[Openswan Users] Openswan in USA

[Paul Wouters]

On Tue, 25 May 2004, Luís Henriques wrote:

> that uses several open/free software. One of these products is
> FreeS/Wan. The point is that we have potential clients for this product
> in US but, as far as I know, we are not able to distribute the product
> as it is now because of export/import laws.
> 
> Is this correct?

No. Importing is fine. Re-exporting might be a problem. Opensource code is
an excemption though, you can export/import that, even without registration/licence
I believe. Though these are decretes, not laws or rights, so it is subject to the
President's immediately retroactive cancelation. In other words, Bush can turn you
into a criminal whenever he wants. 

See further: http://www.freeswan.org/freeswan_trees/freeswan-2.06/doc/politics.html#exlaw

Export status of Linux FreeS/WAN

We believe our software is entirely exempt from these controls since the Wassenaar General Software Note says:

    The Lists do not control "software" which is either:

       1. Generally available to the public by . . . retail . . . or
       2. "In the public domain".

There is a note restricting some of this, but it is a sub-heading under point 1, so it appears not to apply to public domain software.

Their glossary defines "In the public domain" as:

    . . . "technology" or "software" which has been made available without restrictions upon its further dissemination.

    N.B. Copyright restrictions do not remove "technology" or "software" from being "in the public domain".

We therefore believe that software freely distributed under the GNU Public License, such as Linux FreeS/WAN, is exempt from Wassenaar restrictions.


> How can we solve this problem? Is there a solution? I guess that this
> problem is typically solved by having two different software
> distributions: on for US and another for the rest of the world. Is this
> right? I would like to hear your own experiences with these kind of
> problems.

That is usually done not because of import/export restrictions, but because of US software patents.
For instance, some modp groups (A priem number), and NAT-Traversal has been patented in the US, and
you might need to get a licence to use freeswan/openswan within the US.
(RSA licence is not neccessary, they allow free/opensource software to use their patents for free) 

Ofcourse, I am not a lawyer. You might want to contact the EFF or the FSF for professional advice.

Paul