California Law to Require Linux, Windows Implement Age Verification by Jan 1, 2027 A new California Law (AB-1043), signed by Governor Gavin Newsom, requires all Operating Systems (from macOS to FreeBSD) to implement age verification, at the system level, this year.

The answer isn't to say 'we can hack around this, open source!'. This law must be challenged, repealed, struck down. 1st and/or 4th Amendment. They must get the message that this kind of thing is totally unacceptable in a free country.

This is NOT about age verification. It's about tracking users and suppressing dissent against the government.

Live Linus reaction

Every single distro should immediately amend their license/terms of service to make it a violation of use to be operated by a corporation or government that adheres to these new laws. See who gets the last laugh when whole state datacenters go into violation

How about age verification for microcontrollers to check the voltage readings of pins. Maybe they can require for age verification for square wave signals to form. And don't forget age verification for each OP CODE of your cpu.

Mandating age checks at the OS level is a privacy minefield. Crazy

Requiring Linux to implement something? That's a special kind of stupid right there. "Hey, hey! Random anonymous people on the internet and international mega-corporations! Do this thing! I demand it!"

How about a new federal law, with enforcement: Mandatory 10-year prison sentence for state lawmakers that knowingly vote for unconstitutional legislation.

The world of tech-ignorant Karens are applauding this, but the law was not just doomed to fail, it was DESIGNED to fail. Where this law has those ninnies applauding, once it is discovered to be a total failure, the government will say "looks like Digital ID is the only way."

Redhat will jump through a ring of fire and crawl through broken glass to get on board this.

Once they have your ID tied to your Internet accounts, it's going to turn into "oh but you verify your age at home all the time, this is nothing different..." and creep right up next to you in bed and fester until it becomes authoritarian.

reinstalling Omarchy in CA next year just to feel alive again

I will compile my own OS. They clearly don't understand how open source works.

This will be a good experiment to see what happens to a state when this is enforced. Chances are high, the age verification gets hacked, and IDs will be leaked along with every detail you submitted. Once the horror of this settles down, other states will refuse. They want your information and they want control. This is a backdoor to digital ID. If people comply with this, they will fake the hack. Then, say digital ID is more secure and the only way to protect yourself. Mean while they are the ones behind the leaks. Do not compile, do not buy, bankrupt them all. They need your business and are counting on your giving them everything. Including your freedom.

Guys, you know this madness has to play out. It can't be reversed. The only way out is thru. Things have to break now.

This will never work. Maybe in Windows at some level but it won’t work.

welcome to the future! 🤣

At this point, going into the mountains, taking care of cows is becoming a real consideration.

Seems to be massive ofcus on "age verification" also know as to de-anonynmize the internet. There only one answer to this stuff which is "Fuck off" there is no negotiation for it.

Wow. Colorado has a similar bill in their state legislature as well. Isn’t it crazy how this just happens at the same time?

Can't wait for every distro to have a "CE" California Edition on download pages. Like we have to deal with on tax forms, insurance forms, job applications, etc. Good luck with that dumb idea, Cali-girl.

This is DIGITAL ID disguised as protection for children. DO NOT COMPLY. RESIST!

Prediction: Apple, Microsoft, and Red Hat will provide adherent updates. Then, prosecutors will understand better than the state legislature how unenforceable this. Also, Red Hat will integrate this into systemd.

Remember: "Just think of the children!" is almost always actually, "Let's clamp down on liberty for law-abiding citizens."

@RedHat @Canonical move all offices and jobs out of California immediately. This kind of tyrannical law cannot be tolerated in the open source OS community.

Awesome. Now let's see them actually enforce it. GOOD LUCK!

This will be hilarious, because while I replied with a little bit of snark about this yesterday, the reality is that this will likely fail in court, but the process is the punishment. What I do think this opens a can of worms on, which tells me these politicians have stopped talking to their donors (if they even have any left) is Right to Repair and Software rights for owned hardware, which is something mega companies and software giants have been trying to make these retarded politicians sleep on for decades. This case may very well be forced to ultimately define what constitutes fair use of legally owned hardware and the software that you install upon it.

Linux isnt sold so this means nothing, zero enforcement

What about Linux that run elevators, input age before floor?

This sounds like a back door to eventually force all registration, basically what Australia just went through. If the hardware is forced to do an age check, that means the software is going to have to be forced to do it too. This will be default age verification, they're just going through it a different direction.

So by CA standards any virtual machine will have to have age verification? These law makers do not understand anything about coding. So DOS and any command line OS also needs age verification?

When age verification moves to the operating system level, it stops being about specific apps and starts becoming infrastructure. Once your OS verifies you, every program can inherit that gate. That’s a fundamental shift in how access to the internet is controlled.

I'm OK with that when politicians and public officers will need minimum IQ verification and yearly public polygraph sessions in order to be able to govern