Goodbye, and Thanks for All the Bikesheds
Points and comments are a snapshot, not live.
An open source pioneer predicts the end of anonymous FOSS due to age verification and accountability laws.
Poul-Henning Kamp argues that mandatory age verification and EU digital sovereignty efforts will kill anonymous open source development. Cryptographically attested software will be required, and only unmodified programs from approved stewards will run. Maintainer burnout is rising, and new apprentices are not replacing aging volunteers. Kamp believes FOSS will survive only as readable source code, not modifiable software, and wants his predictions to be wrong.
What commenters are saying
Commenters strongly reject Kamp's framing. Many point out that governments broke the social contract with mass surveillance (Stingrays, Snowden) before privacy advocates took a hard line, so compromise would not have worked. Others note that big tech companies actually support age verification laws because they benefit from mandated platforms. A few argue parental controls already work as a privacy-respecting alternative.