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Ask Slashdot: How Exportable is Linux?
Stano sent in
a really good question. He asks:
"The Austrian company I work for develops commercial
software and there exists a Linux port too. Now we have
an opportunity to get a customer in Iran. There exists an
American regulation (that Austria was forced to respect)
that only software with max. 10% of American code can be
exported to this country. Our software is OK in this
respect (we have an export permit) but how about a Linux
distribution? Is all FSF code "American",
regardles of who originally wrote it? How about the Linux
kernel? Who breaks the regulations if the customer himself
downloads some American/German/whatever distribution?"
Ummm. Last time I checked the USA doesn't tell its citizens to go around and bomb passenger airlines. I can understand how a lot of people can be jealous of the USA though since it is a common human trait to be jealous of a more successful person or entity.. take Microsoft for example. Why does everyone hate Bill Gates? If any of you were in his position you'd be doing EXACTLY the same thing. I'm getting sick of the low-life people and countries of this world badgering the successful people and countries in this world with any kind of lie they can come up with to support their groundless idiotic arguments.
Ohhhh GAG! Sombody pass the barf bag!
I don't know of a single nation on earth which doesn't comit and justify some sort of "terroristic" act. The USA included. Terrorism - by definition it's impossible for state-sponsored war machines to comit terrorist acts. If we are to stop trade with nations because of their politics, then (imho) we can't rightly trade with any nation. We're all scum. Like it or not.
On the other hand, why deny the Iranian public a very good product? The majority of them, like the majority of Americans, aren't directly responsible for the actions of their leadership. And we're not talking about exporting Linux to Iran for the sole purpose of supporting Anti-american activities. Sorry, but I don't by the rhetoric behind sanctions. It's nothing short of starving the people of a foriegn land to acheive your own political goals. Sanctions hurt the lay people more than their governing bodies (consider Iraq). Targeting civilians is a hallmark of a terrorist action.
Actually, Nike shoes are made by extremely poor women in Indonesia. Last I heard, one less Michael Jordan commercial would bring them out of poverty. Of course, he is retired now...
Some facts about Nike in Indonesia:
Wages used to be $2.46 per day. During the 1998 economic collapse, they fell to 70 cents per day. According to the Indonesian human rights groups, a family subsistence wage is at least $4 per day.
Weight loss to due malnutrition is common among Nike production workers.
Police routinely meet organizing attempts with violence. Union leader Muchtar Pakpahan is in and out of jail, facing a possible death sentence. Yet workers repeatedly go on strike, because they cannot meet their most basic needs with the money they make.
Regardless of whether there are legal export restricions, please carefully consider your decision to trade with Iran. More generally, please don't export to terroristic nations, or those oppressive to their own people. I understand that the need to make money weighs heavily in the decision making process, but this is a small piece of leverage that we as individuals and companies can exert on these nations.
Of course, export all of the food and medicine you can. I don't think there is any moral reason to deny people food; I feel that would be terroristic in and of itself.
Iran has definitely been trying to improve recently, which would make the decision harder for me. They looks like they are going through some sort of Islamic Reformation. Maybe we should simply reach out to them now. However, I think people should think carefully before deciding to support that country.
Anonymous for voicing controversial ideas (hopefully not flamebait.)
More generally, please don't export to terroristic nations, or those oppressive to their own people.
I suppose I ought to stop exporting the good old US of A...
This sig left unintentionally blank.
If you boycot some entity, it should be because you believe it will do some good. Not just in order to be consistent. Consistency shouldn't be its own goal.
So if the US Government really believe the Cuba boycot will help liberate the Cuban people (it hasn't worked very well until now), then they should continue the boycot, regardless of how they treat other totalitarian nations.
I happen to believe the best weapons of the US against communist totalitarian regimes are Disney, McDonald and soap operas (i.e. the american way of life). These generally follow the trade, so boycots are unlikely to be effective against that kind of countries.
#ifndef _Bloody_Stupid_ #endif
2. Write a short shell script which inserts compiler-valid junk into the twiddles.c file, between the #ifdef and #ifndef. Doesn't matter what. Ensure that twiddles.c makes for 90% of all the code in the Linux kernel.
3. Add -DBLOODY_STUPID to the compiler string in the Makefile.
4. Add twiddles.c to the list of objects compiled and linked by the kernel. Don't worry about bloat, as the whole of twiddles.c will compile, link and optimise to next to nothing.
You now have a US-legal kernel, as more than 90% of your code is GUARANTEED produced outside of the USA.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Of course, once you have Irish citizenship you have an automatic right to reside and work in any of the 15 European Union countries - so if you get bored of Eire you can take yourself off to Denmark, the Netherlands, Italy, UK, wherever...
Nick (whose trying to decide between the UK, Ireland, France and the Netherlands when he goes back to Europe)
-- "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park" - Jim Moran
I would have to believe that since Linux is being developed by a world-wide collection of programmers, none of which actually "owns" the code provided, that Linux itself must be exempt from any trade or export barriers.
As the questioner pointed out, it is very easy to access a distribution (ANY distribution) of Linux from anywhere in the world. By developing a product to run on Linux, you should be fairly certain that your prospective customer's already have FREE access to the Linux base itself.
Michael J. Ball
Open Source Who's Who
Michael J. Ball
Open Source Who's Who
http://support.lcg.org/Whoswho/ unix_guru@hotmail.com
Just get someone at an Iranian University to ftp a Linux distribution from any non-US public FTP server. That way the Iranian citizen/University and government can deal with the issue. Heh, do you really think Iran would extradite an Iranian citizen to the US for downloading publicly available software? (I doubt they even have any kind of extradition agreement with the United States)
A quick grep through /usr/src/linux/drivers/net/*.c
reveals the following.
Thanks
Bruce
3c501.c: Director, National Security Agency. This software may be used and
3c503.c: Director, National Security Agency. This software may be used and
3c507.c: Director, National Security Agency.
3c509.c: Director, National Security Agency. This software may be used and
82596.c: National Security Agency. This software may only be used and distributed
8390.c: Director, National Security Agency.
ac3200.c: National Security Agency. This software may only be used and distributed
arc-rimi.c: Director, National Security Agency. This software may only be used
arcnet.c: Director, National Security Agency. This software may only be used
at1700.c: Director, National Security Agency.
atp.c: Director, National Security Agency.
com20020.c: Director, National Security Agency. This software may only be used
com90io.c: Director, National Security Agency. This software may only be used
com90xx.c: Director, National Security Agency. This software may only be used
cops.c: * Director, National Security Agency.
daynaport.c: Director, National Security Agency.
depca.c: (as represented by the Director, National Security Agency).
e2100.c: Director, National Security Agency. This software may be used and
fmv18x.c: Director, National Security Agency.
hp.c: Director, National Security Agency.
ipddp.c: * Director, National Security Agency.
lance.c: Director, National Security Agency.
ne.c: Director, National Security Agency.
ne2k-pci.c: by the Director, National Security Agency.
pcnet32.c: * Director, National Security Agency.
skeleton.c: * Director, National Security Agency.
smc-ultra.c: Director, National Security Agency.
wd.c: Director, National Security Agency.
Bruce Perens.
The software is owned by its individual authors or their funding agency. For example, many of the networking drivers in the Linux kernel are declared to be owned by the United States Government as represented by the director of the National Security Agency. That is the copyright owner for most of Donald Becker's work. Fortunately, those drivers are under the GPL, and the government can't take the GPL back.
I actually have some question regarding whether the Government's copyright is legitimate and whether or not the networking drivers are in the public domain. However, they are very definitely U.S.-produced software regardless of their copyright status.
If your government is cooperating in a U.S. trade embargo on Iran, they've signed a treaty that says they'll do so, and they're likely to take their export restrictions seriously. I suspect that there is more than 10% U.S. content in a Linux distribution, but I'd have to audit one to make sure.
A recent U.S. court decision supported that some software was protected free speech, but I don't think it went far enough to help overturn a trade embargo.
Thanks
Bruce Perens
Bruce Perens.
No, there is nothing anyone can do, because of the nature of the distributed development of OSS. How can any country prevent another of getting Linux, Beowulf, FreeBSD, or any other OSS application when it is available from dozens of CD-ROm vendors and hundreds of Internet servers?
You bring up an interesting point, one I had not thought of before, but when RMS says "free as in speech, not free as in beer", I am afraid it also means free to be applied to evil purposes.
Or whoever you had to contact to get the export licence for your own software from. I think the important question is "how will your government interpret the regulations if you supply Linux". We can't answer that (at least I haven't seen any replies from Austrian government officials). For example, does the 10% rule apply to a distribution as a whole, or each package, or every individual file in it? Does "American" mean written in America? Supplied from America? Containing any American code at all?
If you get an answer you don't like, you then have to worry about whether it is worth the cost of challenging it in court, if possible.
The simplest answer, if it's commercially acceptable, would probably be to tell your customer that that you are happy to supply the Linux version of your software, but that they will have to get Linux themselves.
rant
I think you'd have a hard time proving how much GNU code is American. And given that the list of GNU maintainers has a vast number of non-Anglo Saxon names on it, I think you could be wrong.
...
Don't get all flustered that some 'terrorist' state is getting it's hands on Uncle Sams crown jewels. You seem to forget the decidedly iffy way that the Carter administration tried to infringe Iranian sovereignty. They also gave asylum to the Shah of Iran, who was undoubtedly guilty of mismanagement of the Iranian economy.
Having watched US TV for the last three weeks while on a business trip, I can see that US jingoism is alive and kicking
Chris Wareham
There are many Americans who don't buy all the crap the military-industrial-media complex feeds us, and are actually pretty good people, and agree with you 100% on all the important issues (like idiotic imperialist arrogant export controls). However, the general population doesn't control our government as much as one would think. Some of us are trying to change that, and moral support from elsewhere helps.
Feel free to criticize "the US government", "US foreign policy" (hey, I'm with ya), or even "some Americans", but not "Americans" as a whole.
Thanks!
Let me begin by saying I'm not a Lawyer. I'll ammend that by saying that you should get one. If you have a s/w package that's good enough to export, you can afford a lawyer to give you the quick run down of what is and is not legal for your country/region/situation.
As many have pointed out, the problem here are the export control laws in Austria with respect to Iran and U.S. written code, as established by the Wassenaar Arrangement. As such, you may not be able to export Linux, or parts thereof (e.g. Don Becker's net drivers) to Iran, without falling under Austrian sanctions. However, not all countries have these sanctions. So what you do is export your package, including any U.S. written GPL code, to a third country (i.e. Jamaca) where you set up a separate distribution company incorperated under local (Jamacian) law. This company does nothing more than act as a middle man between you and your Iranian customers. This is essentially what is done in money laundering, except that the Jamician holding company in that case is a bank (I understand that Jamician law is very kind to financial institutions). This usually complicates matters so severly (as international law is involved) that no one would try to prosecute any simple legalities. The only time I've heard of prosecutions in an arrangement such as described is when it's being done to cover strictly illegal activities, such as drug-running.
So is that what software distribution has become? Drug running? I'm remined of Burroughs origional Blade Runner (not the movie version of DADOES). I hope not, but I don't know. What I do know is that you need a lawyer to work out the details, but at least this might give you a general direction to head.
On the flip side, as others have noted, Iran has undergone a dramatic cultural change in the last few years. I would say the political culture there is much more diplomatic than they were three years ago. I would venture that there is the distinct possiblility that they'll be removed from the list of sensitive nations in the not to distant future. But don't hold your breath. By that I mean in the next decade. It won't help your bottom line now, but it's something to watch out for.
