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SourceForge Clarifies Denial of Site Access
Recently there were some complaints from certain users outside the US stating that they were no longer able to access SourceForge.net. SF.net (who shares a corporate overlord with Slashdot) has outlined the reasons for these bans, and until someone with sufficient power to alter US law or the lists governing who is allowed to access what data from where, there is unlikely to be a change in these bans. It is worth noting that SF.net is not alone in these difficulties, as the same problems have been reported from other repositories, like Google Code. "As one of the first companies to promote the adoption and distribution of free and open source software, and one that still puts open source at the center of its corporate ideals, restrictions on the free flow of information rub us the wrong way. However, in addition to participating in the open source community, we also live in the real world, and are governed by the laws of the country in which we are located. Our need to follow those laws supersedes any wishes we might have to make our community as inclusive as possible. The possible penalties for violating these restrictions include fines and imprisonment. Other hosting companies based in the US have similar legal and technical restrictions in place."
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." -- John Gilmore
The reality of the world is that picking up and moving a company overseas (from a US perspective at least) is not easy, nor cheap.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
Dollars and cents. It's easy to sit back and say SF should stand up for their ideals, but the cost to move their operations along with the risk probably (er, apparently) aren't worth it. It's not a great idea to use a multi million dollar asset as a pawn to reinforce your principles. Especially when it's publicly traded.
Whale
What exactly is the point of ideals if you don't stand up for them?
At least with SF.net we know it's a popularity contest. Make enough noise and they'll do something about it.
I hope you're not living in the US, nor in a treaty signatory. Hosting location does not equal legal liability freedom.
Well according to them the US is limiting their ability to 'to make our community as inclusive as possible'. So that would seem that the US is not a 'country that affords them the gretest opportunity to succeed.'
I realize it isn't just as simple as moving to Finland. But what you said makes less sense.
My addiction: Arguing with idiots. AKA Slashdot!
Yeah, I was looking for a better word than hatred but it does outline one of the main causes of bad international relations. Plus you're a douchesock.
...with more Internet censorship. This is ridiculous. Export laws are what they are, but if we're trying to help open up the Internet in these countries, banning them from accessing knowledge hosted on our servers isn't helping one bit.
It is by my will alone my thoughts acquire motion; it is by the juice of the coffee bean that the thoughts acquire speed
The US doesn't want to face up to the fact that the only way to keep very serious, proprietary technology out of the hands of hostile states is to severely punish those in the US who facilitate the transfer. So instead, it adopts security theater here much like it pretends that it is fighting child exploitation by posting cops all over chat rooms to entrap people who have a passive interest in jailbait at best instead of actually hunting for real, serious child molesters. This allows the national security hawks to believe that we're "being tough," when in fact if we were tough, we wouldn't give a shit about SF.net, but would instead be executing men like this (just read it before attacking me, it was the first Google search result) without a second thought.
This won't do **anything** except deter some students in these countries who don't know how to find a foreign proxy. It certainly won't stop foreign intelligence officers who try to get actual weapon systems and other serious munitions.
Moving your entire company to another country is not the only way to stick up for your ideals. Another way is to fight to change the system. Many people with far less power than the sf.net overlords have been able to do this and succeed.
Not everyone has the power to simply pick up their ball and run away every time they run into things they don't like. Sometimes you have to compromise and sometimes you have to try to work the system to improve it.
Since when was there a sea between the US and Canada?
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
There is not a single land without any restrictions, because every country has laws. However, there are countries that don't have trade embargo's or restrictions in distribution of software with cryptography (both which probably effected SF). In addition some countries value privacy and freedom of speech a lot more. Sweden being a perfect example.
If you are an open source coder (as I am), and you are involved with a project on sourceforge (as I was until a couple minutes ago), just ask the principal maintainer to move it to a different site. If they don't, stop contributing. Or, if you really don't care, then just go on with business as usual.
The issue is not the ownership or contributing membership of the individual projects. The issue is that by hosting, a copy of the software is being maintained under the control of whomever owns and/or controls the hosting servers. In the case of software hosted by a US company or person, that company or person is held responsible for ensuring that the content of that server follows applicable US and/or state law. This includes export laws. So, by you uploading something to their server, they are instantly liable for that. And for every transmission, that is one export, so charge counts, and thus fines add up fast. To ensure that they exist as a company tomorrow, they have to take this step (as crappy as it seems).
Oh and to those of you suggesting to move the hosting servers, that does not remove you from legal liability. If the servers are under your control, and you live in the US, you still have to follow US export laws. So, just by setting up a mirror server in another country that's on the export list, you're violating the law.
