Post #1436093

2026-03-22 19:18 UTC

@iaruffell @ammdias My guess? Linux developers may have patrons that they don't want to irritate. My observation is that swift unemployment in a day job follows when a FOSS developer fails to fall in line. @ tante@ tldr.nettime.org is just one example I can cite. Age verification is getting unprecedented levels of support from funded mass malign influence campaigns.

Replies (3)

@ramsey@phpc.social 2026-03-22 19:38

@Npars01 @iaruffell @ammdias The Linux Foundation has some pretty big corporate patrons.

Open ##1436094
@dalias@hachyderm.io 2026-03-23 16:28

@Npars01 @iaruffell @ammdias This is why tech companies hiring FOSS maintainers or key developers is fundamentally malicious and something we should not accept. If they want to fund the people working on the commons they depend on, they need to do it in ways that do not give them, or even give the appearance that they have, editorial control over anything. As one of them myself, I can say this is not terribly hard but it requires standing up for yourself and your project. Communicating that control over it is not for sale and that terms of engagements need to acknowledge that.

Open ##1436115
@jzb@hachyderm.io 2026-03-23 16:32

@Npars01 @iaruffell @ammdias There's no need to guess: Linux developers that are trying to address this are concerned about legal exposure. Ultimately, if CA decided to bring suit against one of the vendors or projects, the law would *probably* be overturned, etc. But that costs a ton of money that vendors don't want to spend and projects do not have. The EFF has said that they believe the law will apply to the distributions, regardless of whether they are based in CA or not. I'm a bit concerned about the frenzy over this: it seems to have originated with a right-wing personality and is taking on a tone similar to the anti-Mono and anti-systemd brigading that was particularly nasty. And people are turning on FOSS developers in a particularly nasty way now. It's not helpful, and it's not conducive to solving these problems. Disagreeing with the way projects/distributions are handling it is fine, of course -- but people should be able to argue without slinging hate at people at the first sign of disagreement. We should be better than that. From what I've seen so far, none of the proposed ways to comply with the CA age-verification requirement are even difficult to disable. There is too much badness going on right now for this kind of vicious infighting. Note: I wrote about all this here: https://lwn.net/Articles/1062112/

Open ##1436117