So DB48X provides a covered application store?
(e) (1) “Covered application store” means a publicly available internet website, software application, online service, or platform that distributes and facilitates the download of applications from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing that can access a covered application store or can download an application.
Also, where does anything in the CA bill mandate age verification? It's saying the OS needs to prompt for age bracket info and allow the third party apps to query that. That is far different from verification.
> Also, where does anything in the CA bill mandate age verification? It's saying the OS needs to prompt for age bracket info and allow the third party apps to query that. That is far different from verification.
Regardless of the technical details of the law(s), the devs are sensibly refusing to prompt for age on a fricking calculator.
Hopefully Linux distros get on board with this and announce non-CA/CO compliance as policy.
Ultimately, it does not matter. This legal notice is just theater, as anyone from CA or CO can still download, build and use the program. Linux distributions will just do the same.
Certainly. However, The developer seems to want to avoid the $2,500 per violation by any child who accesses the calculator, and might see a dick pic... because that calculator firmware does indeed allow for image viewing, and application development. It's more powerful than your PC back in the late 1990s.
> It's more powerful than your PC back in the late 1990s.
Sounds like a fun thought, but almost certainly untrue: https://www.swissmicros.com/product/dm42
All new PCs sold in the late 1990s handedly beat these specifications. On CPU, storage, RAM, and display. The DM42 firmly remains an embedded system that's just enough for the calculator software and not much more.
If you want to take it back to the early 1980s, you start reaching the claim being true.
You might say the bills themselves are theater. Respond to theater with theater.
Well, no, that's not how laws like this work. Of course people in these states can just install the software and it is very likely nothing more will come from that unless some politico in one of these states decides she has a beef against the company, group or person which distributes the software. When that happens she'll have this law at hand to whack them with because the knowingly violated state law so they need to be dealt with, won't anyone think of the children?.
For Linux it will be way more problematic because:
- A lot of of corporate contributions comes from SV.
- Linux Foundation is incorporated in CA.
- Linus himself is CA's resident AFAIR.
So there is zero chance of claiming no jurisdiction. The only hope is whoever is enforcing this batshit wouldn't go after what is essentially not an OS for the purpose of the bill, but rather an internal component (it would be like going after a vendor of bolts and nuts for noncompliance of a toaster).
It's more likely to be an issue for distributions like Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc.
Although, if I'm understanding this correctly, I think all they would have to do to comply is have something during installation that asks for the age category, and write a file that is world readable, but only writable by root that contains that category that applications can read.
That is already way too much as far as I'm concerned. It's not that it's difficult, it's that it's arbitrary and a form of commanded speech or action. Smallness and easiness isn't an excuse.
If you write a story, there must be a character in it somewhere that reminds kids not to smoke. That's all. It's very easy.
I actually don't mind mandating the market take reasonable actions. The EU mandating USB C was an excellent move that materially improved things.
However I think mandated actions should to the greatest extent possible be minimal, privacy preserving, and have an unambiguous goal that is clearly accomplished. This legislation fails in that regard because it mandates sharing personal information with third parties where it could have instead mandated queries that are strictly local to the device.
Under no circumstances should we be “mandating” how hobbyists write their software. If you want to scope this to commercial OSes, be my guest. That’s not what was done here.
I'm not sure where the line between "hobby" and "professional" lies when it comes to linux distributions. Many of them are nonprofit but not really hobbyist at this point. Debian sure feels like a professional product to me (I daily drive it).
We regulate how a hobbyist constructs and uses a radio. We regulate how a hobbyist constructs a shed in his yard or makes modifications to the electrical wiring in his house.
I think mandating the implementation of strictly device local filtering based on a standardized HTTP header (or in the case of apps an attached metadata field) would be reasonably non-invasive and of benefit to society (similar to mandating USB C).
And then another state will pass a law mandating scanning of all local images, and another state will want automated scanning of text, and a different country will want a backdoor for law enforcement. We have to stop this here and now.
I believe Linus lives in Oregon.
I think Linus Torvalds lives in Oregon.
It's also still bound only to companies in CA. I'm in GA, I don't have to comply, for example, if I were making operating systems. People REALLY need to push back when governments try to extend their reach beyond their borders, like EU regulations. The more we let them the more enshrined in law it will become. We have the right and duty to say no, that only applies in your jurisdiction.
I think the winning move is just to ignore the legislation, and drag the government into an EFF or ACLU-funded First Amendment lawsuit if they try to enforce anything.
the winning move is to publicly post every bit of data that anyone has or ever had about the politicians who wrote this law, VERY publicly, and see how fast they change their mind on privacy. I suggest starting with SMSs and photos in "private" folders.