Good reason why I never will visit the USA. I'd probably have the same bad feeling I'd have in China. Or...on second thought...I'd feel more secure in China. If I'd get arrested there, I'd have at least the broad public on my side. If I'd get arrested in the USA I wonder how many would think this must be my own fault since he USA are a constitutional state and by definition the 'good'.
the wise thing for sourceforge to do is simply agree to whatever the usa demands. and then its business as usual. which is: everything is available with no restrictions to anyone remotely familiar with a proxy server
enforcement is impossible, even for the usa within its own borders, so who fucking cares what the lawyers and bureaucrats and diplomats say? they've already been routed around
i'm not saying you shouldn't get upset at the arrogance and the audacity of the american demands, i'm saying a bully making demands without any actual ability to follow through on his threats is nothing you have to pay any respect to, and therefore nothing you should waste much effort or emotion on
you simply pay the asshole lip service, put a big smile on your face, say "yes" to whatever the asshole wants, and then its business as usual, which is: these laws mean nothing. all of the posturing and threats and demands mean nothing. there's NO ENFORCEMENT POSSIBLE
they can't enforce any of it. its the internet age. this is not about exporting video game machines, which can be intercepted, its about the internet, which routes around everything
people: stop getting upset at idiots trying to enforce legal understandings from a previous technological era and just ingore them and their petty demands without any muscle behind them. they can't stop technological change. they are defunct, they just don't know it
don't waste your time getting upset at a paper tiger
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The US has shown before that they'll arrest employees of foreign companies that are in the US for things the parent company did in other countries. E.g. Skylarov/Elcomsoft.
"What exactly is the point of ideals if you don't stand up for them?"
Host the content yourself if you are so ready to expect sacrifice of others.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
The freedoms of Free Software apply to licenses, not people or entities. This isn't a violation of any open source license as far as I'm aware. Roughly speaking, licenses will require either nothing in this regard (BSD doesn't force you to give away the code or binaries to anyone at all), or distribution of source code to people who receive binaries (GPL and the like). SourceForge isn't doing this, they're just refusing to distribute anything at all to these countries. This also has nothing to do with the software itself, just the act of hosting it. It's about the service, not the good. No one is preventing you from accessing your own work, just from accessing it through SourceForge's service (servers). Just have someone in a neutral country get it for you; this is perfectly legit and I bet even encouraged by SF.
The licenses themselves cannot include these kinds of limitations (if a licence says you can't run the program if you're North Korean, then it isn't an open source license, and this is what Freedom 5 is all about), but they do not require that users have this kind of openness. In fact, it is unnecessary: since the license lets you redistribute the program, all it takes is a third party to proxy between a restrictive distributor and the destination that he wants to avoid.
You can disagree with SF's take on the subject, but they aren't violating any licenses. If they did export to restricted countries, they would be violating local law. Given the availability of proxies and the like, it would be a questionably useful move. So the US government wants to annoy you; work around it and complain about the US government all you want (and rightly so), but don't blame the people who are just following the law.
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3788
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Germany
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_France#Disabled_people
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_the_United_Kingdom#The_UK_before_the_European_Court_of_Human_Rights
I'm not saying that Europe is broken and the U.S. is perfect, but people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
It's highly appropriate that we should hear from somebody on the ground in Syria. One of the points of this law is to gain leverage against the Syrian government, which Washington considers unfriendly. It's a stupid, shortsighted strategy, that doesn't really accomplish anything, except hurt innocent people.
On the other hand, it's a little inconsistent to call SourceForge "cowardly" for not standing up the government. (Note that the wording of any OS agreement they adhere to is irrelevant — no agreement to act illegally is valid.) Would you dare to flout Syrian law the same way? Not to judge your system of government, but you have to acknowledge the consequences would be pretty severe. U.S. law is less so, but they can still put SourceForge out of business and maybe put some of its people in jail.
Sometimes you do have to go to jail for what you believe in. But this isn't one of them.
I don't know what country you live in, but if it is a Western European country, chances are you have similar laws, so this isn't a problem of 'USA,' it is a problem of living in a world where countries still want to destroy other countries.
Qxe4
The "Gulf of Misunderstanding" has definitely been there as long as I can remember.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Not all speech is protected, and just because it's in paper form doesn't mean the 1st amendment will be applied by the courts. Protected speech is primarily political in nature. (like it or not)
Our government has decided that certain algorithms are weapons, and thus claims control on exporting them. Within the States, it seems to be a fuzzy combination of 1st and 2nd amendments that protect us. (from my layman's understanding)
Personally, I think such laws are outdated. The enemies of the US surely use proxy servers here to download whatever public code they wish. If proxy servers didn't exist, they'd find another way to smuggle the information across the Internet. I don't know who they think they're fooling.
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
How ironic that to be free to the world they'd have to move away from the free world.
USA != The free world.
Most countries in Europe and many other countries are still pretty darn free, although American lobbyists are working hard to change that.
My other account has a 3-digit UID.