[HN Gopher] Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO ...
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Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO use due to age
verification
Author : iamnothere
Score : 111 points
Date : 2026-02-27 15:37 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| lokar wrote:
| Does it run applications? The point of the law is to collect (and
| device setup) the age of the (I guess primary?) user, and
| communicate that (as a range?) to any applications it runs.
|
| So, if you don't run applications, does this matter? Also,
| enforcement is by the CA attorney general, so random people can't
| go after you.
| wrs wrote:
| Well, it's a programmable calculator, so...how does the law
| define "applications"?
| meatmanek wrote:
| (c) "Application" means a software application that may be
| run or directed by a user on a computer, a mobile device, or
| any other general purpose computing device that can access a
| covered application store or download an application.
| riskable wrote:
| The calculator firmware is a "software application" that's
| run by a user on a mobile device but it can't access an
| application store or download applications. For that you
| need a PC.
|
| So github.com is the violator, here, since it's a software
| application that may be run by a user on a computer and can
| download applications (loads of them!).
| onionisafruit wrote:
| I've read through the CA law a couple of times and can't
| figure out what an application store is supposed to do.
| What part of the law would github violate?
| kmeisthax wrote:
| The California bill basically says any OS with an app store
| needs to collect an age signal and provide age bucketing to an
| app store (presumably even third-party ones, but notably NOT
| extension stores) so it can forward that information onto
| developers in that store.
|
| There's no further elaboration on what age signals are
| preferred, so my assumption is that a DoB field in the user
| profile and a system service to request the age bucket is good
| enough. It's absolutely silly, but DB48X could implement that.
|
| There's a related question of who is actually liable under this
| law - it seems written to target just Apple, Google, and
| Microsoft; and it only makes sense in the context of consumer
| electronics. Like, how does this work with enterprise systems?
| Servers? Is IBM going to have to rush out a patch for z/VM to
| ask the system administrator what their date of birth is?
| drnick1 wrote:
| Clickbait title, the legal notice explicitly states that an open
| source project cannot and will not implement age verification.
| hlieberman wrote:
| There is no carve out in the law for open source. I don't think
| it matters for this calculator's firmware, because there's no
| covered App Store, but it certainly would for most Linux
| distributions.
| drnick1 wrote:
| The law is irrelevant when it comes to open source. There is
| no one to turn to and bully for compliance. A government
| could presumably request that GitHub delete the repo, but the
| software will then simply move somewhere else, in a
| jurisdiction where these laws don't apply, or be distributed
| peer-to-peer. These attempts at curbing the freedom to write
| and distribute software are pathetic and will fail.
| mhurron wrote:
| > simply move somewhere else, in a jurisdiction where these
| laws don't apply, or be distributed peer-to-peer
|
| Each of these options lead software to become less and less
| discoverable leading to the fact that most people will
| never use anything that isn't complying with these laws. So
| the end result still hits the desired effect.
| tliltocatl wrote:
| > There is no one to turn to and bully for compliance >
| These attempts at curbing the freedom to write and
| distribute software are pathetic and will fail.
|
| You sweet summer child.
| lacoolj wrote:
| I don't see a definition for "operating system" in this
| legislation (California).
|
| "Operating system provider" is defined, but that's kinda useless
| unless "operating system" is defined first.
| netsharc wrote:
| It seems there's also a definition error:
|
| > 1798.500. For the purposes of this title:
|
| > (i) "User" means a child that is the primary user of the
| device.
|
| Child is defined:
|
| > (d) "Child" means a natural person who is under 18 years of
| age.
|
| But that means this is impossible:
|
| > (b) (4) Whether the user is at least 18 years of age.
| ziml77 wrote:
| So DB48X provides a covered application store?
|
| (e) (1) "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.
|
| Also, where does anything in the CA bill mandate age
| verification? It's saying the OS needs to prompt for age bracket
| info and allow the third party apps to query that. That is far
| different from verification.
