Re: Text of Wassenaar regulations, with comments

["Arnold G. Reinhold" <reinhold@world.std.com>]

At 5:59 PM +0000 12/14/98, Frank O'Dwyer wrote:
>"Arnold G. Reinhold" wrote:
>> I am not a lawyer and different administrations could issue more
>> restrictive rules (as the US does), but the new Wassenaar regulations
>> themselves do not seem to affect free distribution of programs like PGP and
>> Linux as long as they qualify as "public domain" as Wassenaar defines it.
>
>Unfortunately, AFAIK copyrighted software is NOT public domain. GPL and
>the like usually make a big song and dance to the effect of "this s/w is
>copyrighted and not in the public domain". Even worse, I think the
>original PGP is pretty clearly not in the public domain, since
>commercial uses must be paid for. So does anyone know just how does
>Wassenaar define the term "public domain", and is open source indeed
>covered?
>

This is the definition of PD from Wassenaar's "DEFINITIONS OF TERMS USED IN
THESE LISTS"  http://www.fitug.de/news/wa/Def.html:

>GTN "In the public domain"
>
>                           GSN This means "technology" or "software" which
>has been made available without restrictions upon its further
>dissemination.
>
>                                               N.B. Copyright restrictions
>do not remove "technology" or "software" from
>                                               being "in the public domain".

I think that is pretty clear, but it might be wise for people who are
distributing open source crypto to include language in their legal notices
stating that the material is to be considered in the public domain for the
purposes of the Wassenaar arangement and waving any rights that would cause
the export of the material to be prohibited under that arangement.  Check
with a good lawyer first, of course.


Arnold Reinhold