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Clinton adds source code to export restriction plan

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CIOL Bureau
New Update

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.

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