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HashiCorp forbids its software being used in China

hashicorp.com

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Re: HashiCorp forbids its software being used in China

#6

Post by bE9a3S5So8igd3 »

Bellamy wrote: post #3

Why exactly they do that?

Good question. It's not like IP protection is practical in China--this software WILL be used in China against license. It's also basically impossible to hold Chinese companies (often entangled with the communist government of China) accountable for things like fraud or IP theft.

Maybe it's just a political statement.

Re: HashiCorp forbids its software being used in China

#7

Post by mitchellh »

Hello, I'm a founder of HashiCorp and I'd like to explain this.

First, this document only applies to enterprise evaluation software. This doesn't apply to our OSS software and this shouldn't be linked anywhere near our OSS except in the context of signing up for an enterprise eval.

Most importantly: why is this here? This is NOT a political statement. This is a legal requirement. The encryption we use in Vault is subject to Chinese export control laws and it is illegal for us (by Chinese law) to sell in China.

To be able to sell Vault within China we'd have to restrict the encryption that could be used within Vault to government-acceptable versions.

We don't do this, therefore it is illegal for us to sell in China. We have to include this line in our enterprise terms.

EDIT: Our legal team has updated the copy in our terms to be more explicit. You can read the updated copy in the second paragraph here: https://www.hashicorp.com/terms-of-evaluation

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