this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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Canonical is UK based, so scrub that.
But Redhat, Rocky, Alma are all owned by US legal entities and can absolutely be legally forced to do as you describe.
Technically blocked is something else, mind. We're clever, resourceful and motivated people and US laws wouldn't directly affect us.
However - you're thinking small. US influence of IT is massive. Routers, servers, hardware of all levels. The most enterprise level software is US led. All of these things can be restricted, or tarriffed heavily, or sanctioned entirely. If the US wants to hurt the rest of the world, it just has to tell Broadcom to turn off vmware outside of America. Ditto Cisco, Ditto Dell, Ditto... etc etc. Sure, it would be illegal, but does the American government care about that?
Anyone telling you that "Y won't happen because it's unthinkable" clearly hasn't been paying attention this year.
More than that, it's the cloud services from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft that worry me. Many IT shops are dependent on these services, so if the US regime decides to f- around with that, many companies outside will be screwed.
Absolutely.
These services are also used by many governments around the world and considered critical infrastructure.
Terrifying, right?
If its a matter of when. Still has 3 3/4 of a term left.
You wonder though, with the big players, whether they can lobby / pay off trump in some way to not be affected? I mean look at how the China tariffs changed overnight to not include mobile phones etc. Can’t have the majority of Apple’s production being subject to tariffs (they sure can’t make them in the US for the same cost)!
Redhat Inc is in the US, but Redhat Ltd is Europe (and more I think). I don't know what would happen if the parts of the company had to take different paths for a while. I would assume all the non-US stuff would want to keep making money while the US slogs through crazy...