[WBEL-users] Hello everybody!!!

[Ed]

Hedemark, Magnus [Thu, Dec 11, 2003 at 12:36:59PM -0500]
> From: Administrador de Red [mailto:ixenrp@ehtij.co.cu] said:
> 
> > Hi fellows!!! My name's Ixen Rodríguez Pérez & I'm from Isle 
> > of Youth, Cuba.
> > 
> > I've got White Box Release Candidate 2 recently
> [snip]
> 
> Don't shoot the messenger, but this brings up an interesting point.  WBEL is
> primarily packaged in the USA.  Is anything in the distribution subject to
> export controls?  While there is nothing stopping a national of an embargoed
> country from downloading the software from another country, are American
> servers expected to block IP ranges known to eminated from embargoed
> nations?
> 
> Maybe someday things will change but for the time being the US federal
> government takes a dim view of American software going to Cuba.  This has
> become even more sensitive under the current US administration.
> 
> There are exemptions for "certain publicly available technology and
> software" but I'm not clear on what those exemptions are.  I couldn't
> readily find details on this in a quicky search.

IANAL.  But I think that you have to inform the US Bureau of Export
Adminisistration with the location of the files that have
encryption.  This from http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/faq/6-4.html
and it looks like the Bureau web site is http://www.bxa.doc.gov/
I'm wading through their "guides" but most of it is confusing to
me.  What does Debian do?  We'd probably be in a similar situation.

> > if not, how can I do to update and upgarde my White 
> > Box packages???
> 
> RC2 has yum built in.  You will need to edit /etc/yum.conf to point to a
> mirror site that carries the updates.  The only ones that I know of off the
> top of my head are in the USA.  Ultimately because of your location you
> should probably be pulling updates from a non-US server.

This brings up another point.  I'm working on upgrading all of our
computers here from redhat 7.3 to white box.  Right now we have an
apt-get server that we use for installs and updates, with a few extra
custom RPMS on it.  I was planning on taking the source RPMS from
redhat, compiling them, and placing them on the apt server.

Is anyone else interested or planning on using apt with whitebox?
I'll probably end up recompiling a bunch of programming, scientific,
and math software for whitebox anyway, and if someone here would find
that useful we can work on it together.  Even something as simple
as providing an apt-get mirror would help if there's a bunch of
apt users.

  Ed