This thread is to discuss the pertinence of the U.S. export control laws
regarding cryptography described on the following page:
https://www.apache.org/dev/crypto.html

The following seems to apply to VCL:

> PMCs considering including cryptographic functionality within their
> products or *specially designing their products to use other software
> with cryptographic functionality* should take the following steps before
> placing such code on any ASF server, including commits to subversion


VCL has always used some cryptographic functionality and new features added
for VCL 2.5 expand the usage.  The README lists requirements of
php-openssl, openssh, openssl-devel, and xmlsec1-openssl.  The backend
installation scripts will install a few encryption-related modules and the
backend Perl code uses functions from the Crypt::OpenSSL::RSA and others.
The frontend does the same.  Encrypted strings generated from these modules
and libraries are stored in the VCL database.  None of the VCL-proper
source code actually does any direct encryption via mathematical or other
functions.

I'm hoping I'm wrong, but it sounds like we should go through all of the
steps listed on the page and that all of this should be completed before
releasing VCL 2.5 so that the README includes the proper crypto notice.

Please discuss...

Thanks,
Andy

PS - I think the *"before placing such code on any ASF server, including
commits to subversion"* part of the guidelines is irrelevant at the current
time since encryption code has been committed -- in some cases, years ago.
We'll certainly abide by this in the future once we figure out how things
need to be handled.

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