🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <WCS.92Oct31010058@rainier.ATT.COM>, wcs@anchor (Bill Stewart +1-908-949-0705) writes:
>Finland is located safely outside the jurisdiction of the NSA and 
>US Commerce Dept. export laws, but other constraints may apply.
>Some of the code may be resticted by patent laws in some countries,
>such as RSA in the US, and IDEA in much of Europe, so you may may need
>to negotiate a license if you live there.

Finland is not a part of the European Patent Convention (or whatever),
and according to the local patent officials Finland doesn't have
software patents (thought the U.S. government is busy trying to change
that one via GATT and UN's WIPO, so we could use some help from you
guys keeping your gummint in line).

About jurisdication - well, not so, really; in addition to the U.S.
government agencies thinking they have jurisdiction all over the world
I have heard that Finland complies to COCOM export restrictions
(though not a member).  There was a treason charge a few years back
wrt a couple of guys selling some outdated VAXes to the Soviet Union.
On this small point we could use some help from you guys, also.

I haven't heard of U.S. troops invading Otaniemi yet for exporting
PGP, DES or such yet, most of the flack from USA has been due to some
picture material which for some peculiar reason isn't available in USA
so whenever there's a writable ftp dir somewhere or an archive with
this picture material accessible from the USA people flock to congest
the net by accessing the ftp servers here.  It would help for some
U.S. sites to have the material so people could access it locally
instead of reaching to Finland.

Yet one small point - even though according to the latest poll, over
50 percent of people in Finland oppose joining EU, our government
wants to join us in it.  This would mean united patent laws and also
patent coverage, so if you have happen to have any influence on this
and like nic.funet.fi please use it to stop Finland joining EU.

Finland - the country where Linux, the first free full OS for the
masses and IRC, the real-time interactive conferencing system were
born, the country with no legal phone wiretapping, the country
beutiful lakes and hills with an University on each, every one of them
networked, the only Nordic country with more tcp/ip traffic going out
than coming in.  You do have to keep an eye for the ice bears (and tax
bears) running on the streets, though.

//Jyrki