California moves to exempt Linux from its upcoming #age_verification law after backlash over forcing operating systems to collect users’ ages — amendment proposed by the same lawmaker who wrote the original law | Tom’s Hardware
▻https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/california-moves-to-exempt-linux-from-its-upcoming-age-verification-la
#California lawmakers may be backing away from a controversial age-verification requirement bill that alarmed #Linux and #open-source developers earlier this year, after a new amendment bill proposed exempting most open-source operating systems from the state’s upcoming Digital Age Assurance Act. In practice, that would likely exempt most mainstream Linux distributions — including #Debian, #Fedora, #Ubuntu, #Arch_Linux, and #Mint — from compliance requirements scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2027.
Assembly Bill 1856 (AB 1856), currently moving through California’s legislature ahead of committee reviews in June, would amend the state’s earlier age-assurance law by excluding software distributed under licenses that allow users to “copy, redistribute, and modify the software.”
The proposed amendment specifically states: “#Operating_system provider” does not mean a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under #license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the #software.
