@devzaid filed Fedora-Council/tickets ticket #541. Discuss here and record votes and decisions in the ticket.
Having done export controls training many times
I would have expected that is a matter for a lawyer to give an opinon on?
Or is there an aspect of this that does not require expertise in US law?
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I understand your point, but here I’m not asking for a legal interpretation. BIS and OFAC have already published the new rules that removed the restrictions.
I just think Fedora’s policy should be updated to reflect that, so people in Syria can access Fedora domains normally.
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I expect legal representation will have to review this as a matter of council process. That being said, having interested community members bringing this to council attention is appreciated. The referenced policy changes do appear to materially impact the situation enough for me to feel comfortable in starting the consultation.
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I understand your point, but here I’m not asking for a legal interpretation.
Actually, yes you are.
BIS and OFAC have already published the new rules that removed the restrictions.
I just think Fedora’s policy should be updated to reflect that, so people in Syria can access Fedora domains normally.
And corporate legal need to review the changes
and decide how to change policy. While they
may, very well, agree to change existing policy
based on the new rules/regulations, they will
need to do the work to make such a finding.
And that will take some time.
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Thanks for pointing this out Gary.
I’ve not done the export training recently. But I recall there is a lot more then these two rules/policies/laws that must be consulted.
There a number of lists (three or more I seem to recall) that you must read carefully to see if your product is on any of them, then apply the specific rules.
I am not an expert in law or politics, but to my knowledge the only reason that prevented the availability of U.S.-based electronic services and websites in Syria was the export restrictions under the EAR, issued by the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) in 2011.
Since this restriction is no longer in effect following the recent changes regarding sanctions and export controls, the legal barrier is no longer present. I fully understand that it may still take some time to review internal policies and procedures, which is perfectly reasonable.
I sincerely appreciate your attention and responsiveness to this matter, and I hope that your final decision will positively benefit the Fedora community in Syria.
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For a number of personal reasons, I am really excited to see this topic come up. 
However, it is a misnomer that the sanctions are actually lifted. 
Yes, the US President did issue some executive orders to lift the sanctions, but those orders essentially expire in a few months. It is up to the US Congress to vote and repeal the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act, which was signed into law by the current US President in 2019. As long as the Caesar Act is in place, my “armchair lawyer” perspective is that a knowledgeable lawyer would flag this as a risk for lifting any export controls today.
It is worth noting that this is definitely something considered as current events. Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa was in the United States recently for the UN General Assembly. During his visit, he spent a notable amount of time trying to curry political favor in the US to demonstrate the evolution of Syria since the fall of Assad. It is a major, well-known position of the Syrian caretaker government to have the Caesar Act repealed and to get over the sanctions, but it appears there is not a consensus in the US Congress yet.
I know @jspaleta has reached out to a real lawyer (which I am not) for input and guidance here. But I happen to know a lot about this topic personally, and I wanted to be open about the politics that likely will prevent us from moving quickly on this.
However, export controls in Fedora are something I have had strong opinions about for a while. But they are the sad reality we have to accept, when it comes to access of free and open source technology, despite Fedora’s international recognition as a Digital Public Good. I am optimistic about the overall situation though, and I personally hope to see a point where we could have a Fedora Release Party in Syria one day. 
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Thanks for your comment Mr. Justin.
I would like to clarify that Fedora’s Export Control Policy is unrelated to OFAC restrictions or the Caesar Act. It primarily aligns with the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) guidelines, as outlined here: Lock
Additionally, I would like to note that the U.S. Senate has recently voted to repeal the Caesar Act, with the next step being its passage through the House of Representatives to complete the formal process of termination.
In practice, many U.S.-based companies and platforms—such as Apple, Steam, Google, and GitHub—have already updated their policies to allow services and benefits for users in Syria, reflecting a broader shift in compliance and accessibility.
Btw I just noticed that old flag of syria here still exists and that must be changed too!
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Is that an emoji flag?
In which case it’s not Discuss that needs to change but the font you have installed I’m guessing?
Discourse replaces emoji characters with images (right-click on the flag and “Inspect” it in Firefox, or do the Chromium equivalent, and you should see it’s an img tag pointing to a PNG hosted by Discourse).
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I think discussion.fedoraproject.org use their own emojis style not system one ( Just like X ), I have Apple device and I don’t see Apple Color Emoji font here.
Oh, interesting. I have not seen this before. This is where I admit that I am not an expert in export control law, and we would definitely need a lawyer to look more closely. That said, I think the presence of the Caesar Act still presents “risk” from a legal perspective.
Also, from that link, I actually don’t know how Fedora would be classified against this line:
“U.S.-origin goods, software, and technology that have purely civilian uses (i.e., those classified under BIS’s regulations as “EAR99”), as well as consumer communications devices and certain items related to civil aviation, can generally go to Syria without an export license.”
When we hear back from the lawyers that Jef contacted, we might know more.
I was reading about it this morning, actually. I was coming back to this thread to update my response but you beat me to it. 
So, the next US budget passed by the US Congress will likely have implications for this topic too.
If I am being honest, all of those companies have products that they likely want to start selling and marketing in Syria. Fedora does not exactly going to profit monetarily by being accessible in Syria. All of this to say, the pressure to make a change is less because there is not necessarily a “market opportunity” like there is for many large US-based tech companies which have hardware and software to sell.
However, knowing that other tech companies are moving in this direction, it definitely does not make it harder for Fedora (and therefore, Red Hat Inc.) to go this road later. I am confident we will get there though.
I’m not sure what needs to be done for sure, but I went to the Discourse Meta forum and made a feature request:
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Our friendly neighborhood Discourse support team was kind enough to make a “hotfix” for the Syrian flag emoji, until the emoji sets actually start to adopt the new flag across the board.
It is nowhere near the same as lifting the export controls, but hey, this is an okay beginning 
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Still no update on the Export Control Policy bits yet. It will take time for that. But in a recent update to Discourse, we have the official, updated 
flag emoji available instead of the workaround hack.
I remain impressed by how on top of it the Discourse development and support teams are.
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I am still following this one closely… while it will take time for any big change like this to make its way into Fedora and our export policy compliance, yesterday’s news from the first visit by the current Syrian president to the US White House in nearly 80 years seems promising:
I think the big thing we will still need for real, tangible action in Fedora is for the US Congress to repeal the Caesar Act sanctions. At the moment, my “I am not a lawyer and cannot give legal advice” take on the situation is that we are only seeing a temporary suspension of the sanctions directed by presidential Executive Order, and the US Congress still needs to formally vote on repealing the Caesar Act sanctions.
My educated guess is that the risk profile for Red Hat to modify the export compliance policy for Fedora will shift only after the US Congress makes a vote, and only if the US Congress successfully repeals the Syrian sanctions.
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