International Law

Open Source Exception from Wassenaar?

By Karl-Friedrich Lenz

Open Source project Firefox has obtained a “no-violation-letter” for the distribution of Firefox. That means participants in the project will not be prosecuted for violating rules against the distribution of strong cryptographic software in the American laws to implement the Wassenaar Agreement.

Mozilla General Counsel Harvey Anderson explains that he argued this as a free speech issue. He also said that other Open Source projects should also be free to distribute their source code world wide.

The General Software Note in the Wassenaar agreement has an exception for software in the public domain. In contrast, the General Software Note in the American Export Administration Regulations (EAR) only has an exception for mass-market software, not for software in the public domain.

If software is in the public domain, access to it is typically very easy. In that case, there is not much point in even trying to limit the access of other nations. The same would seem to be true for Open Source projects. Therefore, excepting Open Source software from export regulation should be compatible with the Wassenaar agreement, as well as with common sense.

Full post as published by Lenz Blog on September 20, 2009 (boomark / email).