If I write a lex/yacc parser, is my contribution counted by the lines of lex/yacc code I write, or the number of C source lines that they produce?
If I write it in lisp and each paren gets its own line, then you reformat my code so each page fits on one line, has my contribution changed? This restriction sounds stupid and totally unenforcable.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
I agreed with you. The concept of National states are an anacronism and root to much evil. The best way to get rid of this concept is render it irrelevant. Long live the Web. Get the source code from the weakest link in this Nationalism Chain. Download from Iceland (These 360,000 brave people does not have an army) and you are probably safe.
Help fight continental drift.
This makes me sick. The Iranian govt. is EVIL.
So are the American. And the Serbian. As a matter of fact, I don't like my very own Hungarian goverment either. So what? I don't hate americans just because they have bloody stupid, agressive and ignorant goverment. You shouldn't punish people for they goverment!
Szo
Red Leader Standing By!
On the other hand, and this is a big other hand, not too many countries are much better. I would rather live in Fascist USA than Uber-Fascist China. The list of free, democratic, non-warlike nations grows ever shorter... hmmm, I wonder if the Netherlands is looking for a new immigrant who is an excellent Python programmer... Only problem is I don't speak Dutch. Let's see, I hear New Zealand is nice, and they don't invade hardly anybody. Of course they do subscribe, or at least give lip service to, the War on Drug Users (err, except Alcohol, which kills more people every year than heroin, cocaine, and others combined.) And nicotine. And wait, I forgot caffeine. Errr, where was I?
First: Some of the previous comments missed the point. This is a serious buissness thing. There are no ways doing something half-legal. The competition will sue you.
Second: Austria is a neutral country. Laws, for example, forbid exporting of weapons to countries involved in a war.
I do not understand, why Austria should be bound to foreign export-rules, especially when this is primaly a conflict between iran and usa.
Sadly Austria accepted some contracts like the Wassenaar-agreement, which (I think) primaly handles the export of dual-use goods. (like cryptographic programs *Grrrr*)
I'm not sure why this or other laws in Austria should forbid the export of anything else into iran. Maybe its a EC thing...?
Arn't there any austrian Lawyers around ?
> Joy.. the US trying to impose its will on
> another country. Ain't life grand.
Don't get me wrong, I'm usually one of the first to point out the stupidity of American technology laws. But as far as I know the US Gov't hasn't laid claim to Linux yet, and I predict that they won't even try. To assume that they will is almost as stupid as classifying encryption as munitions.
Rgds,
Mid
There are several core issues here:
Is the percentage of code measured by number of bytes in the binary, (and compiled for what platform?) the number of bytes of source code, the number of lines of code developed by Americans, or perhaps even by algorithms patented to Americans.
One could develop something in another country based on an algorithm (unfortunately) patented to an American. Would that code be American or not?
This is yet another pathetic attempt by a technically inept government to take absolute control of technology.
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
Personally, I abhor the concept of countries. Because I happened to be born north of an imaginary line in North America I happen to be Canadian.
To me one of the great things about the 'net is that it's essentially countryless. I love the fact that it confuses lawmakers/lawenforcers/taxtakers to no end when a business is registered in Jamaica, is served off a server in Chicago and has customers in the Netherlands.
I would assume that since Linux is not stored centrally anywhere, contains contributions from people around the globe, who may or may not be known/credited, etc. that it's countryless.
Now I imagine the commercial distributions can be tagged as "belonging" to the country in which that business is incorporated... but who knows.
The iranian government isnt evil, your US propoganda knowledge is out of date. The Iranians are next to the Iraqi's who are this years bad guys. Please go back for a current indoctrination.
Americans have a very odd idea about much of the middle east where "good" is defined in terms of arms sales, and money dictates "truth".
