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I'm not sure this move accomplishes that much. It seems none of the technology is moving abroad, just the legal seat. And on trade issues, Switzerland moves pre

I'm not sure this move accomplishes that much. It seems none of the technology is moving abroad, just the legal seat. And on trade issues, Switzerland moves pretty much in lockstep with the US, at least officially (cf. Iran sanctions). To me, this smacks of the kind of legalist thinking that software engineers are prone to: Assuming that if some legal construct is implemented according to some rules, governments and the legal system will disregard the actual physical reality, and will refrain from employing their political leverage. Then again, I'm sure the RISC-V Foundation has professional legal advice at their disposal.

pavon 7y ago
I curious about what the legal implications of this really are. As a layman, it seems to me that US Export Control laws still exist, so if any of the technical data being discussed in the standards meetings would be considered an export before, it still will now. The change is that the liability has shifted off of the Foundation and onto the American members. If the Foundation as a whole couldn't determine its legal responsibilities, the individual members aren't going to have any more clarity. Any chilling effect of US law and policy will therefore result in US members reducing their participation, rather than members of other countries being uncertain about their ability to use the technology. However, given that much of the early work was done by US institutions, if any US contributions were considered to be unallowable exports, that would surely include contributions that already make up foundations of the specification. This move won't undo that, and thus could result in a worst of both worlds situation where members in other countries can't make use of current standards (if they want to export to the US), and US members can't contribute to future standards. Of course this is all assuming that RISC-V standards are actually covered by US export control laws, and that those laws will be enforced. Probably nothing would come of this either way, although the pessimist in me worries that this move itself might trigger protectionists in the US government to go looking for reasons why RISC-V technology might infringe.
- FailEEStudent 7y ago
  Open-source information isn't export controlled but technical data is. You can imagine this causes alot of consternation with standards organizations b/c that line isn't exactly clear. I was just speaking to legal counsel at GSMA and their response was "no one knows what the law is unless the government says we violated it".
  - dependenttypes 7y ago
    Sounds pretty similar to what happened in the Bernstein v. United States case.
sangnoir 7y ago
> I'm not sure this move accomplishes that much. To avoid scenarios like the one described in the middle of the article where it's unclear if it's legally OK to work with sanctioned organizations: In June, more than two dozen standards groups - including those overseeing SD memory cards and Ethernet and HDMI cables - wrote a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross asking for clarification of the rules on working with Huawei. If bodies that work on open standards can't predictably work openly (with anyone) this risks the standards getting fragmented in non-compatible ways, or could even give rise to viable competing standards like US WiFi 7 vs. Chinese/European WiFi 7ce
FailEEStudent 7y ago
Eh, not really. Switzerland was never a member of CoCOM and only joined the Waessenar Agreement b/c there is no binding requirement for the Waessenar Agreement. Switzerland's export controls on dual-use (military and civilian) technology basically don't exist.

pavon 7y ago

I curious about what the legal implications of this really are. As a layman, it seems to me that US Export Control laws still exist, so if any of the technical data being discussed in the standards meetings would be considered an export before, it still will now. The change is that the liability has shifted off of the Foundation and onto the American members. If the Foundation as a whole couldn't determine its legal responsibilities, the individual members aren't going to have any more clarity. Any chilling effect of US law and policy will therefore result in US members reducing their participation, rather than members of other countries being uncertain about their ability to use the technology. However, given that much of the early work was done by US institutions, if any US contributions were considered to be unallowable exports, that would surely include contributions that already make up foundations of the specification. This move won't undo that, and thus could result in a worst of both worlds situation where members in other countries can't make use of current standards (if they want to export to the US), and US members can't contribute to future standards. Of course this is all assuming that RISC-V standards are actually covered by US export control laws, and that those laws will be enforced. Probably nothing would come of this either way, although the pessimist in me worries that this move itself might trigger protectionists in the US government to go looking for reasons why RISC-V technology might infringe.

FailEEStudent 7y ago
Open-source information isn't export controlled but technical data is. You can imagine this causes alot of consternation with standards organizations b/c that line isn't exactly clear. I was just speaking to legal counsel at GSMA and their response was "no one knows what the law is unless the government says we violated it".
- dependenttypes 7y ago
  Sounds pretty similar to what happened in the Bernstein v. United States case.

sangnoir 7y ago

> I'm not sure this move accomplishes that much. To avoid scenarios like the one described in the middle of the article where it's unclear if it's legally OK to work with sanctioned organizations: In June, more than two dozen standards groups - including those overseeing SD memory cards and Ethernet and HDMI cables - wrote a letter to U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross asking for clarification of the rules on working with Huawei. If bodies that work on open standards can't predictably work openly (with anyone) this risks the standards getting fragmented in non-compatible ways, or could even give rise to viable competing standards like US WiFi 7 vs. Chinese/European WiFi 7ce

FailEEStudent 7y ago

Eh, not really. Switzerland was never a member of CoCOM and only joined the Waessenar Agreement b/c there is no binding requirement for the Waessenar Agreement. Switzerland's export controls on dual-use (military and civilian) technology basically don't exist.