Colorado Age Attestation bill gets amendments to have open source excluded

Carl Richell, the Founder and CEO of System76, has given an update on the upcoming Colorado Age Attestation bill that's seen some amendments.

This is one of many bills currently going through various US states, forcing different kinds of age verification on operating systems. Richell actually took the fight to lawmakers, and it seems like we may now have a bit of a win here (as far as a "win" can be when it comes to this other than stopping it entirely…).

Writing on Bluesky and Mastodon:

I received the amended Colorado Age Attestation bill.

* Open source OS's and apps are excluded
* Code repos are excluded (github/gitlab)
* Containers are excluded (docker/podman)

I testify Thursday and can use your help! I need your stories about incredible things kids have made thanks to access to open source software. Share here or DM me.

In a follow-up post on Mastodon in reply to open source developer Neal Gompa asking about other states, Richell mentioned some another positive look:

with the way this worked out, I believe we now have a sound template to start working in other states. I haven't found the amended text online but will post as soon I do. Our next step is a letter to the CO reps that we need to pass the bill with these amendments, then adapting that letter to other states and working with the open source community to raise awareness.

Hopefully this will end up on a happy note for Linux and other open source projects. That said, we still have the Parents Decide Act that's also getting pushed across the whole of the US. If that passes, we have other problems to deal with.