AB 1856 excludes open-source operating systems from the upcoming Digital Age Assurance Act.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works .
These amendments redefine the term “operating system provider” to exclude any person or entity that distributes an OS or application “under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software.” Any software distributed under the GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache licenses satisfies that test, which removes the likes of Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch, and the BSD family from AB 1856’s scope.
A second exclusion removes software components that aren’t “offered to consumers as a stand-alone executable application through a covered application store” from the law’s definition of an application, covering libraries and dependencies distributed through package managers like apt and pacman. AB 1856 doesn’t explicitly say that repos aren’t app stores, but a store’s main obligation under the law is to request an age signal from the user’s OS provider and pass it to developers; an exempt open-source OS produces no signal. A third carve-out excludes storefronts distributing extensions or add-ons that run exclusively inside a host application, which takes browser extension stores out of scope.
The amendments to AB 1856 also remove the original definition of “user,” which read, “a child that is the primary user of a device,” and technically classified every device owner in California as a child. The law’s signaling framework depends on adults declaring their age on account setup, so their devices get flagged as 18 and over, but under that definition nobody could ever be flagged as an adult.
In addition, lawmakers inserted a new provision prohibiting anyone from requesting an age signal from an OS provider or app store unless required by law. That closes off potential abuse of the age API that could have led to it being used as a general-purpose data collection channel even when age verification wasn’t required. Platforms and developers also gain a good-faith safe harbor against erroneous signals, protecting them from liability when age-gating signals are inaccurate.
Private and community servers for Minecraft and COD are illegal and amount to piracy, ESA tells California Senate
Linux was announced by Linus Torvalds 35 years ago today
Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/california-lawmakers-unanimously-pass-linux-exemption-from-age-verification-law-software-distributed-under-the-gpl-mit-bsd-and-apache-licenses-are-exempt#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com/membership
- DLSS 5 mod brings next-gen tech to old Ampere GPUs, but frame rates are horrible — most games tank to single digits, high-end GPUs can hit up to 40 FPS in some
- US military uses high-energy lasers to shoot down three Mexican cartel drones over the southern border — narcos suspected of using UAVs for surveillance and rec
- Get up to $175 back for your pre-installed Windows 11 license — new portal provides legal forms, but warns buyers not to wipe storage first
- Nvidia denies pausing AI cloud commitments initiative after reported partner backlash — report claims company told cloud providers it could only lease its GPUs
- Modders get leaked DLSS 5 running in Control — early Blackwell test drops RTX 5070 Ti from 71 to 35 FPS at 4K
Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.