Re: Problem serving one-click installer to Syria

Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:
> > AFAIK, open source *communities* don't generally do anything at all
> > about this. We can restrict access to any of our servers that run in
> > the US, but as long as there are mirrors and the licence is open,
> > anybody outside the US can just redistribute it. So it sounds like th
> > easy fix is to just mirror it onto the community mirror network.
>
> yeah that seems like a very simple solution, just upload the stuff to
> the mirror network and provide an "if the above link to download fails
> with an error try here" on the main website.

First, to clarify, this only applies to the one-click installers because
they embed the OpenSSL library into the installer, unlike, for example,
the RPMs which use the operating system copy of OpenSSL.

We have managed to avoid all this in the past because the community only
distributed the software (not binaries) for years, but the one-click
installer is forcing us to address this issue.

Second, the one-click installers are produced by a USA company
(EnterpriseDB), which means the company cannot facilitate distribution
of the one-click installers to embargoed countries, and US citizens and
people working for US companies cannot either. That severely limits our
options because I assume USA companies must also prevent their software
from being placed on servers that allow downloads from embargoed
countries, and US citizens cannot facilitate this either.

Now, if the binaries were created in Sweden (and assume Sweden has no
embargoes), we could place the binaries on all the servers _except_ USA
servers. However, since the binaries were created by a USA company, I
don't think we have that option.

--
Bruce Momjian <bruce(at)momjian(dot)us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com

+ None of us is going to be here forever. +