I don't see a definition for "operating system" in this legislation (California).
"Operating system provider" is defined, but that's kinda useless unless "operating system" is defined first.
It seems there's also a definition error:
> 1798.500. For the purposes of this title:
> (i) “User” means a child that is the primary user of the device.
Child is defined:
> (d) “Child” means a natural person who is under 18 years of age.
But that means this is impossible:
> (b) (4) Whether the user is at least 18 years of age.
Ignoring the calculator side of things (fair enough if they don't wanna implement it) is this just requiring an age value for the user of the operating system?
Because if so, that seems a lot more sensible than the online crap where you need to give ID or something. I remember someone suggesting requiring an `X-User-Age` header, and having adults responsible for having their children's account setup with their age, which this proposal seems to be more in line with.
From some of the other responses people seem against this proposal, am I missing something? (I only briefly skimmed the links) Is there some kind of attestation/ID required when the age is input?
It’s the camels nose into the tent of regulating how an OS should behave. This is anathema for FOSS operating systems. It will cause complete madness if different jurisdictions start regulating operating systems in their own way and could honestly kill FOSS OSes.
is it though? If you setup a PC for a 12 year old and prompts you something like [12~16] and thats reported to whatever, what exactly is the fear? You can scream slippery slope but these laws are just going to boil down to technical capability because enforcement isn't realistic.
There's real harms by large businesses such as Meta. Should we pretend those arms don't exist?
The fear is that being below 18 doesn't mean you have no right to privacy. It's not implementation that's the problem. The whole idea is stupid.
It is a slippery slope, and enforcement can quickly go from unrealistic to mandatory as we’re seeing in the UK.
> There's real harms by large businesses such as Meta. Should we pretend those arms don't exist?
Frankly I don’t care. Hands off my operating system. I will set up a guerilla sneakernet before I comply with something like this. Find another way to deal with it.
> Colorado residents may no longer use DB48x after Jan 1st, 2028.
This law hasn't even passed
*Formerly open source
Seems to violate the open source definition paragraph 5, no?
Does it run applications? The point of the law is to collect (and device setup) the age of the (I guess primary?) user, and communicate that (as a range?) to any applications it runs.
So, if you don't run applications, does this matter? Also, enforcement is by the CA attorney general, so random people can't go after you.
Well, it’s a programmable calculator, so…how does the law define “applications”?
(c) “Application” means a software application that may be run or directed by a user on a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device that can access a covered application store or download an application.
The calculator firmware is a "software application" that's run by a user on a mobile device but it can't access an application store or download applications. For that you need a PC.
So github.com is the violator, here, since it's a software application that may be run by a user on a computer and can download applications (loads of them!).
I've read through the CA law a couple of times and can't figure out what an application store is supposed to do. What part of the law would github violate?
The store is just supposed to be able to see the reported age bracket and use it to enforce its existing age restrictions. I'm not sure Github has any age restrictions though, so I think it's already in compliance by default.
The California bill basically says any OS with an app store needs to collect an age signal and provide age bucketing to an app store (presumably even third-party ones, but notably NOT extension stores) so it can forward that information onto developers in that store.
There's no further elaboration on what age signals are preferred, so my assumption is that a DoB field in the user profile and a system service to request the age bucket is good enough. It's absolutely silly, but DB48X could implement that.
There's a related question of who is actually liable under this law - it seems written to target just Apple, Google, and Microsoft; and it only makes sense in the context of consumer electronics. Like, how does this work with enterprise systems? Servers? Is IBM going to have to rush out a patch for z/VM to ask the system administrator what their date of birth is?
> Like, how does this work with enterprise systems?
You put the age of the owning company. If the company is under 18 then too bad for you.
IANAL, but the whole thing feels quite problematic. Should we interpret the prohibition as a licensing condition "a resident using our IP is violating the contract" or as an informative note "we are not compliant and we are not ever going to be compliant so a resident using the IP is violating local laws"? I'd expect the intent to be the latter, but would it hold in front of a judge? If the notice is a licensing condition, the whole thing is problematic as hell:
- Does such prohibition has any legal force at all? Does it do anything to prevent responsibility according to the bill? Wouldn't just saying "CA/CO have zero jurisdiction over us, get screwed" be a saner choice (of course it would be better if the project wouldn't host on M$'s servers).
