > usual caveats about not exporting to embargoed countries and not
> > assisting in the production of WMD still apply, but those restrictions
> > would apply regardless of whether we ship cryptographic binaries.
> 
> In this case it wasn't open source, it was a commercial product that had
> FreeBSD in it, specifically it was "tangible" and that's significant
> when interpreting the export rules.
> 
> The following report shows that it's not always the case that exporting
> crypto does not require a licence.
> 
> http://rechten.uvt.nl/koops/cryptolaw/cls2.htm

Thinking about it, my initial posting might have been misunderstood.
It's not an issue for FreeBSD to be distributed as open source with
crypto so my comments were not related specifically to the intent of the
commit.

It doesn't however follow that FreeBSD is always exempt from export
controls because it might not be if your exporting it as a product, even
if that product is just FreeBSD on a CD. We'll always need to support
the ability to build non-crypto releases so that it can be safely
embedded in products that don't need crypto without encumbering the end
product with a requirement for an export license.