Ask About the Iraqi LUG

Yes, there is a Linux Users Group in Iraq. When it was first mentioned on Slashdot it only had two members. It's grown a little since then, as has The Iraqi Linux Group Portal. Adam Davidson, an American reporter in Baghdad who helped start the group, has agreed to answer your questions about Linux in Iraq. Please post only one question per comment. We'll email Adam 10 of the highest-moderated questions, and post his answers verbatim (except for HTML formatting) when he gets them back to us.

Re:To all the people that think liberation is bad.

[Globe199]

please do not access the site, it would be hypocritical of you.

I disagree. Thinking the liberation was wrong does not imply a disregard for the current state of affairs in Iraq.

Whether or not you supported the war, we must deal with the situation as it stands, and Iraq can use all the help it can get. I fully support a free software initiative in Iraq.

Globe199

Re:Encryption

[I8TheWorm]

Not trying to be a troll at all, but with Linux, does it matter? It's not produced (in many cases anyway) by a US company which is bound to US law. Are there any other reasons, i.e. international law, that would restrict the use of stronger encryption than the US allows in Iraq?

One of the finer points to be made regading use of Linux is none of it (again, unless you use a distro from a US company) is bound by US law, and least that's how I percieve it.

Re:Encryption

[pla]

Actually, Sun Microsystems for example makes sure that your IP belongs to a well-known and trusted subnet before it allows you to download code that may infringe on export rules.

Which accomplishes... Nothing?

"Hi, Mom&Pop's Hometown ISP? I'd like to sign up with you. Yup, great, can I pay for a year in advance via direct deposit? Good. Okay, yeah, I'll need a shell account, does that present a problem? No? You'll have it active in fifteen minutes? Great. Thanks, bye".

Poof, any amount of attempted IP-to-geography mapping completely defeated. [e-mail] now appears to come from Sandusky, Ohio, not Tikrit, Iraq.

And that even goes so far as to assume someone has to pay for such obfuscation of their physical location... Personally, although I live in the US and don't need to circumvent export rules to do anything, I have a number of accounts in various places to get around strange policies I've encountered (such as "only from a .edu", or "only from South Dakota"). And not a single one of them have I ever needed to pay for (nor steal them, which a "real" criminal probably would not hesitate to do).

Re:Encryption

[the_mad_poster]

"All crazy" in U.S. terms means "he screwed with our personal convenience" e.g., he invaded Kuwait which messed with our power-slurping habits. Nobody in any administration in recent memory gave or gives a crap about human rights. We're still "buddies" with China, after all, even though the country's run by nasty little brutes. Ditto India and Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and....

Execute a few thousand of your countrymen? No problem. Fuck with my SUV? You're dead.

Re:Who cares?

[the_mad_poster]

Who fucking cares?

You will when they label you an enemy combatant and lock your ass up with no lawyer, trial, or contact with the outside world.

You don't screw with hair-brained dictator-wannabes and their psychotic little regimes unless you're serious.

the best question asked yet....

[pauly_thumbs]

How can we help? Are there ways for Americans to donate machines to the Iraqi people and what types of machines are needed most?

Here in Seattle there are lots of PII's at the Goodwill - great for Linux use :)

Re:Whats Iraq really like?

[Anonymous Coward]

> As long as you kept a low profile politically, we were likely to be okay.

In Arab terms, this is progressive and liberal! What if you're a woman? Can you go outdoors? Alone? Drive? Work? Please, apologize on their behalf again. I love it when people try and deny that a society is living in the stone age when they evidently are.