Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO use due to age verification

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.

Clickbait title, the legal notice explicitly states that an open source project cannot and will not implement age verification.

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.

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.

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.