- The main project license is GPLv3. GPLv3 clearly has no provisions to introduce arbitrary prohibitions into the license without losing compatibility. But they still keep GPLv3 LICENSE.txt, which is problematic in itself - if LICENSE.txt says one thing and LEGAL-NOTICE.txt another, the conclusion might be that no license applies so no one may use the software at all!
- If they are reusing any GPL software that they don't hold copyright on, they might be or might not be in violation (would need a real lawyer to say if that's the case or not).
And on the actual matter of things, it's really sad to see California to be on the front line of this crap (this screams ageism). And, dear "adults", screw your parental authority so much. Whatever skills I've gained before the university I've done against an explicit parental prohibition. This is what I live off now. Screw you all.
> And on the actual matter of things, it's really sad to see California to be on the front line of this crap (this screams ageism). And, dear "adults", screw your parental authority so much. Whatever skills I've gained before the university I've done against an explicit parental prohibition. This is what I live off now. Screw you all.
It's yet another surface that totalitarian parental control has crept into, and it's a serious problem. Young people kept strictly within the iron grip of their guardians generally aren't the ones who become happy actualized all-star adults.
Obviously there should be some limits on what teenagers and children can access, it shouldn't be entirely free reign, but robbing them of space to bend the rules severely limits their potential for growth and incurs a strong risk of extinguishing their spark.
> Obviously there should be some limits on what teenagers and children can access
Is it? The only people who should be deciding those limits are parents. If they fail to set and enforce those limits then any negative outcomes for the child are due to their own negligence, and can be adjudicated as child abuse per those laws.
I agree fully. Limits should be on the shoulders of parents, not the government or any other institution.
If this were the late 80s I would wholeheartedly agree with you. But it isn't. Every device under the sun seems to have a web browser and wifi built into it at this point. Even most TVs are "smart" these days. If you told me that your refrigerator had a web browser and an app store I would assume you were entirely serious.
The internet is full of amazing things but it is simultaneously a largely unfiltered cesspool.
Imagine you live in the suburbs, but at some point the house to your left got demolished and replaced with a casino that doesn't ID anyone. The house to your right got demolished and replaced with a liquor store that doesn't ID anyone. And the house across the street got demolished and replaced with the headquarters of a local group of political extremists.
Sure, there also happens to be an award winning library a couple houses down. But that's largely irrelevant when it comes to the question of how you're supposed to raise children in this environment.
You shouldn't apply that kind of thinking to global things. Because what you end up doing is nuking library on earth - there might be a casino somewhere near there. I see your concerns, but, ultimately, parent's carving for a comfortable illusion of control is less important than child's rights. And yes, I'll repeat it again, it's not child's best interest to have their surroundings controlled and censored.
And for reference, when I was talking about my personal experience, I wasn't talking about 80's. More like mid- to late- 00's Russia. The internet was already quite a cesspool at the time, the local IRL even more so. Just I wasn't interested. Once a teen is interested in getting into the edgy stuff there is no amount of regulation can stop them.
> there might be a casino somewhere near there.
That's approximately my whole point. We have zoning laws. We have age verification laws. We have lots of ordinances about what is and isn't appropriate in public and around children and similar. You can't open a strip club across the street from a public school and I think that's a very good thing.
The vast global unfiltered internet is increasingly pervading our lives. I think it is entirely reasonable to enact minimal regulation that stems the tide with respect to a narrowly defined goal.
Performative indeed!
so they outlawed a calculator?
From the other post about this law.
> That's likely no big deal for Windows, which already requires you to enter your date of birth during the Microsoft Account setup procedure
This seems like an over reaction because of a simple date field
Why would I need a Microsoft account to use Windows.
The point is, it’s not about verification but a simple date field.
Like those sites where you have to enter a birthdate before you can see the content
Clickbait title, the legal notice explicitly states that an open source project cannot and will not implement age verification.
There is no carve out in the law for open source. I don’t think it matters for this calculator’s firmware, because there’s no covered App Store, but it certainly would for most Linux distributions.
The law is irrelevant when it comes to open source. There is no one to turn to and bully for compliance. A government could presumably request that GitHub delete the repo, but the software will then simply move somewhere else, in a jurisdiction where these laws don't apply, or be distributed peer-to-peer. These attempts at curbing the freedom to write and distribute software are pathetic and will fail.
> simply move somewhere else, in a jurisdiction where these laws don't apply, or be distributed peer-to-peer
Each of these options lead software to become less and less discoverable leading to the fact that most people will never use anything that isn't complying with these laws. So the end result still hits the desired effect.
> There is no one to turn to and bully for compliance > These attempts at curbing the freedom to write and distribute software are pathetic and will fail.
You sweet summer child.