On Fri, 2002-05-24 at 04:31, Glen Stampoultzis wrote: > > > > Hi, > > > > First off: yes, I know POI deliberately doesn't handle encrypted files, > I've > > read the FAQ. > > > > Two questions: > > * What are the legal reasons decryption can't be coded? Is this for > > the US only, or Europe as well? I noticed IBM alphawork's Excel Accessor > > does have decryption coded.
Basically we don't know anything about Legal matters. The US has lots of strange laws regarding encryption (its actually managed as if it were a munition). I do know there are other European countries with peculiar laws on this (and other matters) but POI resides on an American server and is subject to US Encryption export laws. The Excel Accessor uses native code and hence is using encryption/decryption as provided by Excel. Whether Microsoft has the money, power and legal team to do encryption (or anything they want for that matter) without getting in trouble is not in question ;-). > > * Has anybody built/added decryption anyway? > > Since none of us really know what the legal implications are so we're just > playing it safe. > agreed > I don't know of anyone who's gone ahead and built it. We're happy for > people to work on it but it will not become part of this project until we > can be absolutely sure we're covered legally. If we can't verify this, we'll be happy to accept interfaces for plugging it in dynamically, and the encryption stuff itself can be hosted somewhere else (not in the states). If it were important to a committer then what you'd need to do is get a discussion going with our advisor and/or General so that we could ask Apache's legal folks. The simple fact is that I've got plenty of more pressing matters to attend to (graphs, formulas, www.bringmethis.com rewrite in Cocoon) rather than goof with something that is both legalistic and technical. I'll support any effort that shows a great deal of care into ensuring the legal matters are attended to, however I will actively block any effort that looks like it could result in: 1. The end of POI 2. My incarceration AFAIK, The legal arm of Apache is available to ASF members (of which Stefano, our advisor is) but not to any of us (so he'd need to procure that information). There are a Apache projects that do encryption (Tomcat for instance) and such. I'm sure if motivated someone could drive this, its just a particularly low priority for me at the moment. -Andy > > Regards, > > Glen Stampoultzis (TriNexus Pty Ltd) > Fixed:+61 3 9753-6850 Mob:+61 (0)402 835 458 > ICQ: 62722370 EMail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > -- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > -- http://www.superlinksoftware.com - software solutions for business http://jakarta.apache.org/poi - Excel/Word/OLE 2 Compound Document in Java http://krysalis.sourceforge.net/centipede - the best build/project structure a guy/gal could have! - Make Ant simple on complex Projects! The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote. -Ambassador Kosh -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
