[OSGeoJapan-discuss] U.S. Trade Embargo and OSGeo

[Jeff McKenna]

 > Arnulf Christl (OSGeo President) believes that the embargo can only be
 > applied to 'collaborative work'

This statement should have read: "Arnulf Christl (OSGeo President) 
believes that the embargo can only be applied to 'non-collaborative work'"

Sorry for that mistake.

-jeff




Jeff McKenna wrote:
> Hello everyone,
> 
> Last night at the OSGeo Board meeting an interesting topic was 
> discussed: very recently (25 January?) the U.S. Obama administration has 
> put pressure on Sourceforge.net to enforce their trade embargo on its 
> users[1] - meaning users in Cuba, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and Iran are 
> no longer able to download files from Sourceforge (their IPs are now 
> blocked).  Sourceforge has stated[2] that it is registered in the U.S. 
> and therefore has no choice but to follow U.S. laws[2], even though they 
> disagree with it.
> 
> OSGeo is also registered in the U.S. so there a lot of concern about 
> this issue.  OSGeo does have to follow U.S. export restrictions, and its 
> statement is visible here[3]
> 
> Arnulf Christl (OSGeo President) believes that the embargo can only be 
> applied to 'collaborative work' - and since all OSGeo projects are 
> collaborative, this new enforcement should not apply to OSGeo users. 
> However the OSGeo Board will now look into this (we may have to modify 
> the 'US_Export_Restrictions' wiki page to clarify how the embargo does 
> not affect our works).
> 
> I thought the Japan community should know about this recent issue.
> 
> [1] http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=5698
> [2] 
> http://sourceforge.net/blog/clarifying-sourceforgenets-denial-of-site-access-for-certain-persons-in-accordance-with-us-law/ 
> 
> [3] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/US_Export_Restrictions
>