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PayPalThere's a lot of age checking / age assurance bills going around right now, and System76 have entered the fight in Colorado to help open source.
I've recently written about the one in California, with Ubuntu and Fedora developers commenting on the situation, and how more US states are looking at doing it or already have it coming in. System76 are now throwing their hat in the ring, going directly to the source and starting the fight back.
As posted on Bluesky and Mastodon, System76 founder Carl Richell posted:
Today, I met with Colorado Senator Matt Ball, co-author of Colorado OS Age Attestation Bill SB26-051.
Sen. Ball suggested excluding open source software from the bill. This appears to be a real possibility.
Amendments are expected for the CA age attestation bill. It's my hope we can move fast enough to influence excluding open source in the CA bill amendments.
No illusions, it's an uphill battle, but we have an open door to advocate for the open source community.
Why Colorado specifically? That's where System76 are based, in Denver, Colorado USA. So it makes sense for them to be jumping in directly there.
Hopefully other Linux vendors will also be jumping in on this, as it seems to have caught the open source community quite off-guard which is unfortunate.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
About the author - Liam Dawe
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly.
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11 comments
This is great of Carl. Someone needs to stand up against these moronic politicians. He's in a good place to do so!
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I don't think that this is the right approach. As much as I want Linux to grow as a platform, this gives us an unfair advantage. The better choice will be to scrap/abolish such legislation entirely.
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Quoting: KandarihuI don't think that this is the right approach. As much as I want Linux to grow as a platform, this gives us an unfair advantage. The better choice will be to scrap/abolish such legislation entirely.On the other hand, pointing out the flaws in the legislation in the process of requesting exclusions weakens the arguments for the rest of the bill to move forward as well — and should it fail to stop it completely, I’d rather free software be excluded from it than not.
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This is needed - Fighting the politicians. Most Linux distributions should amend their license terms to deny right to use Linux in the state of California and other states where this Operating System Age Law gets implemented.
As soon as Californians are no longer able to legally run Linux, their own citizens will go after this law and end the moronic political overreach.
As soon as Californians are no longer able to legally run Linux, their own citizens will go after this law and end the moronic political overreach.
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Quoting: KandarihuAs much as I want Linux to grow as a platform, this gives us an unfair advantage.You think this gives Linux an unfair advantage? I suppose the fair version of this is asking for it to be completely scrapped knowing that it would be unlikely for them to listen.
Plus we are already asking for that. o_o
1 Likes
Quoting: KandarihuI don't think that this is the right approach. As much as I want Linux to grow as a platform, this gives us an unfair advantage. The better choice will be to scrap/abolish such legislation entirely.The more users that switch to Linux, the better. M$ Microslop may start to listen to the users 😆 😆 or they will try Embrace, extend, and extinguish
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Caldathras 11 hours ago
Quoting: g000hAs soon as Californians are no longer able to legally run Linux, their own citizens will go after this law and end the moronic political overreach.This assumes that the majority of Californians are Linux users. Linux is not significant enough to overturn this law. Besides, the majority of eligible voters are indifferent sheep ... they are more likely to just accept or ignore the overreach.
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Quoting: KandarihuI don't think that this is the right approach. As much as I want Linux to grow as a platform, this gives us an unfair advantage. The better choice will be to scrap/abolish such legislation entirely.As a general rule, I am fine with open source having unfair advantages. For one thing, closed source things do their best to create obstacles and disadvantages for open source. If you can't stop your opponent from cheating, better cheat back. For another, I can see very sound public policy objectives that can be served by preferences for open source. Government does not have a responsibility to make the playing field level, it has a responsibility to make the results of the game good for its citizens. If open source is better for the country and its citizens, then favour it.
In this specific case, I agree that the best choice would be to scrap this kind of legislation entirely. However, if that is not on the table, an unfair advantage for open source would be better than nothing.
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Quoting: CaldathrasWell the alternative is just giving up and result in Linux dying. Is that what you want? BTW California state includes Big Tech utopia Silicon Valley. Love to see Google and Meta trying to run without access to open source.Quoting: g000hAs soon as Californians are no longer able to legally run Linux, their own citizens will go after this law and end the moronic political overreach.This assumes that the majority of Californians are Linux users. Linux is not significant enough to overturn this law. Besides, the majority of eligible voters are indifferent sheep ... they are more likely to just accept or ignore the overreach.
It appears that Meta is responsible for causing this political upheaval - Lobbying politicians in these areas. (Meta gets to avoid big fines if it passes age verification onto operating systems and app stores.)
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A video showing more about this topic:
[https://odysee.com/@techlore:3/your-os-must-now-report-your-age-to:e](https://odysee.com/@techlore:3/your-os-must-now-report-your-age-to:e)
[https://odysee.com/@techlore:3/your-os-must-now-report-your-age-to:e](https://odysee.com/@techlore:3/your-os-must-now-report-your-age-to:e)
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Quoting: CaldathrasThey are. Linux runs virtually everything that's not a PC. What types of devices will fall under each law's purview? Smart watches? Routers? CCTV systems? Car entertainment systems? The farther it reaches, the more it hurts people's convenience and risks overcoming their complacency.Quoting: g000hAs soon as Californians are no longer able to legally run Linux, their own citizens will go after this law and end the moronic political overreach.This assumes that the majority of Californians are Linux users.
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