Subject: Re: README: changes to the build system
To: Jay Maynard <jmaynard@texas.net>
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
List: current-users
Date: 07/14/1999 12:22:04
> I'm doing the searching now, and if I'm wrong, I'll admit it. Perry
> Metzger can still go jump in the nearest methane lake for the way he
> attacked me instead of my ideas.

I can fully understand Perry's reaction, and I don't think it was
particularly ad hominem (attacking what you did is different from
attacking your ideas, but is also different from attacking you).  Some
number of people watching this conversation are going to take away the
wrong idea, because you stated something as fact which (Perry and I
are highly confident is) just not true.  It doesn't matter how
resoundingly your claim is refuted, because readers won't know who to
believe and won't take the time to follow any references provided.

When the issue is one of law, where FUD is cheaper than beer, this
kind of thing gets really frustrating.

It's not trivial to provide references for the non-existence of a law.
Perry could point you at the EAR, which is a set of export
regulations, and you could read it (laboriously) and determine that
they don't restrict import, but that wouldn't prove that there are no
corresponding import regulations somewhere else.

I will note that Perry moderates a cryptography mailing list which
often discusses export controls, and if there were import controls
then Perry would know about it.  (I would to, for different reasons; I
work closely with a lot of people who have to worry about this crud.)