I for one am going through quite a culture shock. I always assumed the nature of FOSS software made it immune to be confined within the policies of nations; I guess if one day the government of USA starts to think that its a security concers for china to use and contribute to core opensource software created by its citizens or based in their boundaries, they might strongarm FOSS communities and projects to make their software exclude them in someway or worse declare GPL software a threat to national security.
Yes. If FOSS projects bend the knee to shitty laws just because “they are the law”, then FOSS is free labor for corporations with no gains for the people.
Which corporation are you talking about here?
America™
Nearly every single corporation with an online presence uses free software from the foss community.
The usual consequences to not following the law are not in your favor.
If your goal in contributing to FOSS is to go to prison, there are a lot better avenues to achieve that.
Law aren’t always right and governments don’t always do the best neither for the world nor for its citizens. Open source projects and corporations shouldn’t rely on any government, they shouldn’t do the biddings on governments — either “good” or “bad” — and act in people best interests.
Of course this is a pipe dream and what we got is more free work for companies with none the benefits
I don’t understand why you think “avoiding prison” equals free work for companies. The individuals contributing to open source are subject to the same laws we’re discussing in this thread, and are the ones that would actually be getting consequences.
No one exists without a government, and that’s not even a pipe dream, it’d be societal collapse.
That’s the point of FOSS as copyleft, to use the law to protect “free and open” information. This allows bigger projects, because contributors don’t have to keep their heads down.
At the same time maybe this is a downside, not an upside. As the reason why it has all gotten so big and complex and corporate-influenced.
It really is. Relying on a government good will to protect people best interests may be the point of failure of FOSS. I hope not but I’m less and less optimistic about the future