>Date: Sat, 22 Mar 1997 01:02:20 +0100 (CET)
>From: Tom I Helbekkmo <tih@stop.email.ads.now>

>There should be a good way to make sure /etc/mk.conf gets read early
>and is still allowed to override whatever it wants.  Impossible?

Other makefiles I've seen get around this by including bsd.own.mk at
the top of the makefile.  (bsd.own.mk is the file that references
/etc/mk.conf.)  I'm not sure that's the proper solution.

>I'm one of those horrible godless commie bastards in the NATO
>countries, so of course I can't possibly get hold of Cygnus code.  We
>can store your nuclear weapons for you in case you should need to
>deploy them from here, but God forbid that we should learn the arcane
>and sacred secrets of DES encryption!  Someone should explain to your
>congress how stupid your current laws on this stuff are -- but I guess
>it's hard to do that well in single syllable words.

There are those in Congress who are aware of the problem and trying to
fix it, but they must fight against the Clinton administration's
resistance.  Clinton hopes that retaining the existing restrictions
will sap the will of commercial vendors to fight the impostion of key
escrow or other schemes that are breakable by "the proper
authorities".  It's a political issue that won't be resolved any time
in the near future, and may not ever be resolved properly unless the
U.S. elects a reasonable Republican (or a Libertarian, that would be a
trick) in 2000.

[Further discussion of U.S. crypto policy does not belong on a NetBSD
list.]
-- 
Mike Long <mike.long@analog.com>     <URL:http://www.shore.net/~mikel>
VLSI Design Engineer         finger mikel@shore.net for PGP public key
Analog Devices, CPD Division          CCBF225E7D3F7ECB2C8F7ABB15D9BE7B
Norwood, MA 02062 USA       (eq (opinion 'ADI) (opinion 'mike)) -> nil