| iamnothere wrote:
| > Also, where does anything in the CA bill mandate age
| verification? It's saying the OS needs to prompt for age
| bracket info and allow the third party apps to query that. That
| is far different from verification.
|
| Regardless of the technical details of the law(s), the devs are
| sensibly refusing to prompt for age on a fricking _calculator_.
|
| Hopefully Linux distros get on board with this and announce
| non-CA/CO compliance as policy.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Ultimately, it does not matter. This legal notice is just
| theater, as anyone from CA or CO can still download, build
| and use the program. Linux distributions will just do the
| same.
| goda90 wrote:
| You might say the bills themselves are theater. Respond to
| theater with theater.
| parasense wrote:
| Certainly. However, The developer seems to want to avoid
| the $2,500 per violation by any child who accesses the
| calculator, and might see a dick pic... because that
| calculator firmware does indeed allow for image viewing,
| and application development. It's more powerful than your
| PC back in the late 1990s.
| tliltocatl wrote:
| For Linux it will be way more problematic because:
|
| - A lot of of corporate contributions comes from SV.
|
| - Linux Foundation is incorporated in CA.
|
| - Linus himself is CA's resident AFAIR.
|
| So there is zero chance of claiming no jurisdiction. The only
| hope is whoever is enforcing this batshit wouldn't go after
| what is essentially not an OS for the purpose of the bill,
| but rather an internal component (it would be like going
| after a vendor of bolts and nuts for noncompliance of a
| toaster).
| helterskelter wrote:
| I believe Linus lives in Oregon.
| thayne wrote:
| It's more likely to be an issue for distributions like
| Debian, Ubuntu, Red Hat, etc.
|
| Although, if I'm understanding this correctly, I think all
| they would have to do to comply is have something during
| installation that asks for the age category, and write a
| file that is world readable, but only writable by root that
| contains that category that applications can read.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| That is already way too much as far as I'm concerned.
| It's not that it's difficult, it's that it's arbitrary
| and a form of commanded speech or action. Smallness and
| easiness isn't an excuse.
|
| If you write a story, there must be a character in it
| somewhere that reminds kids not to smoke. That's all.
| It's very easy.
| iamnothere wrote:
| And then another state will pass a law mandating scanning
| of all local images, and another state will want
| automated scanning of text, and a different country will
| want a backdoor for law enforcement. We have to stop this
| here and now.
| pkaye wrote:
| I think Linus Torvalds lives in Oregon.
| burnte wrote:
| It's also still bound only to companies in CA. I'm in GA, I
| don't have to comply, for example, if I were making operating
| systems. People REALLY need to push back when governments try
| to extend their reach beyond their borders, like EU
| regulations. The more we let them the more enshrined in law it
| will become. We have the right and duty to say no, that only
| applies in your jurisdiction.
| tliltocatl wrote:
| IANAL, but the whole thing feels quite problematic. Should we
| interpret the prohibition as a licensing condition "a resident
| using our IP is violating the contract" or as an informative note
| "we are not compliant and we are not ever going to be compliant
| so a resident using the IP is violating local laws"? I'd expect
| the intent to be the latter, but would it hold in front of a
| judge? If the notice is a licensing condition, the whole thing is
| problematic as hell:
|
| - Does such prohibition has any legal force at all? Does it do
| anything to prevent responsibility according to the bill?
| Wouldn't just saying "CA/CO have zero jurisdiction over us, get
| screwed" be a saner choice (of course it would be better if the
| project wouldn't host on M$'s servers).
|
| - The main project license is GPLv3. GPLv3 clearly has no
| provisions to introduce arbitrary prohibitions into the license
| without losing compatibility. But they still keep GPLv3
| LICENSE.txt, which is problematic in itself - if LICENSE.txt says
| one thing and LEGAL-NOTICE.txt another, the conclusion might be
| that no license applies so no one may use the software at all!
|
| - If they are reusing any GPL software that they don't hold
| copyright on, they might be or might not be in violation (would
| need a real lawyer to say if that's the case or not).
