Mastodawn

Ridley @ WATCH LYCORECO 1d ago

I see so many people making a huge deal out of linux stuff adding support for the california age thing, and I'm like. you know basically every online service has been required to ask for your age since 1998? this is literally just "at account creation, the device owner can set an age field. to whatever they want. and then apps can query that instead of asking themselves."
you can set it to the unix epoch if you want

✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago

@rcombs yeah i really don't get it

✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago

@rcombs everyone knows young people will lie about their age. this enables them to lie about their age very easily. why the fuck would you put up a fuss about it

Cassandrich 1d ago

@whitequark @rcombs I think there are two aspects here. One is the matter of unknown and untrusted folks inserting themselves into projects eagar to comply in advance. This expresses a disempowerment of communities and a surrender of editorial control to a fascist government. From this perspective, it's the statement of values that matters more than any practical effect.

✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago

@dalias @rcombs how is it "in advance" if there are laws about it today?

Cassandrich 1d ago

@whitequark @rcombs Is that a serious question? There is no law that says that we as the authors of a program have to modify it to behave in a certain way. If there is, it's unconstitutional. Even if it weren't, we wouldn't comply. It's complying in advance if nobody is holding a gun to your head or putting handcuffs on your wrists. Governments do not decide what we can write.

@dalias @whitequark @rcombs Brazil's law requires OSes to implement age APIs
https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2023-2026/2025/lei/L15211.htm (^F "Application Programming Interface")

✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago

@natanbc @dalias @rcombs if this is not done, which party is the liable one?

Cassandrich 1d ago

@whitequark @natanbc @rcombs This isn't an answer in terms of case law there, but in general, we have long held that writing FOSS is expression, and that while building products (physical things, preinstalled systems, maybe automated installations? etc.) out of it might be subject to laws and regulations, nobody can tell us what we can or cannot write upstream. This is a principle we should continue to fight for. If we lose it we will regret that.

✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago

@dalias @natanbc @rcombs this is the most america-centered thing i've read this month

✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago

@dalias @natanbc @rcombs you obviously can just ignore non-US law as a US resident and that's valid and sometimes strategically useful, but in a case like this it starts to sound awfully like shifting liability to people who are in a worse situation to begin with

Ridley @ WATCH LYCORECO 1d ago

@dalias @whitequark @natanbc okay? but clearly a lot of downstream consumers are going to need the facility, so providing a standard (optional!) interface for it is prudent as an upstream infrastructure maintainer, to avoid obvious painful fragmentation?

Eric Schultz 1d ago

@rcombs @dalias @whitequark @natanbc why do I, as a user of Linux, want to make that easy? That's actually the opposite of what I think is the best idea.

@whitequark @dalias @rcombs From my reading, the OS provider would be held liable. The law does allow a simple warning at first, but it's up to a court and intent counts, so not implementing it intentionally would likely remove that option from you (^F "Art. 35" for the relevant part)

✧✦Catherine✦✧1d ago

@natanbc @dalias @rcombs right, that makes sense, but who is "the OS provider" legally speaking, if let's say you download Debian from ftp.debian.org? is it the org that runs ftp.debian.org? is it the individual developers of the software? is it the person who gave you the link?

@whitequark @dalias @rcombs No idea, the law barely even mentions OSes, I doubt they ever considered anything other than Windows/macOS when writing that part of it. There's some room for arguing in court in the case of a Linux distro or similar on the basis of social purpose, but that's still lawyers and $$$