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Mozilla Firefox Not In Violation of US Export Rules
darthcamaro writes "While the internet may know no borders, the US government does. There are a number of rules that affect software vendors, including encryption export regulations from the US Department of Commerce and export sanctions by the Department of Treasury. But what do you do when your application is open source and freely available to anyone in the world? Do the same the rules apply? It's a question that Mozilla asked the US government about. The answer they received could have profound implications not just for Firefox but for all open source software vendors. 'We really couldn't accept the notion that these government rules could jeopardize the participatory nature of an open source project, so we sought to challenge it,' Harvey Anderson, VP and General Counsel of Mozilla, told InternetNews.com. 'We argued that First Amendment free speech rights would prevail in this scenario. The government took our filing and then we got back a no-violation letter, which is fantastic.'"
http://xkcd.com/504/
Oh, and FireFirst? :)
I could maybe understand this law making sense in the cold war era, and/or as it relates to hardware crypto, but it seems pretty irrelevant and ignorant for them to try and restrict the exchange of digital informa-- I'm sorry, for a second there I was thinking that politicians and legislators actually had a grasp on reality, please excuse my momentary lapse.
Moot. M-O-O-T.
n. Of no practical importance; irrelevant.
Mute is what people wish you'd be. Moot is what you are.
</nerdrage>
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
2. Moot
n. The founder of 4chan.org
Synonym: mootle.
signature is pants
Sorry, Slashdot. I agree, that was a pretty bad post. I'll go away now.