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@JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk · Mar 01, 2026
#CaliforniaLaw is written by people who are either very ignorant or very incompetent. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043 They have assumed that all operating systems are like Microsoft Windows 11, Android, or iOS; and have written legislation for operating systems where people download glorified WWW client 'apps', from 'stores', which use 'accounts' that they have with vendors or Microsoft/Google/Apple. But the legislation *as worded* *also* covers everything from #Debian and #Ubuntu through #Arch Linux and #MobaXTerm to #FreeBSD and #NetBSD and #OpenBSD; where users anonymously use package managers or ports systems to install applications, written by developers, on operating systems, from 'publicly available internet website' repositories. There is no age field in the GECOS data in master.passwd(5) of course, and the reality is that no BSD or Linux-based operating system has this concept of apps/stores/accounts. #MidnightBSD #FreeSoftware #Unix #California #USLaw #AgeVerification #GDPR
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@JdeBP@mastodonapp.uk · Mar 29, 2026
@bytebro@mastodonapp.uk One U.S.A. state has passed the law, and there are about 8 months to go before the law comes into effect, with the chance of fixing its problems being slim to none given the way that legislatures work and the time left. But there are at least 4 others (Louisiana, Colorado, New York, Illinois) where it's still pending in the legislature and people have a chance of fixing the problems before things become law there. Some people are trying. They have a hard task ahead, because it's actually quite hard to find a legal framework that does not have unintended consequences. I've tried. California legislators (and Texas, Utah, and Louisiana before them with version 1.0 of this, we being now on version 2.0) simply didn't think outwith the smart 'phone and Microsoft Windows worlds at all. Colorado legislators at least know that those are not the entire world, now. #AgeVerification #USLaw #ColoradoLaw #IllionoisLaw #CaliforniaLaw #NewYorkLaw #LouisianaLaw #AppStoreAccountability
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@JdeBP__dup_33984@mastodonapp.uk · Mar 05, 2026
Another 2nd chance to tell legislators that the mechanisms that we have inherited from #Unix, and used in loads of #FreeSoftware operating systems from #NetBSD to #Tribblix, do not have date of birth/age fields for user accounts, is #Illinois, where HB5511 is the very same text as #California's, too. https://my.ilga.gov/Legislation/BillStatus?DocTypeID=HB&DocNum=5511&GAID=18&LegID=167486 It really does seem at this point that this is model legislation. Sponsors in Illionois are Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, Margaret Croke, Janet Yang, Rohr, Kimberly Du Buclet, Natalie A. Manley, Angelica Guerrero-Cuellar, Rick Ryan, Michelle Mussman, Martha Deuter and Tracy Katz Muhl. The bill is in the judiciary–civil committee as of yesterday. It was introduced last month, 1 day after it was introduced in Colorado. I wonder in what other states it has just turned up. A lobby organization handing pre-drafted bills to multiple sets of legislators is not unknown. @nileane@nileane.fr @RunxiYu@social.treehouse.systems #CaliforniaLaw #USLaw #IllinoisLaw #FreeSoftware #AgeVerification
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@JdeBP__dup_33984@mastodonapp.uk · Mar 05, 2026
In case people wanted a 2nd chance to object to a compulsory user account age recording + reporting law (the only people who objected in #California that I have found being only interested in 'gratis' free software on the Google and Apple Stores), #Colorado has a bill going through its state legislature right now. It is much the same text, which seems on course to be model legislation, as #California's, and so will also apply to 'operating system's on 'general purpose computing device's that have 'software application's (package managers) with 'publicly available internet website's that 'facilitate the download of applications from third-party developers' . The sponsors of the bill are (state) senators Matt Ball & Larry Liston, and representatives Amy Paschal & Naquetta Ricks. It has already passed the committee stage and third senate reading. https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116174134208480252 https://leg.colorado.gov/bills/SB26-051 @nileane@nileane.fr @RunxiYu@social.treehouse.systems #USLaw #CaliforniaLaw #ColoradoLaw #FreeSoftware #GDPR #Unix
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JdeBP @JdeBP__dup_33984@mastodonapp.uk
@ariadne@social.treehouse.systems It concerns #AlpineLinux the same as it concerns every other Linux-based operating system that has a package management utility that talks to a public WWW site. As I said at https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116156019252249071 and as @RunxiYu has also said, the statute as written covers all such systems. (It's an Act now, by the way, not a Bill.) Alpine Linux has a covered application store. Here, for example, is what 'publicly available internet website' apk as the 'software application' uses to 'facilitate the download' of the third-party rustc 'application' from the 'store' in Alpine Linux on the aforementioned #mainframes used by the aforementioned naughty 16-year-olds in #California: https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.23/main/s390x/ Yes, #CaliforniaLaw as written is this expansive. Yes, the legislators did not even consider how the BSDs and Linux-based operating systems work. None of the objectors apparently even mentioned how these work. #rust #USLaw #AgeVerification #GDPR #FreeSoftware #Unix
