Good evening, Unless the provider is within California, which Arch Linux is not, there is nothing the Californian state can do. This has been discussed endlessly on the OpenBSD mailing list the past few days. It seems on the Debian and Ubuntu mailing lists, they have been discussing how to comply, less so whether they can ignore it entirely.
If Arch Linux doesn't comply, what is the Californian state prosecutors going to do? Ban * Linux? Well then good luck running any digital infrastructure. Laws such as these are impossible to comply with, they are passed to give the government the ability to fine, censor and shutdown any organisation or company which they do not agree with, whether they have a legitimate or illegitimate reason to do so. If this was passed as a US federal law, then there could be some cause for concern, but considering its currently just California (and I believe its Colorado which wants to follow suit), they can only really go after Californian companies and organisations, and they don't have the power to really get people extradited from other countries to stand trail in California. So in the end, the worst I could see happen is that Arch Linux gets banned in Cali, along with other non-complying distros, but Cali will end up having seldom digital infrastructure, and will go back to the dark ages. The one important thing is, not to follow the example of MidnightBSD which relicenced their project to ban Californians, which now makes it non-free. If Arch is to be prohibited in Californian, it must come from the state, rather than Arch. Take care, -- Polarian Jabber/XMPP: [email protected]
