Re: Social Contract [export laws]

[alegre@saturn.superlink.net (Fernando)]

Bruce Perens wrote:

> 5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups
> 
> The license must not discriminate against any person or group of
> persons unless their use would violate a law of the country from
> which the software is distributed.
> 

I would like a slightly more dissident wording, like:

5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups

The license must not discriminate against any person or group of
persons, except for restrictions imposed by law (see Appendix A
for an explanation.)

Then, at the end I would say:

Appendix A. Restrictions imposed by the law of a country

The Debian project is an international effort. We must therefore accomodate
the requirements of different laws in many countries.  This means that we
have to impose some additional restrictions to the use or distribution of
some programs in a country if the law of that country requires it. However,
this would only affect the software located in servers in that country.

> 6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor
> 
> The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program
> in a specific field of endeavor where such use would not violate the
> laws of the country from which the software is distributed. For example,
                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That is not what we want. Do we want the program to be used against the
laws of the country in which it is used? The idea of my suggested 
Appendix A is making it clear that we honor national restrictions only
in servers physically placed in the corresponding country.

For example, a crypto program located in a server in the US would not
be allowed to be distributed to nationals of other countries unless
they are US permanent residents, while the same program located in
New Zealand would not have such restriction.
US servers comply with US law and NZ servers comply with NZ law.
Software per-se would not have any restriction.

This means that a license for a crypto program which says:

"This program can only be used by US citizens or US permanent residents."

should not be accepted by Debian, while a license like:

"This program can not be exported from the US or given to a non-US citizen"

should be accepted with the implicit assumption that the author is a
US citizen and when he wrote it the program was available _only_ in the
US. In other words, we implicitely add: "... if located in a US server."

Similarly, a crypto program which says:

"This program can not be used in France"

is acceptable, while this:

"This program can not be used by French nationals"

is not acceptable, whether the server is in France or not.
The same applies to Iraqians, Cubans, Serbians or North-Koreans.

[The rationale is that discriminating against any person or group even
 when mandated by law is ethically wrong in my opinion. Nationals of
 a country in many occasions are just victims of the oppression of their
 own government. Individuals should be judged on a case-by-case basis.
 However, we have to comply with the law, but we should try to do the
 minimum necessary and not be over-zealous.]

Therefore, I suggest the following change:

6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor

The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program
in a specific field of endeavor, except for restrictions imposed by law
(see Appendix A for an explanation.) For example,
it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from
being used for genetic research.

Thanks,
	Fernando.


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