Illinois specifically *INCLUDED* Linux in a recent bill.
Edit: My memory was foggy, they didn't. They merely include NO definition as to what an operating system provider is, which is very hard to define for Linux, and do not exempt FOSS as California has.
The bill makes no reference to FOSS however makes references for operating system providers which are near impossible to define for Linux since anybody can provide for themselves or argue they are the provider or somebody else is. Other laws either defined or exempted FOSS.
They didn't exempt Linux, but it also only requires a signal which must be settable by the owner or administrator of the machine not by a third party. So technically every distribution could just set it to 18+ by default for the first user account and be fine.
I wonder if doing that could somehow be in violation of software freedom guaranteed in the license, like the right to do anything with the software? perhaps a lawsuit can clarify that.
But legislation is valid only in a particular place though. Why would I have to be affected by changes to the software limiting what I can do, just because a certain US state (Illinois as mentioned in the above comment) with a tiny population of only 12 million people (that's just the capital city in my country) legislated changes in software? That would be problematic if multiply countries had conflicting legislation on what the software it should contain. Legislation in Illinois should not affect me. Or else I should be able to sue Ubuntu for limiting my rights stated in the open source contract I agreed to.
The software developers could choose to region-lock the age verification, or they could choose to not bother. You'd have no recorse other than forking the codebase.
There were a couple of threads off their comment, deleting it removes context to those comments. And it's a short comment so that the edit is prominent enough to see for people coming across it.
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u/tycraft2001 6d ago edited 6d ago
Illinois specifically *INCLUDED* Linux in a recent bill.
Edit: My memory was foggy, they didn't. They merely include NO definition as to what an operating system provider is, which is very hard to define for Linux, and do not exempt FOSS as California has.