SourceForge Removes Blanket Blocking

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Monday February 8, 2010 @05:12AM from the power-to-the-people dept.

Recently there was much gnashing of teeth as SourceForge (which shares a corporate overlord with Slashdot) started programmatically blocking users in certain countries to comply with US export restrictions. Thankfully they didn't let it end there and have found a way to put the power back in the hands of the users. "Beginning now, every project admin can click on Develop -> Project Admin -> Project Settings to find a new section called Export Control. By default, we've ticked the more restrictive setting. If you conclude that your project is *not* subject to export regulations, or any other related prohibitions, you may now tick the other check mark and click Update. After that, all users will be able to download your project files as they did before last month's change."

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Re:And these restrictions makes so much sense by JoshuaZ · 2010-02-08 05:55 · Score: 4, Informative

Not exactly. In 1996, Clinton issued an executive order which took commercial encryption off the munitions list. It is still on the list of controled commecial exports but that's a lot less restrictive (much, much easier to get permission to export, less severe punishments for violations, and lower priorities for federal investigators).