Some states are beginning to throw their support behind OSS. It seems the "nation-state" has been "soon to be irrelevant" for a while now, but until "soon" arrives, the State is still a primary actor with immense resources and influence. So saying, "these are rules for States" as a way to minmize the importance of this section of the TPP does not make sense to me. At all. It frankly sounds like crazy talk. Sorry, but is does. As software becomes more pervasive and goods and services are delivered by or composed of software more and more, software will take on attributes once associated soley with "real property" and "free speech". As that happens, legal language like this limiting the State's ability, in any way, to legislate software will limit the State's population from having a say over how software should be treated in that population, in that society, in that community.
If the TPP does not impose the same restrictions on contracts between private parties, that is not a benign thing. Private parties includes corporations, and most contests between legal corporations and "individual natural persons" eventually are settled in the interest of the party with more resources, often the legal corporation. Such challenges may play out in the markets or the courts, or it may play out over an even longer period in the legislature by changing the laws regulating or guiding the markets and courts. Thus, hamstringing the State's ability to have laws counter to this section of the TPP actually saves an entity the time and money which might otherwise have been needed to lobby a State's legislative bodies or develop the legal framework by way of a legal process. It fixes the playing field in favor of non State actors. Currently the most powerful non State actors are for profit corporations and privately held companies. This section of the TPP is not at all neutral, if understood to apply only to States. It would then heavily favor corporations and companies, and it would limit State actors and thus their populations. It would favor entities driven by profit motive or the motives of whomever the individuals are that own said private companies. That. Is. Huge. That is a fundamental shift in how, say someone like an American like me, many people might want to govern the communities they are a part of.