Several people have written to me about the federal government’s online census system, which is open only to Windows and Mac users. Russell provides a good analysis of the security issues raised by the approach.
The Census and Open Source
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They’ve changed their minds
See http://www22.statcan.ca/ccr02/ccr02_003_e.htm
The restriction has been lifted for linux users. The remaining requirements are the same as for Windows/Mac, i.e. specific browser and Java versions. The text switches back and forth between “open source” and “linux”, so I don’t know if this applies to *BSD as well.