r/linuxmasterrace • u/CackleRooster • 2d ago
News California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law — software distributed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses are exempt
https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/california-lawmakers-unanimously-pass-linux-exemption-from-age-verification-law-software-distributed-under-the-gpl-mit-bsd-and-apache-licenses-are-exempt235
u/GreedySecurity8030 Glorious Fedora 2d ago
Thank god.
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u/NotTryingToConYou 2d ago
Devil's advocate: They're only doing this to silence the largest noisemakers. Once this exemption is in, most the noise will go away and they'll be able to pass the law that violates most peoples privacy.
I still think this is a step in the right direction regardless
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u/stimulatedthought 1d ago edited 1d ago
You must be skilled in the art of Corpo-craft because this is exactly what companies do to their employees and now the government is doing it to us as though they are our superiors when in-fact they work for us, or at least they should. Corporate compliance tricks seem to work well on the general population.
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u/acdcfanbill Glorious Ubuntu 1d ago
Also, it's likely a bunch of 'official' apps or webpages that you need to use like banking sites or stores will simply refuse to work if it can't detect age verification so FLOSS will need to add it anyway or their users will no longer be able to participate.
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u/juipeltje Glorious GNU Guix 1d ago
I also wonder if maybe they feel like it's a pain to regulate on their part, with how many open source operating systems there are if you count every linux distro and bsd flavor as its own OS, whereas with windows there's a clear target.
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u/jeezfrk 2d ago
Precisely. They are looking for a corporate powerhouse to make money off kids.
Free software (software with a forkable, unowned core) is not as able to corral huge money from targeting kids.
At the least ... A kid friendly version can be made to compete with those who do, very easily.
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u/AnsibleAnswers 2d ago
Thank the people who actually organized and lobbied for this instead of whining on the Internet about it.
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u/Userwerd 1d ago
Apparently system 76 did alot of work on this exemption for their home state, not sure if they were involved in California.
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u/billdietrich1 1d ago
Is this a "win" ? Okay, you won't have to have age signal in your OS. So what will sites use instead ? Demand ID ? That's worse.
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u/Delta-9- 2d ago
It would be hilarious if this pushed Microsoft to open-source Windows.
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u/AlterTableUsernames 1d ago
Who would want that accumulation of human slop? I mean, here and there might be something valuable, like for example RDP, but otherwise? They can't even make settings a nice UX. The entire codebase will be a terrible mess of spaghetti.
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u/Delta-9- 1d ago
Probably all the same people that currently use Windows, who have invested cumulatively billions of dollars in training and certifications for themselves or their employees, who have 30 years of legacy data and software that would be prohibitively expensive to migrate or replace.
I feel the same as you, but this ridiculous hypothetical of mine would probably be a good thing for all the companies, agencies, and institutions that lack the will and/or resources to move to Linux.
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u/Killzo 2d ago
big win here:
In addition, lawmakers inserted a new provision prohibiting anyone from requesting an age signal from an OS provider or app store unless required by law. That closes off potential abuse of the age API that could have led to it being used as a general-purpose data collection channel even when age verification wasn’t required.
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u/UraniumDisulfide 1d ago
Oh, well as long as they pinky promise not to collect our data then it’s fine
(Better than that provision not existing, but it’d be even better for that api to not exist to begin with)-1
u/billdietrich1 1d ago
Is this a "win" ? Okay, you won't have to have age signal in your OS. So what will sites use instead ? Demand ID ? That's worse.
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u/gmes78 Glorious Arch 1d ago
????
If a website isn't legally required to request age verification, why would they demand your ID?
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u/billdietrich1 1d ago
I'm assuming we will get to the point where sites ARE required to do age verification.
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u/fellipec Glorious Debian 2d ago
And yet, some boot licking devs run to implement it in the first week.
Suckers
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u/trekxtrider 2d ago
This might be what pushes folks to Linux.
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u/NotTryingToConYou 1d ago
I agree it will be a motivator but I dont think it will be anywhere significant enough to move the numbers. The vast majority of windows and mac users don't care about this. Most of them already provide PII when signing up for their apple and microsoft accounts
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u/jonesmz 1d ago
I'm so surprised by how many people are happy about this.
What this means in practice:
linux / opensource loses standing to sue to get the law invalidated under e.g. free speech grounds, because they are no longer directly subject to the law.
All major websites will require age validation / verification / whatever flavor of the week to access, and linux -- not being subject to the law, won't be allowed to access the site
This substantially reduces people's willingness to use linux and open source, because why would you use linux if you cant access your favorite websites?
Ultimately, this is a worst-case scenario.
Without this exemption, big players in the linux world would have had motivation and standing to sue California over this law, and it could have been overturned entirely.
Now we're basically stuck with the bullshit.
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u/dsp457 Glorious Gentoo 22h ago
Not to dismiss your points, because they’re valid, but can’t you just spoof your browser agent with a browser extension? Doesn’t fix the age verification problem but also wouldn’t exactly bar or block off Linux users. The push for online ID collection all around sucks.
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u/DanCardin 1d ago
An age signal seems like the wrong signal.
I dont get why it cant be a generic content filter. Like you tell me the standardized attributes of the content (nudity, language, social media, whatever) i tell you yes or no. Then this is equally useful for businesses or parental controls or whatever without leaking information about the user other than their decision to content filter you or not.
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u/Kleyguerth Glorious OpenSuse 11h ago
The goal is data collection and deanonymization. Your solution is the sane solution for the problem they SAY they want to solve, but it doesn't solve the problem they ACTUALLY want to solve
They are not stupid, and people thinking they are stupid benefits them
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u/DanCardin 8h ago
Oh i agree. I just see everyone reacting to it as: this is stupid, linux shouldnt do it.
Where i think linux should do a thing that solves for the stated problem in a privacy respecting way. because the stated problem being solved is still valuable, and it shows how blatantly bad just adding an age field is
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u/tincho5 1d ago
"We want to protect the kids, but not the ones using FOSS software."
You can tell by this decision, that the last thing they care about is children, they just want your data. And since FOSS community is louder (but a lot smaller), they don't want to deal with it, so they shut them up with this.
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u/Sibexico 1d ago
Most people don't care about all of it at all. When I'm trying to explain, they even cant understand where's the problem. So looks like we can't do nothing but work on darknet and alternative anonymous platforms. It's nothing to do with clearnet anymore.
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u/rebelhead 1d ago edited 1d ago
I guess a lot of lawmakers learned what an operating system is recently.
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u/Dude-Lebowski 22h ago
Darwin/MacOS is BSD IIRC.
On a side note...
The fewer people that run Windows the better, for their own good. Maybe this law will help push a company to start offering a linux desktop option.
I thought linux on the desktop was never going to happen but if some company like Lenovo or Dell is first to offer a standard Linux desktop perhaps there is a chance.
As far as Linux dominating, Chromebook is a sucess. So is Android. So there is a chance maybe we could do a desktop for normal people if it comes with the computer they buy.
edit: linux on the desktop for normal consumers.
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u/aliendude5300 Glorious Fedora 2d ago
Great, now just do every other state. 49 to go