I for one am going through quite a culture shock. I always assumed the nature of FOSS software made it immune to be confined within the policies of nations; I guess if one day the government of USA starts to think that its a security concers for china to use and contribute to core opensource software created by its citizens or based in their boundaries, they might strongarm FOSS communities and projects to make their software exclude them in someway or worse declare GPL software a threat to national security.
I don’t understand why you think “avoiding prison” equals free work for companies. The individuals contributing to open source are subject to the same laws we’re discussing in this thread, and are the ones that would actually be getting consequences.
No one exists without a government, and that’s not even a pipe dream, it’d be societal collapse.
Because FOSS stands for both free software and people’s freedom. No one exists without a government except for external forces that are stronger than the government itself (lobbying is a way to strong arm a government), but this is another matter entirely.
FOSS organisations should exist outside a government because governments are easily corruptible, which is has happened again and again throughout history and is slowly happening right now. And obeying the law not to be thrown in jail is a nice argument, yes, and a shitty one at that: imagine how good would be a German citizen to abide to the government rule during the Nazi period. This doesn’t mean either that they shouldn’t follow any laws, but that, much like any international organisation, they should be international laws agreed on by multiple nations.
Which is essentially the crux of the matter: as long as FOSS projects work within the framework of a government (the US), the project can be easily hijacked, turned into something that goes against people interests. What are the people interests? In short, the minimum denominator is equality, freedom to speak, a right to privacy.
If FOSS projects do have to follow a government’s laws, then contributing to one is free work for corporations: laws can be changed and a democratic society can turn into a non-democratic entity, with laws that restrict the freedom of its citizens; in EU they try to pass a “chat control” law to make cryptography useless [by adding a back door] and while I believe it won’t pass no doubt it’s a worrisome sign. At the end of the day who would benefit the most from FOSS but companies, which do so already?
And to reiterate: sometime it’s better to be thrown in prison than to send someone else to their death