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Comment by cassianoleal

6 days ago

They could, but if the branch didn’t follow these laws, the main US branch would still be liable.

It's about time SOME entities start moving from US entirely.

  • RISC-V Foundation did.. though they go out of their way to talk about it in terms that try not to piss anyone off..

    > "Across 2018-2019, the RISC-V community has reflected on the geo-political landscape and we have heard concerns from around the world that investment in RISC-V must come with IP access continuity to ensure a long-term strategic investment. We first mentioned our intentions to move at the December 2018 summit. Incorporation in Switzerland has the effect of calming concerns of political disruption to the open collaboration model. RISC-V International does not maintain any commercial interest in products or services as a non-profit, membership organization. There have not been any export restrictions on RISC-V in the US and we have complied with all US laws. The move does not circumvent any existing restrictions, but rather alleviates uncertainty going forward.

    > In March 2020, the RISC-V International Association was incorporated in Switzerland. Along with this, we shifted to a new, more inclusive membership structure. Members of RISC-V International have access to and participate in the development of the RISC-V ISA specification and extensions as well as related hardware and software. RISC-V has a Board of Directors composed of member representatives as well as a Technical Committee of work group leaders."

    > RISC-V International has not incorporated in Switzerland based on any one country, company, government, or event. This move is reflective of community concern and managing strategic risk for our community investing in RISC-V for the next 50+ years.

    > The IP contributed and produced by RISC-V International is held under industry and global standard licenses that are already open to leverage by any company regardless of jurisdiction. This licensing is a common open source approach to foster collaboration that is not tied to any geographic regulation. IP in the public domain has not been subject to export control.

    https://riscv.org/about/

    • The RISC-V foundation and related companies also got a bunch of money from Europe. I am not so sure this was about leaving a repressive regime as much as chasing the European "homegrown computing" money.

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  • This is part of why the EU is looking to move away from US-based infrastructure. The CLOUD Act basically lets Washington have an off-switch on your computing infrastructure as well as giving Washington unlimited access to any data on your computers (or that passes through them).

  • Other countries sanction each other too.

    • They mostly don't.

      Or rather, when other countries say "sanctions", they are almost always talking about something completely different than the United States.

    • This is not about countries sanctioning each other. This is the US sanctioning a local company because a foreign company doesn’t follow certain US laws in foreign soil, where such laws don’t apply.

      It’s a bit like the US arresting your mom at home in Texas because you ate a baggie of magic truffles in Amsterdam.

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It depends on the legal structure.

If they set up a subsidiary in Europe, they could be held liable for actions of European subsidiary.

If an independent org is stood up in Europe, with European directors, staff and funding, legally independent of US org, and the US org just provides advice/assistance to Europe org without ability to control it-legal liability for US org for Europe org’s decisions is less likely. Of course, ask a lawyer-but if you openly say “we are doing this to work around US sanctions” you could still be liable; if you say “this has nothing to do with sanctions this is about resilience of global digital infrastructure and European digital sovereignty” then under what legal theory is the US org liable?