Item8825: Remove download blocked by Sourceforge

Sourceforge after the outrageous move on January 25 tried to fix things out by allowing rational people to bypass USA stupid laws. Could some of you follow the procedure to allow peoples from USA banned countries to download the Foswiki installer?

The point is I live in Cuba and was very upset to realize the blocking when tried to download the latest installer.

Thanks

-- EnriqueCadalso - 02 Apr 2010

for our project, it is located at https://sourceforge.net/project/admin/public_info.php?group_id=245751

i was going to do it, but i would prefer if someone who is not a US citizen do it instead. thanks. :-/

-- WillNorris - 02 Apr 2010

addendum: i would support moving to a different free software hosting provider such as berlios, or any other one located in a free country.

-- WillNorris - 02 Apr 2010

It is not only US that has these rules by the way. Most countries in the west enforce export of strong encryption.

I do not believe that we have strong encryption code in the distributed Foswiki code. Naturally you can integrate Foswiki with libraries that provide this but we do not include it with Foswiki.

We use standard perl and its libraries but I do not believe we have coded anything ourselves or included libraries that in themselves contain strong encryption of a nature subject to export control.

So I have changed the export setting. I have good faith that this is correct. If someone has knowledge of something else then please notify us.

Closing this

-- KennethLavrsen - 02 Apr 2010

I agree - we do not have anything that can be considered strong encryption - not even the legacy code is that difficult to read.

-- SvenDowideit - 02 Apr 2010

On the other hand, Foswiki being hosted on sf.net does reduce our userbase slightly. But on the other other hand, svn.foswiki.org isn't hosted by sf.net, which counts for a lot (in practical terms: a "blocked" user who wants to contribute to Foswiki is in a far better position to do so than many other open source projects).

-- PaulHarvey - 03 Apr 2010

They are not blocked anymore. I took care of that.

-- Kenneth

-- KennethLavrsen - 03 Apr 2010

Thanks to all for the response. Just one more consideration. I think the question to be done is not whether or not Foswiki have "strong encryption code in the distributed Foswiki code" but if Foswiki wants to honor the "FOS" in its name complying with the open source definition, especially number 5 criteria "No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups".

The political problem between Cuba and USA is something so far away from the final interest of most of common people in Cuba that I think they don’t deserve to be punished by that situation. We are already paying a price. I can't be as explicit as I would like to be because Foswiki is an open and public space. The self censorship I am force to keep in explaining this point may give you a clue the restricted (and sad) situation we already live. So if over that amount of internal restrictions the people that claim open source spirit are going to comply with more restrictions from the other side where is the freedom then? What kind of freedom are we talking about? USA speech "you don’t give freedom to your people so I will block you and won't give freedom to your people either" sounds crazy to me.

Anyway there is TOR and many other ways which shows us it is just a matter of show, not a real concern. Internet can't be blocked, there is always a way. Freedom on the other hand can be blocked. In the end it is not a technical choice but an ethical decision.

-- EnriqueCadalso - 05 Apr 2010

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