Comment by Myrmornis

Docker shall not be distributed or downloaded to or in Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan or Syria

This statement occurs in the docker README[0]. If at all possible, one would want to keep such channeling of potentially offensive government policy out of an open source software project's public documentation. For one thing, there are many enthusiastic open source programmers residing in the above list of countries.

The NOTICE[1] document explains that

Like all software products that utilize cryptography, the export and use of Docker is subject to the U.S. Commerce Department's Export Administration Regulations (EAR) because it uses or contains cryptography (see http://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/policy-guidance/encryption). Certain free and open source software projects have a lightweight set of requirements, which can generally be met by providing email notice to the appropriate U.S. government agencies that their source code is available on a publicly available repository and making the appropriate statements in the README.

I'm not familiar with seeing other open source projects from American organizations state that they may not be downloaded in the above list of countries. Is the use of cryptography in docker different in a way that makes the docker organization more at risk from legal challenges from the federal government in this regard, or are docker being anal and xenophobic in blithely displaying this notice?

[0] https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/blob/master/README.md

[1] https://github.com/dotcloud/docker/blob/master/NOTICE