Question on export issues

[Jon Callas]

>
>
> You were probably asking your counsel the wrong
> question.  Never ever ask the question "is this legal",
> for you will always find that the answer to that is that
> NOTHING is legal, and hearing your counsel tell you that
> puts you in trouble.  The question should have been "Has
> anyone got in trouble for doing this, and if so, how big
> a trouble, and what attracted the attention of the man?
>

I'm going to disagree.

For Ivan, at OLPC, and for me, at PGP, we have to dot a few extra 'i's  
and cross a few extra 't's. Think of what will happen in the press if  
either of us have to deal with export messes.

And for what it's worth, Phil Zimmermann's whole brouhaha was started  
by a competitor that filed a complaint that he was violating export.  
It wasn't anything active by the government, they were just responding  
to a complaint.

If, on the other hand, I were doing an open source thing, then sure, I  
wouldn't be as anal about things. One of the ironies about crypto  
export regulations today is that the  real risks come from trouble the  
neighbors might make for you.


	Jon

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