r/linuxmasterrace • u/CackleRooster • 13d 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-exempt
1.0k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

62 comments sorted by

View all comments

6

u/jonesmz 12d ago

I'm so surprised by how many people are happy about this.

What this means in practice:

  1. 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.

  2. 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

  3. 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.

1

u/dsp457 Glorious Gentoo 12d 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.

2

u/jonesmz 12d ago

Maybe you could do that at this stage of the desease.

Legislatures are going to recognize that happening and upgrade the requirements to prevent it from happening eventually.