I suspect it might not even be anything like that and just be that the BSD maintainers don’t want to rely on any GPL code for anything, even if it’s optional.

I haven’t replied because I don’t know the precise details of why they can’t but Linux could, so was hoping someone else would answer, but it’s been a whole day, so I guess we’re both left not knowing.

Some people are shit parents and often it’s not even their fault that they’re shit parents (e.g. their parents were shit, too, or socioeconomic factors) and they’ve got no way of knowing they’re shit parents as they go along (e.g. their children don’t have obvious signs of having shit parents when they’re with them and they’re better parents than most other people they know). People do need protecting from other people who had shit parents, and it makes sense for the state to do things to protect people from the shitness of their parents.

Banning things for everyone (including consenting adults) is certainly not the most technically feasible, effective or targeted solution, though. E.g. if I were the minister tasked with solving the problem, I’d make sure sex ed classes in school covered everything relevant (they already do, but not effectively enough that it sinks in, so maybe I’d commission a report into why), and legislate that porn sites couldn’t promote potentially harmful fetish content without clearly labelling it as such. I’d also not necessarily focus so much on the effects on teenagers, as it’s not like people magically become able to maturely deal with things they were totally unable to the day before when they turn eighteen, and there are risks if people don’t learn moderation and are exposed to the full brunt of everything all at once. Porn blurs the line between fiction and reality because it contains real nudity etc. so it’s understandable that people without any other frame of reference wouldn’t intuit which bits were exaggerated.

There’s a genuine problem that needs dealing with that this is attempting to address in that lots of women and girls report that sexually inexperienced young men and teenage boys assume they want to be strangled during sex because they’ve learned it from porn, and choke them during sex without asking. Age gating porn hasn’t stopped it, so this ban is the next step.

It also carries a jail sentence for possession, just like CSAM, so you’d be in big trouble if the police ever had to look at your computer for any other reason.

Because, as the comment you’re replying to says, if they include any GPL code, the whole combined work has to be licensed as GPL, and the BSD operating systems don’t want to be GPL.

The post title is on English, not French, so the French etymology isn’t particularly relevant.

Also, part of why it’s chain mail in English is to specify that the individual links are made of something rigid. If the definition of maille mattered, it would still fit for something entirely different like a string vest.

We have some windows without curtains, blinds or shutters, so die, I guess.