Seems in all thing tech at the moment the US legal system is accelearting a great split and erectinga digital iron curtain, from AI models to the more mundane like TLS certs.
Its been standard for a while for many Linux distros based in the US to toe the party line - like RedHat having notices pretty similar to this one by LE.
Seems any meaningful Open Projects will have to choose what path they want to take, be like RISC-V and relocate or LE and others and enforce the divide.
It isn't just the US. China, Russia, the EU, and Australia and probably others are all increasingly trying to create virtual walls of various forms in the internet.
It is in the nature of nation states to assert control over national borders. That the Internet and the globalised flow of information it enables circumvents this is a historical anomaly.
Woah, I had no idea about DARPA and RISC-V. I wonder why they care about RISC-V so much? This is the best explanation that I can find:
> Open source standards provide great benefits to U.S. taxpayers in reducing the cost of advanced military system development, and also increases security by allowing the government to build their own trusted implementations at low cost.
> RISC-V International has not incorporated in Switzerland based on any one country, company, government, or event. This move is reflective of community concern and managing strategic risk for our community investing in RISC-V for the next 50+ years.
So what? If I disagree with the direction any FOSS project (or its maintainers) is taking... I can just fork it. People have done that countless times in the history of FOSS, most notably in the xOffice schism.
No remotely western company will risk US sanctions violations or whatever other regulatory burden by using US technology where it can't be used. Even Chinese companies depending on how state backed they are might not be willing to risk it.
This is the big irony of the current situation: while the US is dependent on China for manufactured goods, China is dependent on the US for external demand for its manufactured goods.
One is the mirror image of the other and neither economy can exist in its current state in isolation.
So China has the US over a barrel when it comes to actually building stuff, rare earths and all of that, but equally US sanctions still have real bite (a lot more than China would like) because China does have to do a huge amount of international trade to export and externalise its surpluses.
