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Any laws that have the potential to reach me I am compliant with. If there are countries with laws that strike me as idiotic - such as anti-blasphemy laws - then I will do my level best to be informed of that beforehand and I will not break that law even if I feel that it is idiotic.

And as for the 'don't insult the monarch' law, we have that law here in NL and I purposefully broke it as a private individual to make a point.

The tax regime of every country in the world has no impact on me, I reside in NL, my businesses are here as well. But when I had several businesses in Canada and one in the USA I complied with the tax laws there too.

> The creator of Monal has decided the easiest way to be compliant with another country's laws is simply not to do business there, and I think you're underestimating the difficulty of the alternative (trying to comply with every country's laws).

He's taking the easy way out because there never was a real business behind this. This is my conclusion because he feels that his holidays are more important than the rights of his users.



You're right, there was never a business behind this. It's free software.

Why should the creator of free software spend their own money to support users in a region that imposes extra regulations?


>Why should the creator of free software spend their own money to support users in a region that imposes extra regulations?

If I create free software that concretely and demonstrably aids in worldwide human trafficking and has negligible utility elsewhere, would you still consider my refusal to comply with regulation reasonable because my software was free?

How free the software is not a determining factor, either morally or legally, in determining whether or not the GDPR is or should be applicable.


Nice strawman. If sometime in the future you want to talk about Monal, let me know.


Because even free software has to comply with the law. Funny how that works, but not making a profit on something does not absolve you from legal liability.


And the easiest way to comply with the law in this case is simply to block EU users, as was done.

You can hardly complain that someone who gave you something for free wasn't willing to spend their time or money to comply with additional demands.


Funny how that works, but not making a profit on something does not absolve you from legal liability.

But why would someone who is literally giving something away accept that liability, or even any perceived risk of liability, if they have an easier option?




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