If I said the Web Integrity API is incompatible with Free Software, would you read that as:
a) Chromium would cease to be Free Software if it implemented it; or
b) Web Integrity itself makes effective Free Software structurally impossible and exists to punish its users?
The latter is what I mean. Web Integrity or SafetyNet are a closer counterpart to this situation than your curl example. A user agent is just a hint; attestation is an effective enforcement mechanism.
No Free Software license on my client can obligate your server to cooperate. But if attestation becomes the norm across many different services, the entire framework of user choice Free Software stands on collapses.
How would Ungoogled Chromium survive if every second website rejected non-Google Chrome? We've already seen this play out with Android: more people daily-drive GrapheneOS than Lineage because it passes Google's lower-level integrity checks.
And when a "strongly advised" government app requires the strictest attestation level, will you have to move countries just to exercise that freedom of choice you supposedly have?
Ungoogled Chromium is still free software even if every second website rejects it. Free software does not have a de facto right to interoperate, and does not become less free or structurally impossible because other entities don't interact with it. The freedoms define what you can do to and with software you possess; it does not put requirements on 3rd parties to interact with you.
In the same way that commercial entities aren't guaranteed a business model just because they want one, free software isn't guaranteed connectivity to other people's systems just because otherwise it's less useful.
The latter is what I mean. Web Integrity or SafetyNet are a closer counterpart to this situation than your curl example. A user agent is just a hint; attestation is an effective enforcement mechanism.
No Free Software license on my client can obligate your server to cooperate. But if attestation becomes the norm across many different services, the entire framework of user choice Free Software stands on collapses.
How would Ungoogled Chromium survive if every second website rejected non-Google Chrome? We've already seen this play out with Android: more people daily-drive GrapheneOS than Lineage because it passes Google's lower-level integrity checks.
And when a "strongly advised" government app requires the strictest attestation level, will you have to move countries just to exercise that freedom of choice you supposedly have?