Fedora To Have A "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" For Contributors

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Fedora To Have A "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" For Contributors

Fedora contributors from certain nations may face scrutiny by Fedora's legal department if they reveal their nationality, country of origin, or country of residence; the issue comes down to US export restrictions...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTYyMjg

[sarmad]

Good move from Fedora. Export restrictions should really be limited to weaponary only, not civilian products. If governments are inhumane, civilians and companies should not follow suit.

[dstaubsauger]

Good move from Fedora. Export restrictions should really be limited to weaponary only, not civilian products. If governments are inhumane, civilians and companies should not follow suit.

And then they redifine "military equipment" to include Cryptography software and 3D printer drivers? Would it change anything if fedora hosted their stuff somewhere outside the united states?

[r1348]

It seems to me it's the only reasonable thing to do: Fedore is US based and so it has to abide by US law, yet rejecting contributions because of one's nationality is strongly against FOSS ideals. And let's face it: a linux distro is hardly a strategic asset...

[GraysonPeddie]

Curious! Is Arch US-based? What about Debian? I know Ubuntu is based on UK. I wonder if UK have any export restrictions similar to US?

What if a contributor intentionally (I mean, really, do NOT MIND) reveal their nationality/residence and decide to NOT want to bring all that information to the attention of Fedora Legal? What will happen ne--oh wait! Don't ask; don't tell. Oh, crap...

Oh, the irony!

[felipe]

characters

[Luke]

It's about time someone stood up to the US

On the one hand, the US tries to block exports of things like crypto, on the other hand, US corporations freely export censorship software AND hardware, as well as exporting outright malware installation tools for other governments to use on their dissidents and even hosting command and control servers for such malware in the US . It's about time we leveled the playing field: if they can export, so can we. Let's not forget how they tried to kill PGP!

[zanny]

Curious! Is Arch US-based? What about Debian? I know Ubuntu is based on UK. I wonder if UK have any export restrictions similar to US?

What if a contributor intentionally (I mean, really, do NOT MIND) reveal their nationality/residence and decide to NOT want to bring all that information to the attention of Fedora Legal? What will happen ne--oh wait! Don't ask; don't tell. Oh, crap...

Oh, the irony!

Aaron Griffin is the Arch project lead and hes in the US. I think he got the trademarks on the logo filed there as well. But there are Arch devs from all around the world and the trademarks are personal and not corporate to my knowledge.

[Anvil]

this is going to far IMO, soon Fedora will have most of its packages in the non-free RPMFusion Repo, but my question, why wasnt this done years ago when the project got started, why now? i find that a bit odd to say the least.

people may just Jump ship an go over to another Distro like OpenSuse or any other RPM based Distro to avoid the politics

[Ericg]

this is going to far IMO, soon Fedora will have most of its packages in the non-free RPMFusion Repo, but my question, why wasnt this done years ago when the project got started, why now? i find that a bit odd to say the least.

people may just Jump ship an go over to another Distro like OpenSuse or any other RPM based Distro to avoid the politics

ALL US based distros technically are under these requirements, its simply US law. Suse isn't excluded there