Question on OSD #5

[Chris Travers]

On Nov 23, 2007 11:09 AM, Ben Tilly <btilly at gmail.com> wrote:

> The best known piece of software to successfully sneak out of a
> classified project in a high security facility is Perl.  Opinions
> differ on whether this was a good or bad thing. :-)

IANAL....

But Perl itself wasn't subject to state secrets that I know of.  I
thought that Nigel's original question was one of state or trade
secret protections removing the open source status of a particular
piece of software.  My response would be:
1)  I do not think that software restricted by state or trade secret
classifications could be considered open source.
2)  Of course, in any reasonable jurisdiction, it couldn't be publicly
distributed so it doesn't matter (i.e. I don't think an entity can on
one hand publish information and on the other hand claim that it is
their secret, though this hasn't stopped the Bush Administration from
trying this unsuccessfully-- jurisdictions which allow such
secrets-based protections for publicly available works are not
reasonable).
3)  I am not sure the label of "open source" pertains to any sort of
private modification anyway.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers