The proposed EU law Chat Control will not only create a centralized mass surveillance system and violate people's privacy. It will also ban open source operating systems as an unintended consequence.

If and when this law goes into effect it would make illegal the open source software services underpinning the majority of services and infrastructure on the internet.

Learn more here: https://mullvad.net/blog/2023/2/1/eu-chat-control-law-will-ban-open-source-operating-systems/

@mullvadnet I think some inconvenience is possible, but you exaggerate.

@midgephoto @mullvadnet A "software application store" is defined by Article 2[*] to mean "a type of online intermediation services, which is focused on software applications as the intermediated product or service".

Article 6 of the law requires all "software application stores" to:

Assess whether each service provided by each software application enables human-to-human communication
Verify whether each user is over or under the age of 17
Prevent users under 17 from installing such communication software

I'm assuming "verify" means more than "Are you over 16? [N/y]". Gonna need to register an ID to run pacman