Number of iranian children who shot each other in school this year: 0
Number of chinese embassies bombed by iran in error: 0
Live there - no I don't speak the language, follow the culture or fit the religious philosophy. (Anyone about to make cracks on that point should count the number of abortion centres bombed in the USA and shut up).
Alan
Iranians contribute to the kernel, Iranians have beowulf clusters and Iranians have plenty of options for buying Linux from countries who have the sense to tell the US where to go.
So America may be crippling your business but thats between you and your parliament. You may want to look at moving to another EEC state that is freer ?
Alan
I'm sure that the US government will say that Linux is more than 10% American, regardless of whether it is or not - their position on crypto makes it clear that logic has nothing to do with these policies. I would like to say that you should just tell them to go screw themselves and go for it, but from a business standpoint that might not be so wise. On the other hand, if you tell them where they can download it, and only make suggestions on which distro to get, without actually selling it to them or exporting it yourselves, I don't see how you could get nailed. Be sure that the US government will try to figure out a way to nail you anyway - they REALLY hate the Iranians!
Of course stopping the Soviet Union from getting too much power was as a large bit of the US motivation. But the Soviet Union is no more. The US stands alone with the power to enforce their will over most nations. And the US still support and commit atrocities.
There's no risk of a "Communist revolution" in Turkey. The Kurdish people who get their villages blasted to rubbles are no Soviet agents. And still the US choose not to utter a word of protest. Still the US make big bucks selling weapons that are used for killing innocents.
The democratic government of Guatemala before 1954 was not a communist one. Though it favoured the poor people at the cost of US company United Fruit. And so the US had the government overthrown and installed a regime which would torment the people of Guatemala for decades with its death squads. With the direct participation of the CIA. That is profit at the cost of human lives.
You should also keep in mind that often the supposed "victims" of these oppressive, militaristic regimes are just as oppressive and militaristic in their own right (the guerillas, or insurgents, or rebels, or whatever, not the innocent civilians who inevitably end up getting killed by BOTH sides in such conflicts)
Exactly. And the people sent to the Gulags were all counter-revolutionaries threatening the peoples revolution, remember? Just mention something about "communist guerilla" to the CNN, and your death squads can work undisturbed. We must at all cost keep the commies out, even if that means supporting a dictator. (And often a dictator that manages to keep the people from complaining about their poverty and gladly working for big foreign companies exploiting their natural resources and cheap labour. And of course a dictator that spends a large part of the nations money at arms manufactured in the US)
To chalk up all of the US's interests to sheer economic greed is absurd though.
If is isn't greed, then what is it? Sheer evil? Ignorance? Unloading a bit of the huge amount of weaponry you have no room for? Greed seems pretty likely to me.
We GIVE more money in aid and support than we could ever GET from many of these countries.
Really? Go compare your the numbers for the US foreign aid (and please, do not include aid in the form of weapons) with some UN statistics of how much most third world countries are paying in interest for loans that have already been paid many times over. Loans that were spent on weapons to keep the people opressed and the economies 'open'. Also compare it with the profits of some US based multinational companies. And not to mention the profits from selling wheat to often starving nations. The US is not losing money over all this.
Oh, just for fun, stick into the comparison the money spent so far on bombing what's left of Jugoslavia in your peacekeeping attempts.
I would like to point out a few things first...
Iran and Iraq's *governments* had a war in the 80s. During which time, the US sold bombs and weaponds to Iraq which were used to murder the citizens of Iran. In the late 80, early 90s, Iraq fell out of favor for some reason or another, and now they are being bombed by the US (to fulful the US's need to maintain a war economy, but thats another posting...).
Short is this... the actions of a Country represent the actions of a government which do not necessarly represent the wishes and desires of the citizens, espeically in a country which does not have representitive government (although considering how indivdual lobbiests can cause laws which inconvience many others, how is that "represensitive"?)
