[GNU-linux-libre] OpenJDK international use restrictions

[Riley Baird]

Hi,

OpenJDK is released under the GPL (with a linking exception), but on

International Use Restrictions
Due to limited intellectual property protection and enforcement in
certain countries, the JDK source code may only be distributed to an
authorized list of countries. You will not be able to access the
source code if you are downloading from a country that is not on this
list. We are continuously reviewing this list for addition of other
countries.

Does this make OpenJDK non-distributable by restricting the
redistribution rights granted by the GPL?

Thanks,

Riley Baird

----
[1] http://download.java.net/openjdk/jdk8/

[Sergio Durigan Junior]

Post by Riley Baird
OpenJDK is released under the GPL (with a linking exception), but on

International Use Restrictions
Due to limited intellectual property protection and enforcement in
certain countries, the JDK source code may only be distributed to an
authorized list of countries. You will not be able to access the
source code if you are downloading from a country that is not on this
list. We are continuously reviewing this list for addition of other
countries.

Does this make OpenJDK non-distributable by restricting the
redistribution rights granted by the GPL?

IANAL.

This is a very interesting question (and enters in a grey area of legal
obligations...). There was a relatively recent discussion about this on
Fedora as well, though this discussion unfortunately happened "under the
hood".

The link is:

<https://fedorahosted.org/irc-support-sig/ticket/157>

While the discussion was happening, I contacted rms and johns to ask for
help from the FSF on this subject, and they said they would contact
Fedora/Red Hat about it. I am not sure they did (things sometimes are
not as transparent as I wish), but nevertheless the conclusion (from the
ticket) is that the text on the main page cannot be changed due to Red
Hat's obligation towards U.S.'s ridiculous export law.

That may be the case for OpenJDK as well. But I am not sure what we can
do about it.

[Jason Self]

Their message seems to indicate that they're blocking access from
certain IP ranges. This tells me that they're only talking of what
they do to comply with U.S. export laws, not making it a part of the
license.

Hence, let's go back to the FSF's Free Software Definition. The whole
thing is relevant but specifically the second paragraph below...


Sometimes government export control regulations and trade sanctions
can constrain your freedom to distribute copies of programs
internationally. Software developers do not have the power to
eliminate or override these restrictions, but what they can and must
do is refuse to impose them as conditions of use of the program. In
this way, the restrictions will not affect activities and people
outside the jurisdictions of these governments. Thus, free software
licenses must not require obedience to any nontrivial export
regulations as a condition of exercising any of the essential freedoms.

Merely mentioning the existence of export regulations, without making
them a condition of the license itself, is acceptable since it does
not restrict users. If an export regulation is actually trivial for
free software, then requiring it as a condition is not an actual
problem; however, it is a potential problem, since a later change in
export law could make the requirement nontrivial and thus render the
software nonfree.