i don’t know what exactly was in question in the kernel, that the lawyers had to worry about, but From EAR rules… “note that open source software can still be subject to export control measures if it includes technologies or functionalities that are regulated. In such cases, specific controls may be applied to prevent the unauthorized export of these technologies or functionalities.”
IF something was deemed controlled, it makes sense to pull it so kernel can ship anywhere, and whomever received it can do their own tweaks
Exactly. Not much different than a distro that can’t legally ship non-free drivers for initial instal due to licensing, but you load them in yourself on first boot
@BCsven As I stated though moot, the laws have really outlived their usefulness. There are simply too many unsecured systems on the Internet to make it impossible for a bad foreign actor to gain access to any software that is not intended for export. When I worked for the local telco, many of their switches had dial-in modems that connected to the recent change channels, the channels that allow you to alter how lines were assigned, telephone calls were routed, etc, without so much as a login or password. If you knew the commands you could do pretty much anything you wanted to. I caused a major meltdown that got me an unwanted interview with directors merely for suggesting that they put a password on the root account of a pbx interface Unix system used to serve a 40,000 line customer. So yea security is mostly a joke and as a result these laws serve no useful purpose.