So, why do I care? Well it just so happens that my girlfriend is from Iran. She calls herself "Persian" because that is what she is. She speaks persian, and soon so will I. Furthermore, during her 5th grade she didn't go to school because Tehran was being bombed by Iran using bombs designed and made by the United States, sold to Iraq, even though the United States knew full well that there were to be used on civilians. Innocent civilians.
Now, is my girlfriend a terrorist? I dare anyone to say so... I would be rather upset I think. Of course not. Are there terrorists from Iran? Yes. Are there terrorists from US? HELL yeah. What about that guy who was shooting abortion doctors? He's a terrorist. Does the US engage in international terrorism? It's hard to tell, because news is hardly objective... But the US's actions certainly seem terroristic at times.
Another thing, like the Beasty boys say, not everyone from Iran is a terrorist. Because of the Koran/Islam and because of other religions, some people feel they are religiously supported when they use violence to solve a problem. But its not a knock against those religions, because need we recall the crusades? The Spanish inquision? I don't need to continue I think.
Another thing, in that region, there is not very much space. Countries fight over the space available, the rights to extract minerals and oil, and religious issues. However, its not the *people* fighting. If you are a mother/wife, would you want your love to go off and fight an unnecessary war and die? I don't think so.
I wish the US would stop vilifying those countries... there are bad things about them, but don't over-villify things. Even the people in Iran don't like the governmental controlls, but hey, if you dissent, you are shot. So change is hard to institute.
And for all you americans reading this, I hope I can change your mind. I never thought much about Iran/Iraq and all of that stuff except as emotional-less thereotical political science issues, but it becomes so much more real when the one I love was the target of my neighbour's bombs. And when she suffers discrimination due to unfair negative portrayal of Persian/Iranians by the US to satisify some obscure lame political goal. These are *PEOPLE*... no different then you mom/wife/SO/etc. I encourage any of you working for defense contracters to review your position...
(he who feels sadness for war)
Actually, due to the Wassenaar Arrangement ( http://www.wassenaar.org), 32 countries have agreed to enforce the same export restrictions on encryption as the US. The agreement was signed sometime late in 1998.
Somehow this didn't get very much attention in the mainstream medias here in Norway, but due to this we got funny situations like the Opera web browser suddenly being on the weapons export list.
It's great that the us governments word is law, not only in the us, but all over the world. Too bad the rest of us don't have the right to vote there though.
Slightly off-topic, but anyway..
After a quick search I found the following Austrian regulations that may apply to the export of software and storage mediums containing software.
*) Exports to Iraq and Yugoslavia
Those two countries are currently on the UNOs shit-list and all trade with them is forbidden. There are only a few exceptions for medical stuff. This shouldn't concern you.
*) The Austrian Aussenhandelsgesetz (AHG)
This law is the base-law for most of those pesky permits.
One interesting point is right at the beginning in the definition of technology (Paragraph 1.2):
Technology (which may be subjected to export limitations) is technical know-how recorded on storage media of any kind, which is not generally available.
As LINUX is generally available, it seems not to be technology and therefore not subjected to this law.
*) The Dual Use Goods list
There is also a list with product which can be also used for military purposes. Here we find an exemption for goods with a value of less than ATS 11500 ($1000). As Linux is free and a storage medium used for export should be availble for less than that, this regulation shouldn't apply either.
*) Pornographical Material
There are some EU restrictions on exporting porn. Considering how some people drool over Linux, this may pose a problem. You'd better check that out.
A few tactics that worked well in the past in similar cases are:
*) Don't sell Linux as part of the package, just sell the support for the installation etc. If they need the software, be generous and give it to your customer as gift, download it, find it on the street, whatever.
*) Bundle it with your system or software and calculate the percentage by value. The value of the disk with linux shouldn't exceed 10% ot the value of the whole system.
If you still have problems with the ministry, try to find out exactly which regulation they apply
and check if it is really relevant. Often the people at the ministry have no idea what the whole thing is about. Then hit them with a chorus chanting the mantra 'Linux is generally available and has a monetary value of less than $39.90'.
