I'll bite. His statements in this very forum could he used against him as evidence of intent to violate the law, should he be prosecuted someday.

There's a reason why lawyers generally advise their clients to remain silent.

No one is asking me to add code to stagex right now, so there is no actual legal situation I am in.

I am not even an owner of the project, I founded the project, but am now just one of many volunteer contributors. Are they going to mandate wikipedia volunteers alter pages to state guidelines as well?

We must not be afraid of stuff like this. It is blatant overreach I do not expect would stand legal challenge.

I am simply saying I would refuse to write code I do not want to write. I am honestly surprised people think this is such a scary thing to say.

The point of saying this publicly is not in order to harm or help my own defense of a court order from another state I will probably get.

It is to signal to legislators that if they decide to take this fight, it will be done with people not afraid to do it all in public to establish public trust. It is not even okay that people -think- it is possible for our FOSS projects to be altered or backdoored by any random state officials.

What next, asking Torvalds to add KYC to the kernel?

Pretending like technical limitations protect him from being in violation of the law like another commentator made an analogy to handcuffing yourself to property you were told to leave?

His comments on this thread itself which establish intent to not comply with the law?

All power to him for going with his morals but he’s making unforced errors and should instead be contacting one of the several activist legal firms that would at least give him advice on how to protect himself and not follow through with this law if not outright pro bono legal defense.

I’m not a lawyer and even I know that argument would never hold up given the plethora of other laws that have been implemented through software. Not to mention copyright and patent claims too.

That argument has been going on for decades, and has had few victories in the court system. The DMCA, which prohibits trafficking in anticircumvention devices, even though there's a lot of code in them, is still alive and well.

There is pretty solid case law for the constitutionality of a variety of compliance requirements. If you can comply by being silent then they aren't really compelling you to do say anything.

Is is also clear that there are major deficits in our Constitution but that the amendment process has failed to survive a modern world.

Any of our original forefathers would recognize today's American federal government as an overreach from their indended form of government.

The only reason we aren't seeing a Boston Tea Party 2.0 over the recent string of coordinated assaults against our inalienable human rights is because surveillance capitalism is already coarsely achieving its goals of suppressing any civic participation which exists between the spectrum of ineffective political protest to the most desperate, radical action.

Some of those among us simply cannot drink this koolaid. A quote from MLK, Jr:

  I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

I think the issue here is that while the people here are aware of the history and "utility" of laws like the one above, most people aren't and right now "regulate social media, the internet, and what my kid does with computers" is having quite a day. Inevitably all of this is framed in terms of keeping children safe, whereas piracy is at most a misdemeanor of very little consequence.

Although I have no doubt that courts would ultimately side with you, the chance of becoming even a transient focus of a frustrated AG or congressperson looking to pin blame on "Out of touch and recalcitrant techies, the very ones who created this problem," is chilling. It's meant to be chilling, but it often works because he reality of what you'd go through on the way to eventual victory isn't trivial. Maybe you're willing to go through the courts (public opinion and otherwise), but if so the first thing any attorney you employ will beg you to do is stop talking the way you are.

tl;dr I think taking a stand is great, I support that, I think doing it now is a good idea. I don't think you should talk about it in public though, especially not in a literal, "Come and get me" way.