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.'"

Comments

this has been known for years

[Pretzalzz]

This is why the non-US archive for Debian went away.

Prior to the release of Debian 3.1, United States laws placed restrictions on the export of certain defense articles, which, unfortunately, included some types of cryptographic software. PGP and SSH, among others, fell into this category. It was legal however, to import such software into the US.

To prevent anyone from taking unnecessary legal risks, some Debian packages were only available from a site in Leiden, The Netherlands, until the release of Debian 3.1, which incorporates this software thanks to changes in United States law.

You should not need the non-US archive unless you are using a version of Debian from before Debian 3.1.

Debian 3.1 corresponds to 2005. I'm amazed that Mozilla was unaware of this and needed to ask someone.

What the heck is going on today?

[MoxFulder]

Did someone not tell me? Is it Government Does The Right Thing Day today???

So far we have, in succession, on Slashdot:

• a bill introduced that would limit warantless wiretapping and remove retroactive immunity for spying telecoms,
• the FCC set to introduce net neutrality regulations, and now
• the U.S. government takes an entirely reasonable stance on crypto exports, without having its arm twisted

Not bad for one day. The cynic in me assumes all this is going to be reversed tomorrow... :-p