Hello Eike, this really seems strange. AFAIK, there was a Russian version of Windows 3 during Soviet times. And it's really hard to see a reason why there should not be an OpenOffice.org for NK.
Regarding the export control, is this because of the encryption standards used in OOo, or the whole product? I agree to David's opinion, that the product will not be reserved for NK use only and there indeed are some NK-speaking people all over the world, but even if it were reserved for NK, I see no reason why we should not try to support this. Eike, I am sorry for asking, but if it's not against the law, could you describe the request of export regulation body you received? On what law/ paragraph did it base its request? Is there really a law that restricts export to specific language? This act seems rather unpleasant, as the word "Open" in OpenOffice.org should imply to Open pfilosophy, not to the commercialy and governmentially controlled policies. Please don't take this personal, I totally understad your situation, but we have the right to at least question the legal basis of the request Sun has received, as well as discuss the possibility or either filing a legal complain against such request, or at least having the "org" community from OOo participate in adding the NK support. If people from outside United States participate in adding the NK support, will Sun have any legal reason not to include such changed in OOo (I am not talking about SO, that could be another issue)? Kim, what is the case in regard to other open source products? Do GNU Linux distributions and other products support NK? As the issue surpassed l10n only, I will post a copy of it in [EMAIL PROTECTED] too. Best regards, Aiet Kolkhi ER> Hi David, ER> On Fri, Apr 08, 2005 at 12:41:24 +0200, David Fraser wrote: >> Even wierder, it seems like the patches were first applied and then the >> above comment was added. ER> We had to take them out, on request of the legal department. >> Surely there should be some discussion about this kind of thing! ER> You may discuss, but the basic situation won't change. >> A few points that may help >> - The US laws target the country, not the language. There are North >> Korean speakers outside of North Korea. So having North Korean language >> support does not neccessarily imply exporting things to North Korea. ER> Correct. Now try to explain that to the US government and the people in ER> charge of the export control thingy, and apply for an exemption for ER> OOo/SO. >> - There are OpenOffice.org developers all over the world, they are not >> all neccessarily bound by the same terms as Sun. ER> Surely not. >> So if Sun *really* has >> to take these things out, Sun could maintain a patched version and let >> others include the North Korean language IDs. ER> But I as a Sun employee am not allowed to even assist in bringing ER> N.Korean functionality into the product. That's what the issues were ER> about, that's why we had to turn them down. >> I'm sure there is a lot more to be said in this debate though ... ER> Note that in this case my personal opinion is completely different from ER> what I have to obey as an employee of an US-based company. But I have to ER> fulfill the requirements of the export controls compliance. ER> Eike --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
