Post #1396206

2026-03-21 14:57 UTC

@Frisk Good luck arguing that in court! The problem is that it’s very easy to think up theories like this, but there’s every chance that a judge will decide that there’s a clear meaning that _does_ included FOSS projects — and I don’t think such an interpretation is completely unreasonable. We clearly think of Debian (for example) as an operating system distributed by the Debian project, etc, even if we know that its components come from elsewhere. The other problem here I think is that it doesn’t seem fair to expect others to bear the risk. I am not one of the people who might be sued as a result of this; so what right do I have to tell the people who *are* at risk of being sued that they should do nothing to protect themselves, and just wait to get sued? I think civil disobedience is a great idea but it’s something that people need to choose for themselves, not to do armchair activism over the internet.

Replies (1)

@Frisk@woof.tech 2026-03-21 15:34

@benjamineskola Not sure what I did to deserve such a tone in your response (first sentence being an exclamation, calling what I suppose is asking a question "armchair activism"), to me I've asked a genuine practical question, because I really don't know the answer to it and I don't think law has one either. The bill was clearly made in mind with proprietary operating systems, if it was otherwise I believe it would have been more thorough with its definition. I do agree that the judge would probably rule in one way or another against FOSS community, that's a real risk, though I really do question enforceability of such a bill in real scenarios for Linux (and therefore your statement that it's very obvious a specific project has to implement it) because it's unclear who is responsible for implementation and if anything it *should* be the legislative branch at fault. It is especially problematic, because newer bills are going one step further and requiring OSs to age assure users[1] (which is no longer a request to provide age by the user, but rather require OSs to verify age using a method). How is FOSS going to respond to that? Is every Linux distribution going to be equipped with spy tech? Where does this madness end? [1]: https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/06/os_age_verification/

Open ##1396207