Re: FW: Crypto

From: Henry Spencer (henry@spsystems.net)
Date: Wed Aug 02 2000 - 18:18:42 EST


>> FreeSWAN is complicated by the fact they want no US resident contributing.
>> That makes life kind of tricky
>Yes. I'm not sure if this is a healthy idea anymore, at least not with
>the last BXA concessions...

Trouble is, those concessions are not Supreme Court decisions. They could
be reversed with one stroke of a bureaucrat's pen. (Remember that it's an
election year in the US.) It has happened -- four years ago, US rules on
exporting satellite technology were reasonable, but not any more, not since
Congress decided they could embarrass the President over it.

If FreeS/WAN were to once start accepting US contributions, then making
its code base *verifiably*, *unquestionably* free of them again -- should
that become necessary -- would be extremely difficult. It's an all but
irrevocable step, requiring considerable trust in a government that has
historically been openly hostile to free crypto.

                                                          Henry Spencer
                                                       henry@spsystems.net

(I don't normally have time to follow this list much, but a friend
pointed me to this discussion...)

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