Introduction

One of the greatest strengths of open source development is how it enables collaboration across boundaries. Open source collaboration occurs transparently, publicly, and across organizational boundaries: individual developers, academics, and employees across the globe can come together and build an open technology that is greater than any of them could individually produce.

Open source collaboration also occurs across geographic boundaries: people and organizations from a multitude of countries around the world bring their unique perspectives and strengths to build together in the open, and to release the results to all.

Because open source development is a global activity, it necessarily involves making available software across national boundaries. Some countries’ export control regulations may require taking additional steps to ensure that an open source project is satisfying obligations under applicable laws. This article briefly describes the Export Administration Regulations of the United States and discusses how they apply to open source communities developing technology in global collaboration.

In this article, we will generically refer to “open source” as any technology or software where the development process and the resulting code, designs, instruction sets, specifications, or other technologies are made publicly available. Open source as a creation model has evolved to cover more than just software technology. Open source now includes a wide range of open technology segments such as hardware designs, microprocessor instruction set architectures, specifications, data models, protocols, standards and any other technology that groups are collaborating to build publicly, in the open.

Export controls are unfortunately not the only legal rules that can affect open source collaboration. Various laws and regulations—involving sanctions and trade, cybersecurity, or particular technologies and industries—may all impose restrictions and requirements on collaboration within and across national boundaries. This article focuses on the application of US export controls to participation in open source and standards collaboration. The Linux Foundation will continue to publish guidance to assist the broader open source community in understanding other US and international regulatory compliance topics.