Comment by hlieberman
1 day ago
There is no carve out in the law for open source. I don’t think it matters for this calculator’s firmware, because there’s no covered App Store, but it certainly would for most Linux distributions.
1 day ago
There is no carve out in the law for open source. I don’t think it matters for this calculator’s firmware, because there’s no covered App Store, but it certainly would for most Linux distributions.
The law is irrelevant when it comes to open source. There is no one to turn to and bully for compliance. A government could presumably request that GitHub delete the repo, but the software will then simply move somewhere else, in a jurisdiction where these laws don't apply, or be distributed peer-to-peer. These attempts at curbing the freedom to write and distribute software are pathetic and will fail.
> simply move somewhere else, in a jurisdiction where these laws don't apply, or be distributed peer-to-peer
Each of these options lead software to become less and less discoverable leading to the fact that most people will never use anything that isn't complying with these laws. So the end result still hits the desired effect.
Eh... Prohibiting access to MSN Messenger on school computers was one of the catalysts to me being a highly paid professional today.
Tell children they can't do X, some will find ways around it, tell their friends the workaround and maybe even get a profession out of it. Who knows, maybe one kid will find a text editor and a compiler laying around somewhere...
Fuck, I even tried to learn Russian by myself just to understand those old hacking forums. At least I got proficient in Cyrillic. I don't have children, but definitely I'd direct them to learn reading Chinese.
> There is no one to turn to and bully for compliance > These attempts at curbing the freedom to write and distribute software are pathetic and will fail.
You sweet summer child.
>There is no one to turn to and bully for compliance.
They can and will go after anyone that distributes it.