Hello Dear community!
I want migrate my future Open-Science projects (and maybe current projects too), to KiCad.
But i worried about: My country(Russia) may be blocked due to sanctions in future?
I cannot speak officially here. As long as you can access gitlab it shouldn’t be a problem. Russian translation? I count 5 Russian translators in the official credits.
We try to stay out of the politics here.
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KiCad is Open Source (and Free Software) project and will never enforce any sanctions on anyone. The software will be kept freely downloadable, and if you can download something from outside Russia, you can download KiCad. Whether or not it’s possible that Russia will be isolated from the internet is not a decisions of the project or the developers or the end users. Apart from preventing all downloading, not just KiCad, it’s impossible to prevent the Russians getting KiCad.
(EDIT: the KiCad developers of course obey the laws, as I was informed privately. It’s possible that for example it’s not allowed to actively distribute software to/from some location. But KiCad would still be available from for example US and EU, and if you can download something from there, you can download KiCad, too. Your concern is practical: whether or not new versions of KiCad will be available to you. I just can’t see how limiting for example download server mirroring could stop people in Russia downloading KiCad. As I said, preventing downloading files in general or isolating a country from internet is not something an individual or a project can do.)
Basically KiCad can be part of the strict sanctions only if all Open Source software can be, and I don’t see how that could be possible. It’s unclear to me if putting a file downloadable freely for all so that someone from another country downloads it can be ever be seen as exporting.
As far as I understand, the sanctions which apply to software are about commercial products and software directly related to some other technology under sanctions.
Even though KiCad is related to technology it’s not hi-tech as I would understand the current sanctions. Some software is under sanctions, but they are not something ordinary people can use for their hobby.
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Thanks, yours answers is very clear.
PS. I known several examples when opensource projects add limitation via regional settings. The worst case in my memory is node-ipc (vue.js) protestware, which wipe computer data via location. (CVE-2022-23812)
Therefore i’ve try ask the community or projects owner when planned to use software made after 2022y.
Interesting. “Protestware” seems to be an euphemism, it’s totally malware and illegal, irrespective of the intention of the writer.
Only the spokesmen of the KiCad project can answer whether they could accept altering the KiCad source code to prevent using it in e.g. Russia. We can imagine that a government would force sw developers to make the software prevent using it in some areas. It just wouldn’t work for Open Source sw because it’s easy enough to modify the source and recompile it. You wouldn’t even be pirating. Now it’s a good time to learn compiling software for yourself.
Changing the licence is out of question, it would be against the current GPL licence, and the software wouldn’t be Open Source anymore by definition if it would deny people in some area using it.
IMO your problem boils down to this and only this: will you always be able to download files from the World Wide Web. That’s not something we here in the KiCad user forum or even the project representatives can answer.
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Well, you appear to be a good person with a mission to help others. Our political interest pretty much ends there. 
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