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Comment by popcorncowboy | Hacker News Reader

> "could chill or even prevent the availability of globally maintained open source software in Europe."

Chill? More like obliterate. If this bill goes through, almost every single open source repo is going to necessarily end up with a banner saying:

"MIT licensed ex EU. If you are an EU entity or intend to use this software in any way that may result in an EU entity coming into any contact (even indirectly) with this software, you are excluded from all rights granted under this license and prohibited from using any code provided here."

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Why? If you sell commercial support for your software, you're just as liable as a closed source developer selling commercial support for their software. What's wrong with that?

Have you ever been 18yo and sold your first bit of software? Have you even been a contractor?

Let's not forget that's already the case since 2015 for businesses of countries behaving like police states (like the US) being effectively banned if they are trying to handle personal data (including often IP addresses) :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Schrems#Schrems_I

But enforcement has been slow-moving :

"German state of Hesse has banned the use of Microsoft 365 in its schools (2022)" :

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33741537

Also there's an even more recent precedent with the new directive about the obligations of content displayers (typically regarding copyright takedown requests) : in the end the directive is at least somewhat accommodating for the small/new/nonprofit displayers.

The reason for this slow movement is because EU made a new agreement (Privacy Shield) that did not address the issues of the first one, and was invalidated in 2020 by Schrems II.

Please. Don't spread FUD.

Why? Unless it's fixed, this act would be the cause of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The most rational and likely outcome would be to add EU exclusions until and unless Open Source liability under the act is sorted.

Of course they're not going to pass a law requiring FOSS volunteers to provide support for or pay fines for software they provide for free.

That would be immoral and entirely unenforceable.

They're not idiots.

Maybe it's a bad law. It could be. But this FUD distracts from a real discussion about its merits and flaws.

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