Re: Union of the Snake

[Sandy Harris <sandy -at- storm -dot- ca>]

Pete Sanborn wrote:

> "How hard is it to move a high tech firm (software, especially) off-shore?"
> 
> Good question.  It actually depends on the type of company it is, ...

If you're working on strong cryptography, it can be a major advantage not
to be in the US so you're not subject to their export restrictions.

The project I'm on (www.freeswan.org), for example, is done entirely in Canada
by Canadians for exactly that reason. My docs go into that in some detail:
http://www.freeswan.org/freeswan_trees/freeswan-1.91/doc/politics.html#exlaw

Nor are we the only ones. Another major Open Source player, NetBSD
(www.netbsd.org) are in Canada for similar reasons, and there are lots of
non-US companies competing well in those markets. 

The US company RSA Data Security opened an Australian office partly to
hire a couple of well-known Aussie programmers, but apparently mainly 
to be able to export product without dealing with the State Dep't.
Wired coverage was:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,17185,00.html 

When American Phil Zimmerman wrote PGP (Pretty Good Privacy, email encryption
software, FAQ at http://www.dk.pgp.net/pgpnet/pgp-faq/), and it became
available via the net, the US gov't threatened to jail him. e.g see this
interview with Phil:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/hightech/philspgp.htm

By contrast, the German gov't is funding an Open Source version of PGP:
http://www.gnupg.de/presse.en.html

So, at least in some fields, almost anywhere is a better place to work 
than the US.

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