Exemption on age verification for Linux operating systems
Tom's Hardware
California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law — software distributed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses are exempt
AB 1856 excludes open-source operating systems from the upcoming Digital Age Assurance Act.
Guess GNU/Linux is about to get popular with kids.
Good. Maybe then future generations won’t be as tech illiterate.
Thanks to smart phones, this generation of kids is roughly as tech literate as boomers.
I wouldn’t get your hopes up.
My 14yo is on Linux and has been troubleshooting the VR setup. Not going to say she knows Linux well or better than me, but motivation is the key.
Are they the avarage teen in the avarage family tho? I feel like we cannot call that avarage if the parent uses the Fediverse xD
Self-marginalization for the “win.”
Limp energy.
What are you even talking about? Go back to your cave troll
Trolls don’t live in caves. They live under bridges, where life passes by above them.
I never heard more true words
That you and your daughter rock aside, anecdata alas does not trump statistics.
This is the way. A child’s stubbornness is the best path to learning a new skill!
While I’m not the average person, my kids have never known anything but Linux or ChromeOS (because school). They game on SteamOS/Bazzite, they use a Linux laptop at home, and they use Android devices. Everything they use, somewhere inside deep down, is powered by Linux.
Open source ftw
better but still bad. hope it blows up in their faces in ways worse than i can even imagine.
I had a thought, this is done to reduce opposition to age verification. Most people who really care about privacy will use Linux and open source. So now a lot of those will not care about the age verification being thrust on Microsoft/Apple users because it doesn’t affect them.
I’m sure that was an added benefit, but the market share of Linux users is not that big to give a political care about. This was likely a result of effective lobbying to the right people willing to listen to reason.
ETA: I’m still against Age Verification, and throwing Linux a bone doesn’t change that.
Also because there’s no logical, effective way to enforce this on FOSS tech
Aside from, you know, not being able to access anything that looks for that OS okay, or worse…declaring people not on compliance in criminal violation of the law and mass arresting.
I’m glad there are still options.
Cynical me thinks this might make big software vendors marginalize or demonize these platforms further for not “verifying” their users.
Oh, it’ll be just like the “anti-cheat” system, which screws Linux users.
This was never about the children. Besides what does this really accomplish when there’s Roblox?
So if you want to protect your kids from adult rated content, and you live in California, you need to buy a propietary system. Which make sure data collectors get to know all about them, and therefore doesn’t protect them… But am I the only one to see the commercial argument about to be used by MS, Apple, and others?
Their websites and services will ask for age verification and Linux will not provide it.
Therefore Linux systems will be barred from using online services. You will need a proprietary spyware OS in order to continue banking, citizen. Please drink a verification can to continue.
There are some steps you can take in Linux but there are also steps you can take regardless of OS. Gnome has built in parental controls. I’m not sure about the other DEs but Gnome has something. Browsers have had controls for a long time.
For those so inclined, you can set up network wide controls via a PiHole instance. If that’s too restrictive, you can pick and choose your kids’ devices to apply the restrictions. That’s what I do. It was super easy. I just update the block list regularly and test it.
As parents, we need to have some awareness of what our kids do online. I’m all in favor of making it easier for parents to do that and better educating parents on what is available.
The big guys might advertise their “new parental controls” but I doubt they will be advertising against Linux and open source. I’m sure Apple will have a version of this that is slightly more privacy respecting than Microsoft and maybe they’ll advertise that. They don’t care about Linux though. Not from a competitive standpoint, not yet.
I hope you are right.
Yet do you know if the thing implemented by California would allow criminals to make sure that a kid is really a kid before they attack? Because if that is the case, and even if it needs a hack to do so, it may do the opposit of its aim.
Regarding the hypothetical anti-Linux marketing, Linux is not that big of a market. It shows promising growth, but it’s not even 10% of the desktop market. Microsoft leads hand over fist, and Apple has its own giant cult.
I don’t see them spending much effort to scare/entice people away from Linux, because they’re not really a threat. On top of that, Linux is its own deterrent, because people still don’t realize that opening a terminal is becoming more optional all the time.
Until Linux breaks 10%, which is still less than half of Apple, I don’t think they’ll really care.
USA murdered anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti far before they became a significant threat to the system. What ever tries to bring freedom is so scared by american authorities… But once more, hopefully you are right and I am just overly pessimistic.
I mean, we’re talking about a hobby project operating system, not people who support a different governing system (also, they were arrested and executed during another time in history when “radicals” and immigrants were particularly hated by those in power).
I appreciate the concern, but I don’t think those stories are really that analogous. Nobody in the government is currently worried that a bunch of programmers are stoking the fires of rebellion, though if they start trying to say that “Linux is the operating system of antifa,” then we might need to start worrying.
At some point they may need a new target, and we could be one. We are known by the general public while we are neither too much nor too powerful. And nobody would defend us beside those already targeted.
Certainly, but we’re not there (yet). Fretting about all the possible negative possibilities might feel like preparation, but your time would be better spent finding ways to protect our digital sovereignty/privacy, which is a good thing regardless of the market or political conditions.
I would love to find good ideas for protecting digital freedom, and freedom in general. May we can assume that those who do not care about privacy aren’t using Lemmy… But I don’t know how to protect ours except by defending it as a principle that should be universal.
And so a rule to restrict freedom except for us is not a good news to me. It is not as bad as if we were concerned directly, but it is still a step backward. Isn’t it?
It certainly is. Rights for some and not others aren’t rights, they’re privileges, which we all know can be easily taken away.
Yep, notice how I said “another time.” The parallel with current happenings is not lost on me.
That’s not at all what this means. You’ve always been free to add any additional parental controls to your kid’s devices, and that hasn’t changed.
I know it is not the aim, I am concerned by how it may be used against free softwares… once more, I hope I am wrong.
Also, I am concerned by the loss of freedom involved by this policy. And I don’t think it is made to protect any one, just to restrict and control.
I am waiting for the day to teach the niblings how to operate TempleOS
A good day. A good day, indeed.
Geez. Windows is just getting less and less worth it, even for more mainstream consumers.
I don’t think anyone should be using Windows. It’s fascist spyware. Windows users don’t own their systems, Microsoft does.
You’re definitely not wrong there.
Why to specify the licenses? Why not all opensource software?
If it’s public domain, is it required? If it’s EUPL, is it required?
It’s not just those specific licences, it’s:
Thank you very much!
I’m really impressed!
The headline shortchanges the exception.
This ahould mean an Open Source, encrypted Discord competitor would also not be required to do age checks (i.e. Matrix, etc).
I’m under the belief the push for Linux to be exempted is because the amount of work that enterprise would have to retrofit their network, server and software applications would be too costly. So once again Capitalism favors itself over the consumer. Just here the consumer gets a taste of what a govt exemption feels like.
It’ll be a lot more difficult to update Windows servers for this. This doesn’t make any sense.
Well, this has the potential to positively impact a project I’m an active part of: Simutrans. Simutrans is FOSS, so if software became required to verify age, it would definitely cause issues for us. So this is potentially some good news.
While I personally dislike age verification, I’m only a little worried about government overreach. Not totally unconcerned, mind, but I’m not so sure it’ll generally be quite as huge of a deal as some seem to think. But I don’t particularly like it.
So to me, this is a potential positive step in pushing more to Linux/FOSS, which I think is generally a good thing. And if I’m right and age verification isn’t a huge deal, I still think this is good for that reason. And if some of the more worried folks are correct, then this potentially could be huge.
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