It's not a problem for Linux as a concept itself. The problem is with legal represneatons of it. For example let's say you are providing a distrubution (like Ubuntu) or seeling a computer with Linux preinstalled. Then you are liable! Also.. think of all the devices that have linux installed... including Android phones.. ALL of them which have any legal represantion in California (for now! But also New York for example) are liable. BSD... is liable OPen BSD... is well.. BERKELY (aka California) based. This of course means that Chinese distros or Russian distros... will as usual be able to continue operating while the very best won't be or they will have to pay a fine. See... we're not just talkign abouit coding from my garage or something. We're talking legal entitites. As for Linux being decentralized... you don't have to guess... There's a copy of code avaible on Github and lesewhere.... Just check the forks and you'll see it's decentralized' :) That doesn't mean thought that kernel isn't very central-developed since Linux was born! Kernel is to this day under watchful eye of Linux Torwalds himself + the core kernel developers (drivers specialists, graphics specialists...etc etc etc). It's a whole universe here, man! But distros... the big distros are projects that are usually incorporated - that's the whole point! That they can do that using the same kernel freely available. But even if kernel remains as-is, your final Ubuntu distro will either have to follow to law or pay something like 20k per installed Ubuntu machine! Do you understand the problem now? It's not just 'decetralized' or not... It's practical aplication in real world. Your computer is physical... and if you run linux on it, you're running a distro, a flavor of linux. And if that distro is any of the popular distros then it's like 95% that there's at least an organisation of some kind behind it because it takes A LOT to make a distribution that actually works well as daily desktop driver.