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@JdeBP__dup_33984@mastodonapp.uk · Mar 05, 2026
@gettie@fedi.catto.garden Actually, it's 'yes' as a login-name here that causes #OpenBSD to issue a message. (Also 'root', 'daemon', 'operator', 'bin', 'build', 'sshd', 'www', 'nobody', and 'ftp'.) @domi@donotsta.re @prahou@merveilles.town #ColoradoLaw #CaliforniaLaw #AgeVerification
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@JdeBP__dup_33984@mastodonapp.uk · Mar 05, 2026
@bobulous@fosstodon.org See the widely publicized announcement by the developer of #MidnightBSD, which caused a lot of people, including me, into looking at the actual law. https://nitter.net/midnightbsd/status/2027101491211718765 The only people concerned with free software, apparently, as the bill made its way through the #California legislature, were Oakland Privacy, and they were only interested in 'gratis' free software on the Google and Apple Stores and the impacts on its development. The various committee analyses are on that legislature page, and they give the objectors's objections. I have yet to find a mention of BSDs, Linux-based operating systems, or even Unix. Goodness knows what #IBM is going to do about #RHEL and #RPM. Clearly they completely missed a very important lobbying opportunity. I wonder if the IBM legal people know about this even yet. @ariadne@social.treehouse.systems @RunxiYu@social.treehouse.systems @reallyflygreg@mstdn.ca @toddalio@mstdn.ca #USLaw #CaliforniaLaw #FreeSoftware #RedHat
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@JdeBP__dup_33984@mastodonapp.uk · Mar 05, 2026
@ariadne@social.treehouse.systems It concerns #AlpineLinux the same as it concerns every other Linux-based operating system that has a package management utility that talks to a public WWW site. As I said at https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116156019252249071 and as @RunxiYu has also said, the statute as written covers all such systems. (It's an Act now, by the way, not a Bill.) Alpine Linux has a covered application store. Here, for example, is what 'publicly available internet website' apk as the 'software application' uses to 'facilitate the download' of the third-party rustc 'application' from the 'store' in Alpine Linux on the aforementioned #mainframes used by the aforementioned naughty 16-year-olds in #California: https://dl-cdn.alpinelinux.org/alpine/v3.23/main/s390x/ Yes, #CaliforniaLaw as written is this expansive. Yes, the legislators did not even consider how the BSDs and Linux-based operating systems work. None of the objectors apparently even mentioned how these work. #rust #USLaw #AgeVerification #GDPR #FreeSoftware #Unix
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@JdeBP__dup_33984@mastodonapp.uk · Mar 02, 2026
@reallyflygreg@mstdn.ca @toddalio@mstdn.ca I'm inclined to believe that it is indeed the people who don't understand technology (specifically: they think that everything works like their smart 'phone or Microsoft Windows 11 PC do) making policy; or that they did understand the technology and were just crap at drafting legislation such that it could distinguish the Microsoft Store, Google Play, the Apple App Store, et al. from #Ubuntu's package repository and #OpenBSD's ports tree. And that distinguishing criterion is not #FreeSoftware. Given the aims, the #California legislators would want #FDroid to be required to hand over #AgeVerification data to free-software apps that F-Droid allows, that themselves want to impose age restrictions (on, say, showing certain content to minors) via the route of getting the account holder's age (bracket) information from the operating system via a 'signal' from the 'store'. https://monitor.f-droid.org/anti-features #FreeBSD #NetBSD #Debian #CaliforniaLaw #USLaw
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@JdeBP__dup_33984@mastodonapp.uk · Mar 02, 2026
@montyontherun@bitbang.social The definitions are broad, so to quite an extent they would. There are users, who have accounts, on general purpose computers, and run applications. The only hope for #mainframes seems to be that they likely don't have things that fit the definition of a 'covered application store'. But they might; especially if the mainframe is nowadays running a Linux-based operating system. http://linuxvm.org/info/distros.html #Debian and #Ubuntu have package repositories for s390x, for example. Such a repository is a 'publicly available internet website […] that distributes and facilitates the download of applications'. Here's one way how the naughty 16-year-olds in #California would download rustc onto such a mainframe with no #AgeVerification, for example: https://packages.debian.org/trixie/s390x/rustc/download #CaliforniaLaw #USLaw #FreeSoftware #rust
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