Perhaps it's not obvious to the author of that software, but publishing products (even free ones) involves liability. You cannot simply say, "Well I didn't charge you!" A free product can still be the subject of a fraud lawsuit, or a negligence lawsuit, etc.

And I think this is as it should be. I'm not sure why people think software meant for use by a broad audience, however cheap, should not be subject to basic safety, security and privacy regulations.

What's more, it's pretty clear the author doesn't actually have a lot of GDPR obligation. They need to maintain a contact point which Apple is actually doing for them. They need to forward RTE requests to crashlytics. If they're doing ANYTHING else with personal data, that's shady as hell and I'm glad they're not doing it to EU citizens anymore.

In the United States and under English common law, those giving away something for free are only liable for 'gross' negligence, which is a significantly lower bar than the implied warranties of merchantibility that will arise if you start charging. All these warranties can simply be disclaimed, by licensing the software correctly.

> I'm not sure why people think software meant for use by a broad audience, however cheap, should not be subject to basic safety, security and privacy regulations.

There is a major difference between cheap and free. There is an especially major difference between cheap and open-source, because most open-source licenses include specific text to disclaim any implied warranty. Without contractual consideration, the author's words don't form any kind of contract with those who choose to use his software.

This is not a difficult concept to grasp. If the author made any money off his project, then yes, a very strong warranty is implied, but without that, the warranty is rather weak. Under common law, those giving things away for free can only be held liable for 'gross negligence', which is different from the automatic warranties that arise when you sell things, regardless of price.

Even in America, if a user can argue that their consent is uninformed you can still end up with a lawsuit. What's more, various states have different rules regarding that liability as well.

You're not wrong in this guy's case, especially since his software is on the App store. However, for most open-source projects, the installation process is sufficiently obtuse that you would be hard pressed to claim you were 'tricked' into installing it

It's not clear that open source projects that are published public domain actually have GDPR obligations. Specific INSTANCES of them running as a service might.

That's the law in the EU, I think it's natural to have a hobby that doesn't break any laws.

Right... which is why this guy has decided this is no longer going to be his hobby in the EU. While the EU has every right to say 'those who do X for a hobby must do Y to comply' they cannot say 'everybody must have X for a hobby' or 'Bob must continue doing X for a hobby' .

The high-tech laws and regulations of the EU are a bit more sophisticated than in the US so it may take some time for the rest of the world to catch on.

Well, if anything, Europe has a history of labeling authoritarians as progressives. Whether that's something to be proud of is something history will decide.

Authoritarianism is the only way to protect the people from runaway capitalism. Juncker is a good leader - I never understood why Americans/Anglos think that "Authoritarianism = BAD".

Probably because we’ve internalized the lessons of the aftermath of the British empire

He's not in the EU.

Indeed but he head a TLD from a self-governing dependency which is implementing the GDPR:

https://www.gov.im/about-the-government/data-protection-gdpr...

So he wants the funky TLD from Europe but he doesn't want European law 'hassle'. Hypocritical.

How is that hypocritical? It's really obvious that the author puchased an "im" domain because it looks like the acronym for "Instant Messaging", not because he wants to be associated with a European country or European law. He also purchased his domain name before the GDPR came out.