[Incubator] SourceForge's compliance with the US Export Restrictions Act

Tue Feb 9 07:20:26 EST 2010

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On 09/02/10 11:37, Arnulf Christl wrote:
> Folks,
> this is a follow up to my short report at the last board meeting wrt US
> Export Restrictions and the problems that this caused for a number of
> OSGeo members and officers [1]. SourceForge now decided to allow project
> leaders to decide for themselves [2] whether their code falls under
> Export Restricitons or not. This is a good step and follows suit with
> how Apache [3] and OSGeo [4] handle this issue. Seems like we are on
> track, although our own document is not approved yet, it never got to
> that stage. Chris Schmidt offered to look into this issue and update the
> OSGeo page accordingly.
> 
> Incubators, we might want to make the check for Export Restriction
> related code a mandatory exercise for projects in incubation. One goal
> would be to comply with US law - which we must - the other is to make
> PSCs plan and suggest implementations of alternative access facilities
> for folks from the evil axis. This might include SVN mirrors or even the
> adoption of more flexible code versioning tools like git or mercurial
> (just throwing around names, I am not savyy at either of them).
> 
> A short term practical solution can be the provision of proxies in
> countries that do not fall under the US Export Restrictions. An official
> request to the German FOSSGIS on that behalf is on its way. It is a
> legal entity of its own and should be fine to either provide a proxy or
> mirror or both. If you are also in a position to offer workarounds feel
> free to speak up.
> 
> This also brings up the old question about what to do with existing
> projects in post-graduation mode but lets leave that for another thread.
> 
> Project Leads, can you please make sure that you are up to date with
> these issues and report back to these lists (or any of us off list) if
> you encounter any difficulties.
> 
> Thank you.
> 
> Best regards,
> Arnulf Christl
> 
> [1] http://logs.qgis.org/osgeo/%23osgeo.2010-02-04.log starting at 06:28:37
> [2]
> http://sourceforge.net/blog/some-good-news-sourceforge-removes-blanket-blocking/
> [3] http://www.apache.org/licenses/exports/
> [4] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/US_Export_Restrictions
> 

Well I'm not talking on behalf of anyone but me, but it's sure gvSIG
project is not going to impose restrictions to download any of its
resources to USA "enemies", never.

Right now we're migrating  several of our resources (downloads, bug
tickets, etc.) from Polytechnic University of Valencia to OSOR.eu in
several separated sub-projects. None of this facilities of course are
directly affected by these restrictions, and I hope that to be part of
OSGeo won't impose to projects any restriction nor a legal problem for
USA citizens of the Foundation.

Let me note here that Jorge Batista, an OSGeo-ES board member from
Cuba, was not able to receive some kind of funds or hardware (I don't
have all the details) from OSMF because "some" of the OSMF board
members are US citizens, as the 31 CFR 315.329[1] states. Obviously,
I'm not a lawyer and can't bring more light here.

If OSGeo imposes those export restrictions to the projects, I'm really
worried about the viability of the incubation of gvSIG or any other
European project with sensible PSCs. Please believe me, I don't want
to be "stubborn" or an "alarmist", I've been supporting OSGeo
initiative long before gvSIG incubation and I'm absolutely confident
on the mission of the Foundation. This whole thing is a real PITA for
me :'(

Finally, at gvSIG we are quite committed with OSOR.eu as a good
alternative for projects that are looking for an alternative to sf.net
or any other US based hosting. OSOR.eu is intented as a FOSS
repository for projects promoted or used by public administrations and
in general FOSS4G fits very well on this category.

Cheers.
[1] http://www.lawserver.com/law/country/us/cfr/31_cfr_515-329
- -- 
Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas
gvSIG team
http://gvsig.org

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