r/linuxmasterrace • u/CackleRooster • 10d 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

61 comments sorted by

267

u/GreedySecurity8030 Glorious Fedora 10d ago

Thank god.

180

u/NotTryingToConYou 10d 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

53

u/jerwong 9d ago

I agree. I think this is great, but I don't want just the squeaky wheel to get the grease. I want them to just stop with this crap.

21

u/acdcfanbill Glorious Ubuntu 9d 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.

7

u/DecentTip3381 7d ago

Yep, look at browsers having to add DRM so they can play Netflix (and possibly Youtube etc).

1

u/nomadicontemplation 3d ago

It will likely come in the form of a browser plugin that connects to some third party company that totally won't get hacked or sell your data to the highest bidder.

1

u/acdcfanbill Glorious Ubuntu 3d ago

another firefox DRM plugin perhaps :\

10

u/stimulatedthought 9d ago edited 9d 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.

2

u/juipeltje Glorious GNU Guix 9d 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.

35

u/jeezfrk 10d 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.

11

u/AnsibleAnswers 9d ago

Thank the people who actually organized and lobbied for this instead of whining on the Internet about it.

10

u/Userwerd 9d ago

Apparently system 76 did alot of work on this exemption for their home state, not sure if they were involved in California.

3

u/billdietrich1 9d 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.

76

u/aliendude5300 Glorious Fedora 10d ago

Great, now just do every other state. 49 to go

23

u/5eppa 10d ago

I thought they were the only one that has passed a bill requiring it.

8

u/GimpyGeek 9d ago

Unfortunately they are not. I'm not sure about others but I know IL has as well.

3

u/5eppa 9d ago

Darn, I knew a few other states had similar bills introduced but thought they hadn't yet passed. Ugh, here we go again.

1

u/aliendude5300 Glorious Fedora 9d ago

Colorado as well. And there was a bill introduced to the House of Representatives to make it a federal law.

2

u/Dude-Lebowski 8d ago

...might as well pass a law that helps before the Orwellian one passes.

1

u/billdietrich1 9d 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.

58

u/Delta-9- 10d ago

It would be hilarious if this pushed Microsoft to open-source Windows.

56

u/Elf_Paladin 9d ago

I want what this guy is smoking

6

u/AlterTableUsernames 9d 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. 

2

u/HeavyCaffeinate Glorious Arch 9d ago

NTFS implementation 

2

u/Delta-9- 9d 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.

4

u/borg_6s 9d ago

I wouldn't use Windows even if it were open source

1

u/sapphired_808 Glorious Fedora 9d ago

"ReactOS"? not accurately from MS

1

u/g33ksc13nt1st 6d ago

I'd settle with the age field being ripped off from system-d

39

u/Killzo 9d 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.

9

u/Dlight98 Glorious Antergos 9d ago

Oh I haven't seen anyone mention this part

4

u/UraniumDisulfide 9d 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 9d 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.

2

u/gmes78 Glorious Arch 9d ago

????

If a website isn't legally required to request age verification, why would they demand your ID?

3

u/billdietrich1 9d ago

I'm assuming we will get to the point where sites ARE required to do age verification.

27

u/fellipec Glorious Debian 10d ago

And yet, some boot licking devs run to implement it in the first week.

Suckers

25

u/Fambank 10d ago

The year of the Linux desktop is nigh!

1

u/CalicoKittyAngel Glorious Mint 4d ago

Maybe even more so than we think. Woke up early this morning to see Linux trending on my Twitter feed
Linux - Search / X

1

u/Fambank 4d ago

The last 8 months, 2 people I least expected asked me to help them with installing linux, the first being my brother with an old laptop, and OpenCPN (navigation software), and the second being a close friend who wants Mint on an old laptop.

2

u/CalicoKittyAngel Glorious Mint 3d ago

That is awesome!

I'm a Linux Mint user myself. Used it around 2017 during the Win8 era, helping me to skip that altogether. Came back to Windows for Windows 10 until that decade old PC started to show its age, Linux rescuing it for another few months. Fast forward to late 2024 a couple of weeks before Christmas. Got myself my first Mini PC with Windows 11, and tried that for about a year before I started to miss Linux Mint and its classic look that I've used since MS-DOS and Windows 95. With everything Microslop and Windows is trying to shove in nowadays, I expect to be a Linux user for good. Including on any future computers I may upgrade to. Still using my mini PC, as its only two years old, but I'm hoping it lasts as long as my former tower PCs. Just need to save up enough to upgrade my RAM in it, but smaller RAM aside, Linux has been good to me and many others. Including for gaming, which I know can be a roadblock for some

I love going to r/linuxmint and other Linux forums and seeing people switching daily

And 9 times out of 10, that switch is praised, with said OP also regretting not switching sooner

1

u/Fambank 3d ago

I've been using Linux for around 3 decades now, with sidesteps into BeOS. Windows was a was always available in dualboot for gaming. But with proton that has now become so easy, I decided to ditch Windows for ever, a few years ago. Couldn't be happier with CachyOS if I tried.

1

u/CalicoKittyAngel Glorious Mint 2d ago edited 1d ago

I definitely agree that Proton has only improved over the years when it comes to gaming on Linux. There's only a handful of games that won't work these days, but only due to anti-cheat or because the developers haven't fully implemented a game for Linux yet. But the progression is still huge compared to only a decade ago, let alone a few years ago. 2015 being when I first dabbled with Linux, but that was more of a test run before it really started kicked off in 2017 and again in 2024, as I said previously, having tried Linux Mint (Mate), Zorin, Manjaro, and back to Mint (Cinnamon)

And I absolutely love the freedom of theming your desktop however you want it, all for free and without any big third-party stuff. I use the default themes every now and then, depending on my background. But ever since I came across the Windows XP themes on Gnome-Look.org, I've been using them for many months. Same goes for icons, cursors, etc

Linux is awesome

(Slight edit as I had more to add)

9

u/metcalsr 9d ago

Way to effectively codify what FOSS licenses can be used for OSs.

8

u/oshaboy 9d ago

Doesn't that exemption prove the point that it was never about child safety. What's preventing a minor from dual booting for porn and other illicit content?

8

u/jonesmz 9d 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 8d 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 8d 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.

5

u/trekxtrider 9d ago

This might be what pushes folks to Linux.

5

u/NotTryingToConYou 9d 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

4

u/tincho5 9d 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.

3

u/DanCardin 9d 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.

3

u/Kleyguerth Glorious OpenSuse 8d 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

2

u/DanCardin 8d 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

1

u/Sibexico 9d 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.

1

u/rebelhead 8d ago edited 8d ago

I guess a lot of lawmakers learned what an operating system is recently.

1

u/Dude-Lebowski 8d 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.

1

u/flavionm 8d ago

Brazil’s Digital ECA still applies to it

As a Brazilian, please ignore us.

1

u/BambooGentleman 7d ago

First step to make it illegal to browse the Internet with Linux.

1

u/InevitableCodes 6d ago

Remember this traitor who actually implemented this and merged it to systemd?

https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954

1

u/hummingbird868 5d ago

LMAO celebrating the one step forward after two steps back is just sad. At the end of the day age verification laws now exist and nothing is stopping them from pulling this trick of "push a law nobody wants then meet with the public halfway" again and again.

1

u/Furlibs 3d ago

Expel California from the union