Country Restrions

[Matthew Seaman]

On Thu, Oct 14, 2004 at 08:53:54PM -0700, stheg olloydson wrote:
> it was said: 
> 
> >Is there any restriction to use FreeBSD in Cuba and other countries 
> >where US have comercial restrictions?
> >I work for a British company with branches in Cuba and Syria. So I
> want 
> >to know if there is a limitation or if I can think about deploying 
> >FreeBSD globally for my company.

> Although many Americans work on the Project, I doubt that FreeBSD can
> be considered and "American-made product". In any case, you can
> download the software from numerous non-US servers. See
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/mirrors-ftp.html
> (URL may have wrapped) for the complete list. Pick one from a country
> that has diplomatic relations with Cuba and/or Syria.

The biggest problem you're going to have legally is about the export
of strong Crypto to Cuba and a number of other states.  That's not
permitted from the USA, UK, France and many other countries.  However,
it *is* permitted from Canada and Germany.  (That's why the OpenBSD
main site is located in Canada.) Google for the "Wassenaar
Arrangement" or see http://www.wassenaar.org/ for details, and consult
your companies' legal team to be certain.

There's no general restriction on usage anywhere in the world from the
FreeBSD project itself, or from most ported software either.
Exceptions do exist: check, for instance, very carefully the license
terms for using Java.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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