237

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

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] towerful@programming.dev 16 points 12 hours 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

this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2026
237 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

82489 readers
3713 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS