[POLITICAL] Re: [Fribidi-discuss] License question to the pro ject owners

[Dan Kenigsberg]

I, too, have no concern or saying with regards to the fribidi license, but
I did not sense any hint of contempt against any country, and feel that the
question that was raised is a valid one.

The sad truth is that many Arab states have laws against trading or cooperating
with Israel. Moreover, trade unions in states like Egypt, which has diplomatic
relations with Israel for 25 years or so, still forbid their members to
cooperate with Israel or Israeli. Such was an Egyptian author who were cordially
persuaded against publishing his book in Israel [1]. Thus the thought of an Arab
programmer being unable to share his/her code with Israelis due to state laws is
not unthikable.

Obviously, a similar threat may rise from the other side, if someone in the
Israeli Ministry of Defense wakes one morning and decides that fribidi can be
used by the armed forces of countries who are in an official state of war with
Israel, and therefore sharing code equals to exporting munition to the enemy.
Which is obviously absurd, but so is blowing up a busload of students, so who
knows.

Salam `aleikum,

Dan.

[1] Google found me this for a reference
	http://www.metimes.com/2K1/issue2001-20/eg/boycott_against_israel.htm

On Fri, Jul 11, 2003 at 09:49:13AM +0700, VisualMind wrote:
> I'm not concerned about whether LGPL or MPL is being used, but I sensed some 
> contempt against Arabic-countries which I totally disagree with;
> We really do respect all opensource licensees when we use any software no 
> matter who the author is, and if needed we can write our own code.
> 
> I also hate (Fanatic people) who have a countryless/relegionless fanaticism 
> against whatever, and those don't really care about what license is there.
> 
> Regards,
> Salah Faya
> 
-- 
Dan Kenigsberg        http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~danken        ICQ 162180901