Following up on its recently announced intentions to abolish nearly all data
encryption export restrictions, President Clinton’s government said it was
considering relaxing export limits on computer source code as well. The move
appears prompted by the Linux operating system whose popularity is spreading
like wildfire through certain large segments of the computer industry, including
network administrators and the education market. Already the Linux source code
is made freely available to anyone over the Internet. U.S. laws consider this
type of distribution an export of products.
That creates problems for U.S. programmers who want to include encryption
features for Linux or other ''open source'' programs. The source code addition
to the earlier encryption policy was prompted, in part, by a May ruling by a
panel of U.S. Court of Appeals judges. They ruled that the source code export
limits were a violation of the First Amendment's free speech guarantee.
U.S. under secretary of commerce William Reinsch said the administration had
originally intended to maintain current export limits on source code. But, after
the recently announced plans to abolish most export restrictions on computer
encryption programs, high-tech companies complained that retaining the source
code limit was unworkable. ''We are now reviewing that. It is on the table as an
area where we might make a revision,'' Reinsch said. The Clinton Administration
is expected to formally announce the radical change in encryption export rules
on or before December 15. Any changes for source code export guidelines will
likely be included at that time.