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> impossible to regulate free and open source tools BS. Can you imagine a legislation? Yes, thus it can be done. As an early example, the CRA (Cyber Resilienc
by mnau 2y ago
> impossible to regulate free and open source tools
BS. Can you imagine a legislation? Yes, thus it can be done.
As an early example, the CRA (Cyber Resilience Act) already contains provisions about open source stewards and security. So far they are legal persons, aka foundations, but could easily relate to any contributor or maintainer.
- tiborsaas 2y agoAs I made the comment, I can't really imagine anything that's not so absurd that has a more than zero chance of happening. Seriously, what can anybody do about random hacker Joe publishing under the name XoX? Even if they burn GitHub and friends to the ground, if something is useful it will be really really hard to get rid of it. Remember youtube-dl? It's now https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp If they make anything that cripples open source development they will feel it quite soon when they realize that it also cripples their world as much of the tooling and infrastructure also depends on it. Killing open source is like killing the internet itself.
- mnau 2y agoConsequences never stopped anyone. Your example with yt-dl doesn't matter. Open source/free software inherently relies on copyright and all state legal infrastructure. Once you operate outside, it's no longer open source/free software. Can you host software in a way that's really hard to block? Sure. There is onion routing and plethora of other options. But that's no longer open source/free software. You are in a realm of dark web and marketplaces. I do maintain a semi popular open source project that I took over after about a year of inactivity and I seriously considered quiting because of CRA. It's quite easy to cripple/kill something when it basically runs on volunteering of your free time.