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Comment by lrvick | Hacker News Reader

Tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure run on top of stagex, but I remain happy to ignore an unconstitutional, unenforceable, and badly worded law that does not and can not apply to me all the same.

They will be successful at forcing corporate operating systems like MacOS, Windows, and maybe RedHat, but they have no power to compel code being added to independent international volunteer maintained open source operating systems maintained.

For projects with no legal entity like Stagex, arch, alpine, etc... we do not have to comply and there is no legal mechanism that exists to make us. Who would you even target? All maintainers have equal power, and cannot make changes alone. Especially not changes we do not want, for free.

I think the legislators should PR age verification code to all open source operating systems on their own dime, so we can ridicule them mercilessly before closing them as WONTFIX.

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> Tens of billions of dollars of infrastructure run on top of stagex

Oh, this I've got to see. Show us the receipts.

Several fintech companies, blockchains, operating systems, and server operating systems use stagex as a foundation because it is the only fully deterministic and multi-party verifiable OS stack that exists, built to resist supply chain attacks be they by politicians, blackhats, or AI bots.

Look at my companies I work with via Distrust, and my resume. Most use stagex for their security critical operations, though I am unable to say which ones specifically. NDAs and all that. You could figure out a few of them if you looked.

I can tell you many many fortune 500 companies are relying on stagex for security critical use cases, and most are probably not even aware of it as they consume projects that wrap or build on stagex.

Calling stagex a "niche Linux OS" suggests that hardly anyone uses it. Now you're claiming that "many Fortune 500" companies run it atop tens of billions of dollars worth of infrastructure.

These two narratives materially conflict with each other.

Niche: (2d) a specialized market

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/niche

In this case the market is "security critical operations."

How the dictionary defines “niche” doesn’t really matter. It’s the storytelling that matters.

A prosecutor might be motivated by and could cite the "tens of billions of dollars" quote.

Building compelling narratives is one of the key skills a prosecutor (or any other lawyer) brings to bear in order to win cases.

I'm saying it's false that:

> Calling stagex a "niche Linux OS" suggests that hardly anyone uses it.

It’s not a false suggestion. It might not comport with your interpretation of the dictionary definition, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is what it means to people. That’s why it’s a narrative.

You can concoct your own meanings for things all day, but that doesn't mean Irvick was making things up as you clearly implied.

It’s not just me. This is how people think. That’s my point. Maybe you don’t think that way, but that’s fine.

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