Mastodawn

@soller not an American and did not read the bill, but even this idea that PC users must in any way identify themselves is beyond stupid

does it mean that everyone who uses a network router needs to identify as well? it also runs an OS. all house members?

what about smart TVs?

@amackif Read the bill if you can. On account creation, the person making a user account must identify at least their age within four brackets. This must be provided to every application that runs on the OS. No requirements exist for directly connecting that to a real person currently using the computer.

@soller since you have expressed an opinion on the governor of CA in the Reddit post, what do you think of AOC?

@soller it's difficult for me to focus on these kind of texts.

anyway, I read it

(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.

this means pop os app store only?

@soller it's about 3rd party apps only. since pop os stuff is not 3rd party does it apply everywhere?

I guess you have your moment as chat control in eu

Bill Zaumen Feb 27

@amackif @soller On the other hand:

(e)(2) “Covered application store” does not mean an online service or platform that distributes extensions, plug-ins, add-ons, or other software applications that run exclusively within a separate host application.

With Linux/Unix, your window system and shell are a "separate host application" (I guess - the government's terminology is really bad).

@soller So distros should implement this in the installer, e.g. Calamares. ( Not that I agree, but technically, that is what is required to be compliant )

@joostruis @soller it's completely unenforceable scare-ware. I would recommend hard-forking any distro attempting "compliance".

@elle @joostruis Why do you believe it to be unenforceable other than wanting it not to be?

@soller @joostruis outside of proprietary OSes, how do imagine it is enforceable? they going to force backdoors into every Linux / BSD install? you going to add this spyware into Redox?

@elle @soller Ok you completely lost me there. Backdoors? I am trying to understand the implications and what is required IF any distro wanted to implement what is asked in that bill. As I read it, and I do not personally agree with such bill, there needs to be some check in the installer asking if the user is at a certain age criteria when living in a certain area / state. Just a checkbox.

@joostruis @soller what I'm saying is how are they possibly going to verify that every distro contains a check in the installer? what about distros which don't have an installer, like source-built distros (where removing such a check would be trivial)? they would literally have to compromise, and/or control every distro maintainer. what about maintainers / distros outside their jurisdiction? it's unenforceable outside of those who wanted to do this anyway

@elle @soller A check in installer is just my interpretation. At the moment I am a bit clueless about what really would be required. Good that it is brought to our attention though. Now it is up to the FOSS community to deal with it.

@elle @joostruis Read my reddit comment in full first.

@soller huh I did. What did I not understand?

@joostruis I was replying to Elle's reply to you, not to you.

@soller @joostruis I'm not visiting that cesspool, tl;dr please?

@elle @joostruis You are asking me to restate things I have already stated. I don't care to.

@soller @joostruis that's fine, you are asking me to visit a website I don't care to.

@elle @joostruis You are replying on a thread where it is important context. I would appreciate due diligence before doing so.

@soller @joostruis

"Pop and many other Open source operating systems should Sue, and quickly."

> "Under what grounds? With what legal funds?"

You absolutely should sue with whatever funds System76 can provide, potentially in a class action suit coordinated with EFF. I imagine RHEL/Redhat, Canonical would also have sizeable warchests to fight this, if they want to.

It's not like you're some lone developer, PopOS literally has a whole-ass company behind it. Get together and fight!

@elle @joostruis Age restrictions are legal. They are already used in software. I don't see we have any legal argument to make.

@soller @joostruis I'm not a lawyer, but why are you giving up without even trying?

for example, this isn't just another "age restriction" on an 18-and-over service, this is an age restriction on general computing. for example, the law seems to force the age input, along with an API to serve that "Signal" to whatever software interacts with the OS. that is forcing spyware, and seems to be an encroachment on the 4th amendment. there is no "opt-out" option. don't comply? don't use computer

@elle @joostruis The bill only requires an OS to ask the user to specify an unverified age bracket which it then presents to applications. I don't see any way that would be unconstitutional. Similar requirements have been around for social media for a long time.