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MidnightBSD Bans Users in Brazil and California, Warns More Regions Could Follow (itsfoss.com)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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MidnightBSD, a FreeBSD-based desktop operating system, has quietly updated its README to reflect a new geographic restriction. The project has added a clause that bars residents of any country, state, or territory with OS-level age verification mandates from using MidnightBSD

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[–] 17 points 6 months ago (1 child)

haha I guess that's one way to deal with it and do nothing at all. Doubtful they block the connections from those areas

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  • [–] 18 points 6 months ago

    IDK. It puts them at the forefront of this fight.

    If governments successfully prosecute distro maintainers (if they can) for this, then distro maintainers are liable.
    And distro maintainers would then have to pursue non-compliant users to cover that liability, or fold.
    Which is a huge loss for open source.

    Or, there would be a huge legal fight and it turns out that the licence of a distro protects it from its users actions.
    Which would be awesome and a massive win. It also makes sense. Nobody is suing an OS maintainer because it was used for a data breach.
    And then the governments have to pursue the actual users. Which... is gonna be useless wrt these laws

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