I've been developing an argument that the right to fork (the irrevocable right granted by open source licenses to any party to modify and redistribute the software) fundamentally changes the liability picture for the original author.

The argument in brief:

When a jurisdiction mandates a compliance mechanism, it is mandating a modification to software behavior. Open source licenses already grant that jurisdiction the legal right to make exactly that modification and distribute the result. The compliance pathway therefore exists and is available to any party with the will to use it; including the regulating jurisdiction itself.

This means the original author has not withheld compliance. They have made compliance structurally possible while not being the party with either the control or the obligation to implement it. The party with the obligation is the one exercising control over distribution within the jurisdiction; which may be the jurisdiction itself, a local distributor, or an app store.

If this argument holds, it has significant implications for how open source authors should respond to regulations like California AB 1043, the EU's DSA, and similar laws.

I'm genuinely uncertain whether this argument has been made formally before, and whether it would survive scrutiny in a compliance or enforcement context.

Has anyone encountered this argument in a legal or policy context? Does it hold?