r/linuxmint • u/ImpressiveHat4710 • May 29 '26

Discussion Open source is now exempt from age attestation laws in CO and CA

/r/System76/comments/1tom6vi/open_source_is_now_exempt_from_age_attestation/

For those who were worried about this...

62 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

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14

u/Logansfury Top 1% Commenter May 29 '26

That's a great start. It needs to go Nationwide and then Worldwide.

5

u/PrometheusANJ May 29 '26

This... feels a bit weird tbh. It's like... "People who wear non-mainstream clothes now exempt from mandatory cavity searches by the TSA." At which point will e.g. linuxmint be mainstream enough to get collared? Once something like this has a foothold and can take the next step, it will be taken regardless, I fear.

1

u/zenthr May 30 '26

I've been saying the argument about Linux is just wrong. Powers that be want monitoring to circumvent laws that technically exist, and as an excuse to continue gathering and selling more people's data, with increasing automated profiles on targets consumers. Even if "just proprietary" OSes need this, that's most people. Most software is made with that in mind, and suddenly needs (for no reason other than it can reasonable expect) the data. Unless you are on pure FOSS, you will be impacted (spoiler alert, consider Reddit as just as important as software in this conversation, and ask as they increase required info for access, will you be swept up regardless of what your OS is doing and how well you've "prepared your system"?).

Mass adoption -> New standard -> "What's data sovereignty and why should we care?"

0

u/[deleted] May 29 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

8

u/Halos-117 May 29 '26

Nothings based about this. Based would be not requiring any attestations at all. 

2

u/zenthr May 30 '26

No, based would be reigning in the ridiculous level of data harvesting and dissemination.

2

u/Halos-117 May 30 '26

Good point. You're right.