FreeSWAN & US export controls

[Sandy Harris]

John Gilmore wrote:
> 
> Anonymous said:
> > The major problem that holds back the development of FreeS/WAN is
> > with its management.  [Management that cares more about sitting on
> > its pulpit, than getting useful software into the hands of people.]
> > Unless things have changed recently, they still won't accept
> > contributions from the US.  This makes no sense.  GPG is shipping
> > with every Linux distribution I know of, and the German's take
> > contributions from the US.
> 
> (From the pulpit:)
> 
> Once we kick John Asscroft's unconstitutional ash outta town, bush
> George Bust along with more than a thousand other innocents, and
> eliminate the spectre of Judd Gregg and other retrograde stalinists
> 're-regulating' US crypto, then we'll think about polluting the
> precious bodily fluids of worldwide freeware privacy protection with
> the stench of US crypto policy. ...

Beyond doubt it is important to keep FreeS/WAN free, specifically to
continue development in ways that keep it clear of US regulations. I
think that means not taking US contributions to the code. 

Various Americans have made important contributions by testing, reporting
bugs, joining design discussions and so on, just not code.

To me, the interesting question is what can we do to get FreeS/WAN
more widely distributed, without giving up that freedom.

FreeS/WAN is already included in several Linux distributions not produced
in the US. SuSE, Mandrake, Conectiva, ...
For a list, see:
http://www.freeswan.org/freeswan_trees/freeswan-1.94/doc/intro.html#products

However, RedHat does not include it. The issue doesn't seem to be just that
they don't ship crypto. Checking the RPMs on RedHat 7.2, I find GnuPG, 
OpenSSH, OpenSSL, CIPE, ... but not FreeS/WAN.

So should we just suggest that everyone buy distributions that do include
FreeS/WAN?

Or is there something we should be doing to get RedHat, and Debian, and
other US-based distributions to include it?



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