JdeBPMar 1

#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

Bill Status - AB-1043 Age verification signals: software applications and online services.

AB 1043 Age verification signals: software applications and online services.

Show threadJdeBPMar 1

I foresee:

1. #Debian eventually following #MidnightBSD's lead and cutting #California off from #FreeSoftware; after lengthy mailing list discussions where at least one person tries to deny with convoluted nonsense the plain reading of the statute.

1. A storm when someone points out that the #MobaXTerm version of APT isn't exempt, nor is RPM. (Goodness knows what IBM is going to do.)

1. An even bigger storm when someone adds an 'age' field to systemd's JSON User Records, to be enforced and served out over Desktop Bus via a systemd-aged service or some such. Much fun if that someone comes from a #GDPR country.

1. Some nutter taking a Linux distribution to court because it doesn't enable developers to control whether 16-year-olds can install rustc and busybox.

#CaliforniaLaw #Unix #rust #USLaw #AgeVerification #FreeBSD #OpenBSD #NetBSD

Show threadMontyOnTheRun

@JdeBP how about legacy Mainframe operating systems? Would those fit the definition of such law?

I can imagine the chaos among the COBOL maintenance programmers 😅

Mar 1 at 10:23pmWeb
Show threadJdeBPMar 2

@montyontherun

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

Linux distributions for the mainframe

Linux for Mainframe systems