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California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
111–120 of 409 posts
Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
#112My gut reaction to this is that there is something seriously wrong if special clauses are required. Why should open source get special treatment, to me that just highlights that the law is utterly ridiculous.
Why shouldn't open source get special treatment? Public laws should recognize and incentivize public goods.
Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
#113Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
#114People celebrate too early.
A court at a later time may find that this situation is unfair to windows users who have to submit to age sniffing. So this will easily be overturned at a later time - age sniffing will never be given up by the lobbyists groups paid for by Meta and others (and the USA also wants that information).
Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
MacOS isn't Darwin and comes under terms that do not fit rhe criteria of the exception. Apple actually did go to some lengths in the past to ensure that all layers of MacOS contained bits that they could claim restrictive licenses on. A project like PureDarwin, however, can be freely distributed because it omits Apple's proprietary parts.
Macos contains elements that are open licensed. Many linux distros contain elements that are closed source. Where is the line? This law describes as a true-false something that is not only true or false. This law is poorly written. Amending it didn’t fix that.
The line is that an open Linux distribution will boot and run on hardware that is sufficiently compatible.
The full MacOS as distributed by Apple is engineered to require closed source, non-redistributabe components even on the hardware it is most compatible with. It will completely stop functioning if you remove those parts. The presence of freely licensed components becomes de facto irrelevant.
Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Linux phones, Linux gaming machines, Linux on Desktop and Laptops, Linux VR/AR, Linux watches, etc.
And then the exception will evaporate overnight.
Precisely. Courts will find that the situation where Linux users are exempt from the law, whereas Windows users have to submit their ID and any other personal data, can not be maintained, so Linux users will also be forced to give up their ID before being able to access the internet. This will also first come via commercial distributions (perhaps it can not be enforced by independent linux users, but the law need not necessarily work for 100%, could be 95%, and the rest are declared as breaking the law).
Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
#117Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
#118So is anyone going to revert the commits that jumped the gun on this? E.g. systemd's birthdate field https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954
Systemd is paid for by Big Business, so they will retain user-identification information in the long run of course. Poettering will never revert what he is paid for by the TechBros.
Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
#119Re: California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
#120Excellent. From now on all kids will become linux natives. The decade of the linux desktop is coming!
I credit Minecraft with getting an entire generation comfortable using command line statements.