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That example of you and your boss is not the same as the government forcing you to do/say something. The end result is unemployment in your case, and it is your

That example of you and your boss is not the same as the government forcing you to do/say something. The end result is unemployment in your case, and it is your choice since the decision to take the job in the first place was voluntary. In the case of the government compelling you to work and/or write code, the result of non-compliance is fines, imprisonment for contempt, etc. And assuming the process that led to the writ being issued in court was fair and followed correctly, you wouldn't be able to just walk away from it. Which is why the first amendment and other laws matter for the government and not for your employer-employee example.

harryh 11y ago
No, you're wrong about fines, imprisonment for contempt, etc. That might be true for senior officials at Apple (Tim Cook, etc) but definitely not for rank and file employees. Any of them that are asked to implement GovOS (to use Apple's shorthand for the proposed software) could surely quit instead of doing the work. To be honest, they wouldn't even have to quit. I'm sure there are plenty of people at Apple qualified to do the work. If some of them have moral issues I'm sure they can go work on other things. Apple will have no problem finding a few folks to comment out a few lines of code and recompile the OS. You're basically repeating FUD spread by Apple and others to make the situation seem worse than it is. Normally this kind of FUD spreading is reviled by the hacker community.