I whish you good luck!
johi
The United States has NO position of moral authority on this issue. This government has repeatedly supported oppressive dictatorships, so long as they were perceived as fascist rather than communist.
The American government suppressed information about the Holocaust and encouraged xenophobia until they absolutely had to become involved in WWII.
Do you really expect us to believe that the average Cuban would be better off if Batista (whom the Americans ardently supported) still held the reins of power in that country?
To suggest that the Americans are in ANY position to pass moral judgement on other nations is to ignore the history of this nation.
I personally don't export software to an embargoed country. I do, however, have a problem with the United States meddling with the trade policies and other politics of sovereign nations in a hypocritical manner. The United States is and has been more than willing to support tyrannical dictatorial regimes (such as Batista's, Iraq, China in the early to mid '80s) if they suit their needs. It shocks me to see so many people of any nationality supporting this level of hypocrisy.
As for embassies, you must be confused... There have been a few protests at government buildings against the Serbian bombings, and the occasional protest at the American embassies. However, I'm unaware of any rioting, rock throwing or bombing related to this issue in this country.
The point is - it's not for you, and it's not for your government to determine my morals. I have a hard enough time with my own government attempting to dictate morality. I DON'T want a government I'm not under the jurisdiction of to do the same damned thing.
Since Linus Torvalds created Linux, legally it is his to do as he pleases and he is from Finland. However since he GPL'ed the kernal, it falls under American copyright laws and International copyright law.
Go ahead and export to Iran. Americans do not solely create international laws or have the monopoly on what is right.
Romanes eunt domus? People called Romanes, they go the 'ouse? It says Romans go home. No it doesn't. What's Latin fo
Joy.. the US trying to impose its will on another country. Ain't life grand.
But in reality, it probably doesn't matter. From what I remember, a group in Iran has produced some of the best Beowulf supercomputing/clustering software. So, obviously, they already have Linux and the US Government can just go cry in the corner.
In conclusion, if worst comes to worst, find out what distro is already comonly available in Iran, and build your software to that distro, then just odn't include the distro and tell 'em what to use.
Regards,
Strider
...si hoc legere nimium eruditionis habes...
I don't think American export laws should be applicable to this. Why? Perhaps more than 10% of code was written in the United States. But is it 'American?' I would argue that under gnu, the US can't claim any sort of ownership: it's 'owned' just as much by Europeans just as much as by Americans. The U.S. government may disagree, but I think a distribution made in Germany like SuSE is ultimately outside of their jurisdiction.
The problem, however, is that US (and other countries) have laws that treat software like physical property. It isn't, and eventually law will have to deal with this. Obviously, there isn't a clear precedent for this. The US and Iran may have different opinions on what the law should be, based on their concerns as nation-states, but linux itself is not national. It crosses national boundaries because it is information. Whatever the law may be, an Iranian can download linux distributions without penalty from the internet. The US government is powerless to stop this, whatever its laws may say.
Ultimately, there will be some sort of conflict, a legal battle or something more, between the interests of capitalistic nation-states and the non-national, non-money based systems of information contained in phenomena like linux. The western world cannot, at present, deal with free software.
There are a lot of good suggestions for your your problem here. I'm sure that you'll be able to find a solution, although I'm not sure that the US government will like what's going on, whatever you do.
> why would you want to do business with people that
/(GNU\/)?Linux/ when producing chemical weapons (not that I think they'd care much about the license anyway?)
;)
> want to design, make and worse yet, USE chemical weapons and other biological warfare devices?
Interestingly enough, the Debian Free Software Guidelines (for example) stipulate that you cannot discriminate against fields of endeavour, so in principle these people could use
Some of the CERN libraries have a clause in their license that says that the library in question cannot be used in any kind of military research, and this actually makes the library non-free in the DFSG sense.
Of course, it doesn't answer your question. Sorry
--- Premature complacency is the evil of all roots