Slashdot Mirror
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."
12. No Surrender of Others' Freedom.
If conditions are imposed on you (whether by court order, agreement or otherwise) that contradict the conditions of this License, they do not excuse you from the conditions of this License. If you cannot convey a covered work so as to satisfy simultaneously your obligations under this License and any other pertinent obligations, then as a consequence you may not convey it at all. For example, if you agree to terms that obligate you to collect a royalty for further conveying from those to whom you convey the Program, the only way you could satisfy both those terms and this License would be to refrain entirely from conveying the Program.
It doesn't even matter if they want to be a corporate entity. I worked for an international company that came into close contact with US export laws all the time. You can't ship a product to one country in transit to another country so if they did move they would still have to enforce an export control on the data that was exported. Secondly, US export law also has this wicked "taint" rule to it. If a US corporation(or citizen, I think) provides technical knowledge towards the product then that product can come under US export laws. It made it really hard to tell the US what we were doing as we did not want to deal with US export law when possible.
The physical location has no bearing on what the US can do to you if you want to deal with them. Just tell that to the "prince" of pot.