|
| And on the actual matter of things, it's really sad to see
| California to be on the front line of this crap (this _screams_
| ageism). And, dear "adults", screw your parental authority so
| much. Whatever skills I've gained before the university I've done
| against an explicit parental prohibition. This is what I live off
| now. Screw you all.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| > And on the actual matter of things, it's really sad to see
| California to be on the front line of this crap (this screams
| ageism). And, dear "adults", screw your parental authority so
| much. Whatever skills I've gained before the university I've
| done against an explicit parental prohibition. This is what I
| live off now. Screw you all.
|
| It's yet another surface that totalitarian parental control has
| crept into, and it's a serious problem. Young people kept
| strictly within the iron grip of their guardians generally
| aren't the ones who become happy actualized all-star adults.
|
| Obviously there should be some limits on what teenagers and
| children can access, it shouldn't be entirely free reign, but
| robbing them of space to bend the rules severely limits their
| potential for growth and incurs a strong risk of extinguishing
| their spark.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| > Obviously there should be some limits on what teenagers and
| children can access
|
| Is it? The _only_ people who should be deciding those limits
| are parents. If they fail to set and enforce those limits
| then any negative outcomes for the child are due to their own
| negligence, and can be adjudicated as child abuse per those
| laws.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I agree fully. Limits should be on the shoulders of
| parents, not the government or any other institution.
| ronsor wrote:
| I think the winning move is just to ignore the legislation, and
| drag the government into an EFF or ACLU-funded First Amendment
| lawsuit if they try to enforce anything.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| the winning move is to publicly post every bit of data that
| anyone has or ever had about the politicians who wrote this
| law, VERY publicly, and see how fast they change their mind on
| privacy. I suggest starting with SMSs and photos in "private"
| folders.
| hotsalad wrote:
| *Formerly open source
|
| Seems to violate the open source definition paragraph 5, no?
| croes wrote:
| From the other post about this law.
|
| > That's likely no big deal for Windows, which already requires
| you to enter your date of birth during the Microsoft Account
| setup procedure
|
| This seems like an over reaction because of a simple date field
| conartist6 wrote:
| Why would I need a Microsoft account to use Windows.
| vincent-manis wrote:
| Performative indeed!
| mijoharas wrote:
| Ignoring the calculator side of things (fair enough if they don't
| wanna implement it) is this just requiring an age value for the
| user of the operating system?
|
| Because if so, that seems a lot more sensible than the online
| crap where you need to give ID or something. I remember someone
| suggesting requiring an `X-User-Age` header, and having adults
| responsible for having their children's account setup with their
| age, which this proposal seems to be more in line with.
|
| From some of the other responses people seem against this
| proposal, am I missing something? (I only briefly skimmed the
| links) Is there some kind of attestation/ID required when the age
| is input?
| iamnothere wrote:
| It's the camels nose into the tent of regulating how an OS
| should behave. This is anathema for FOSS operating systems. It
| will cause complete madness if different jurisdictions start
| regulating operating systems in their own way and could
| honestly kill FOSS OSes.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| is it though? If you setup a PC for a 12 year old and prompts
| you something like [12~16] and thats reported to whatever,
| what exactly is the fear? You can scream slippery slope but
| these laws are just going to boil down to technical
| capability because enforcement isn't realistic.
|
| There's real harms by large businesses such as Meta. Should
| we pretend those arms don't exist?
| iamnothere wrote:
| It is a slippery slope, and enforcement can quickly go from
| unrealistic to mandatory as we're seeing in the UK.
|
| > There's real harms by large businesses such as Meta.
| Should we pretend those arms don't exist?
|
| Frankly I don't care. Hands off my operating system. I will
| set up a guerilla sneakernet before I comply with something
| like this. Find another way to deal with it or face open
| rebellion.
| creatonez wrote:
| > Colorado residents may no longer use DB48x after Jan 1st, 2028.
|
| This law hasn't even passed
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(page generated 2026-02-27 23:00 UTC)