SourceForge.net is our provider of development and download services. Last month they decided to exclude users from Cuba, Iran, North Korea and other countries from downloading our and other software hosted on their site; thereby following US export restrictions. I (and I am confident that the rest of the team follows me on this one) believe that export restrictions are not compatible to the spirit of Free Software. Furthermore, TeXnicCenter is predominantly developed in Germany, i.e., US law does not apply. And even if US law would apply, we do not use any technology that is subject to US export restrictions (e.g., encryption). Hence, the exclusion of some of our users by SourceForge was a big disappointment to me and triggered thoughts about switching to a different site.

Yesterday, SourceForge announced that they changed this policy in the following way: every project can now decide whether they fall under the US export restrictions or not. If not, project admins are able to open the download service for their project to the whole world. This is exactly what I did today. TeXnicCenter downloads served by SourceForge are (again) available to all our users.

If someone experiences problems downloading our software and believes that this is related to the matter described above, please contact me.

We are grateful for SourceForge’s great service and are very happy about their change in policy.

Freiheit ist immer die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden.
(Freedom is always the freedom of the one who thinks differently.)
Rosa Luxemburg (1917)