Good Times
Good Times
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I wonder what everyone’s opinions on this are…
This is a direct attack by a fascist government on FOSS as a whole (but of course the “big $$$” foundations that should fight it are doing exactly nothing once more, because their supporters are in with those behind it – and where are the self-proclaimed “Anti-Fascists” when there actually is some fascism to fight?).
Since we don’t have any presence in CA (or CO), we should be fairly safe, but of course they could use lawfare tactics to just drown us in legal documents even if they have absolutely no standing.
The MidnightBSD response is good in that it attacks the law - but of course it also punishes innocent people in CA who did nothing wrong (you could argue they had it coming for voting the wrong way - but in a 2-party system where both parties supported it, there’s really not much they could have done).
A possible approach – assuming someone implements the verification – could be to have a special “Fourth Reich edition” with a hint that people in CA are required to use that one and why (but no policing on our part to ensure they actually do).
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best option right now is to leave CA, CO.
That is the best option right now, but is rapidly changing. Other states are pushing age verification laws, and I believe Georgia is as well pushing a law similar to that already passed in California and up for vote in CO.
Here in Arkansas, the state Supreme Court overturned their App ID efforts. (Thank God)
But north of me, Missouri the app age ID law stands.
All of this is ushering in global digital ID for Agenda 2030, coupled with social credit scores to access and use services. I say services as you will own nothing, and if you aren’t happy you’ll be dead from lack of food or lack of housing.
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At this time I do not have a clue or even an opinion about what OM should do about this.
This is a link to the actual legislation: Bill Text: CA AB1043
Bill Title: Age verification signals: software applications and online services.
(h) “Signal” means age bracket data sent by a real-time secure application programming interface or operating system to an application.
First I’d need to say I am not sure what this means? What are they trying to legislate for or against? That so far is not clear to me.
Does OMLx do “age bracket data sent by a real-time secure application programming interface or operating system to an application”?
My unsophisticated legal mind reads this as something with no clear purpose, and the legislation itself as overly broad, vague, and unenforceable. What the courts will see and say is ofc anyone’s guess. Unfortunately if this law stands I can see it possibly causing harm to OM and OMA that we would not have the resources to fight.
So for now concerned and baffled.
Edit: Another link about this: California Introduces New Age Verification Requirements for Software Application This still does not tell me what this law is trying to make better. Maybe I am just missing it.
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Texas is trying similar stuff, only worse: Going for external verification, a-la-discord. That law is currently under injunction by the feds while the 5th circuit decides.
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Does OpenMandriva have any plans to address the laws in California (and soon, Colorado - I think) that would cause a 7,500 dollar fine per user if it is distributed without have age verification before a user can even use the OS? Will they add an exception to exclude California residents from the software like BSD (or at least one of the BSD orgs) did? I personally am quite upset about this law, and how to see it overturned soon since it is dictating what people can and can’t do with open source software. I’m curious to hear anyone’s thoughts on the matter.
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We were discussing this over here:
So far I’ve not seen an official response from OM.
System76 caved because they sell hardware, and Colorado and California are likely large markets they are unwilling to lose. I would bet though them caving causes people to abandon their hardware and Cosmic DE.
I just merged two threads regarding this, please keep this in one thread, it gets to confusing to track otherwise.
MidnightBSD has a good approach. Modified their licence terms to forbid use in California. That way, anyone who uses it in Cali is violating their TOS.
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OMA is headquartered in France. If California, or anyone else, tries to go after them, I suspect that the French gov’t would tell them to pound sand.
In all seriousness, given that OMA is based in FRANCE there’s really bleep all they can do.
Unless and until some sort of agreement is struck about it with the EU and France and the US govt.
Plus, what happens when I bring my laptop across the state line? This is going to turn into a major mess.
How will it affect corp systems? Will every employee have to “verify” at every desk? What if a computer changes hands? Does the new user have to re-verify?
The libertarian in me says OMA should just add a box that pops up when a CA user installs it that tells those idiots to go shove their heads ever further up a [insert farm animal of choice]'s anal cavity.
Or just change the license and again have a box pop up explaining this and forcing a checkbox that the computer won’t be used in those jurisdictions (optionally again referencing head locations)
Or just ignore it and see what happens since you are based outside the US
It’s an election year and everyone is virtue signalling so they can slip more gov’t control into people’s lives
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Will every Netflix Open Connect Appliances (BSD) OS, every Linux webserver, etc, have to be re-written and re-installed?
Those morons in Cali are totally retarded.
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Having been to California several times, and living in a state where one city controls the entire state via fraudulent voting, I can assure you there are numerous people in California who did not vote for this. Regardless, they are being punished, one way or another, no matter what MidnightBSD or OM does legally. Their insane fuel taxes and “get out of jail free” cards for criminals guarantees daily punishment.
If California is like every other blue state, there is no two-party system. There is only one big Uniparty with two wings. The ultra-left totalitarian government control freaks. The other is the “we talk a good game at election time, but when push comes to shove, we cave to the ultra-left every time because we want to maintain what few crumbs we receive when we comply.”
I agree with the MidnightBSD response. Do a pre-emptive legal strike on California. That way when the state does go after MidnightBSD, the lawyers can point to the clause and show the courts that legal action was taken in advance and responsibility falls back on California users for not complying with the insanity.
Assuming the court system is still viable. I highly suspect that they California courts are heavily rigged with DEI leftist totalitarian judges, just as they are in other states.
Force total chaos in California with every server installation? Go for it. Force everyone to lose their minds when they find out they can’t stream their latest episode of whatever bread and circus show for the uneducated masses that they watch.
The biggest weapon against this could be the school of unintended consequences for the totalitarian government in California. History has shown this does work.
Will France do that?
its funny, but the law, as currently worded in Cali, only gives penalties if children are actually “harmed.”
This “harm” would supposedly be reported by the parents.
“My kid saw pr0n on the phone I bought him. Fine Samsung, or Apple, or whatever.”
It would be neat if some other state levied charges of child neglect against parents who make these sort of complaints, and arrested them if they ever set foot there.
There can be no doubt, the west is thoroughly cooked.
In instances of child porn, the pedophiles will gain special protected class status from California, as we are currently seeing in other blue states. Whenever the far left screams “it is to protect the children,” what they really mean is this is a new method for them to provide better enabling of child predators. When it comes to protecting children, expect the opposite from them. The goal of the left is destruction. Especially when it aligns with their totalitarian control and ultimately, utopian one world government. There is a reason why all of them are protesting and harassing ICE agents who are out rounding up child predators, rapists, and who knows what else.
The law is very poorly worded for a reason. It is to give the state’s lawyers maximum traction in a rigged court when in front of a leftist judge.
What they want to accomplish there, according to the supporters of this monstrosity, is the usual – “protect the children”.
Age limits on apps to make sure children can’t access harmful content (which of course is nonsense, if you want to make sure a child can’t access “harmful content”, you’d have to restrict access to a browser to the 18+ age bracket – but without a browser, kids can’t even get their school work done anymore these days).
What they want to accomplish, according to people who don’t believe that Epstein’s customers would suddenly care about children’s safety: Since the age verification introduced in this first step is unreliable (with everyone essentially just self-certifying their age), it has to be secured in the next step - meaning everyone will have to authenticate against a “trusted” source, giving a reliable age as well as a perfect way for total surveillance.
But of course the language in the law is not very clear on whether or not it actually covers us at all:
“An operating system provider shall […] for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store”
Do our repositories qualify as a “covered application store”? They define it in the law as
”“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.”
Sadly, the definition is indeed so broad that we can’t say “DNF isn’t an application store because it isn’t a store, it doesn’t sell anything” – but there is another aspect to it:
“distributes and facilitates the download of applications from third-party developers”
Is that what our repositories do? One could argue that yes, we package code from third party developers, therefore our repositories distribute applications from third-party developers. But one could also argue that it’s not what our repositories do at all: They distribute only packages built by ourselves (no third party involved in packaging), so while those packages may be based on the effort of third parties, they’re not the product of third parties and therefore are not covered by this definition. Our repositories are strictly tools to distribute our own, NOT any third party’s, software. They are therefore not a “covered application store”, and Dictator Gruesome can go **** himself.
Also, if for some reason someone decides our repositories are a “covered application store”, here’s what we’d have to do:
”Provide a developer who has requested a signal with respect to a particular user with a digital signal via a reasonably consistent real-time application programming interface that identifies, at a minimum, which of the following categories pertains to the user”
So we could easily comply with that by just publishing a microlibrary saying something along the lines of
enum AgeGroup {
LESS_THAN_13,
BETWEEN_13_AND_16,
BETWEEN_16_AND_18,
AT_LEAST_18,
UNKNOWN
};
AgeGroup getUserAgeRange() {
// some minimalistic logic to determine the age range based
// on a birth date specified in a plain text file, or UNKNOWN if
// the text file isn't there
}
Of course the result will be that, given we don’t have the amount of users that any third party developers care about, nobody will implement using this microlibrary, and therefore there will be no “developer who has requested a signal”. But we’ve clearly provided “reasonably consistent real-time application programming interface that identifies, at a minimum, which of the following categories pertains to the user” – not our fault that nobody requests the signal.
It’s not our fault that 3rd party applications respecting the law will likely have something along the lines of
#if defined(WINDOWS)
int age=MicrosoftAgeVerification();
#elif defined(APPLE)
int age=VerifyAgeApple();
#elif defined(UBUNTU)
int age=getUbuntuUserAge();
#elif defined(FEDORA) || defined(REDHAT)
int age=g_user_age_get((gpointer*)G_USER(g_getuid()));
#endif
without an equivalent implementation of the OM microlibrary – “developer shall request a signal with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider” is not the responsibility of the operating system provider.
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Unlikely. Dictator Micron generally does anything his overlords in Brussels say, and they do just about anything their overlords in the District of Criminals say.
It does add a few bureaucratic hurdles though.
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Thanks!
Because I have known and spent time with children that did this my first thought on reading that legislation was “how will this affect the child or young adult that is trying to do advanced learning outside of school”. There was a fair amount of this in my own family. Especially in science and math related subjects.
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