[HN Gopher] Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO ...
___________________________________________________________________
Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO use due to age
verification
Author : iamnothere
Score : 212 points
Date : 2026-02-27 15:37 UTC (1 days 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?
| idle_zealot wrote:
| The store is just supposed to be able to see the reported
| age bracket and use it to enforce its existing age
| restrictions. I'm not sure Github has any age
| restrictions though, so I think it's already in
| compliance by default.
| sgc wrote:
| Only if its js initiates downloads (even if just
| injecting other js), in which case, I guess yes??? Or
| does that fall onto the browser??? Sounds simple to
| figure out. Maybe everybody will abandon the term webapp
| now.
| 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?
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > Like, how does this work with enterprise systems?
|
| You put the age of the owning company. If the company is
| under 18 then too bad for you.
| 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.
| rescbr wrote:
| Eh... Prohibiting access to MSN Messenger on school
| computers was one of the catalysts to me being a highly
| paid professional today.
|
| Tell children they can't do X, some will find ways around
| it, tell their friends the workaround and maybe even get
| a profession out of it. Who knows, maybe one kid will
| find a text editor and a compiler laying around
| somewhere...
|
| Fuck, I even tried to learn Russian by myself just to
| understand those old hacking forums. At least I got
| proficient in Cyrillic. I don't have children, but
| definitely I'd direct them to learn reading Chinese.
| 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.
| delfinom wrote:
| >There is no one to turn to and bully for compliance.
|
| They can and will go after anyone that distributes it.
| 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.
| sgc wrote:
| if (user is null) is leaving me way up in my feelings.
| Ambiguous value error: 'too true' is not an approved
| response. Please consult your legislator and try again.
| 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.
| chungy wrote:
| > It's more powerful than your PC back in the late 1990s.
|
| Sounds like a fun thought, but almost certainly untrue:
| https://www.swissmicros.com/product/dm42
|
| All new PCs sold in the late 1990s handedly beat these
| specifications. On CPU, storage, RAM, and display. The
| DM42 firmly remains an embedded system that's just enough
| for the calculator software and not much more.
|
| If you want to take it back to the early 1980s, you start
| reaching the claim being true.
| benj111 wrote:
| True. I can see 58008 on mine....
| rockskon wrote:
| Or, heaven forbid, 8008135. Can't allow that!
| theodric wrote:
| I had a program on my overclocked TI-83 in 1998 that
| displayed a single pseudo-greyscale dithered photograph
| of a topless Pamela Anderson, which has left me
| hopelessly psychologically scarred. Ban this filth
| hagbard_c wrote:
| Well, no, that's not how laws like this work. Of course
| people in these states can just install the software and it
| is very likely nothing more will come from that _unless_
| some politico in one of these states decides she has a beef
| against the company, group or person which distributes the
| software. When that happens she 'll have this law at hand
| to whack them with because _the knowingly violated state
| law so they need to be dealt with, won 't anyone think of
| the children?_.
| pixl97 wrote:
| I'd also put notice in the usage that the offices of the
| representatives of the politicians that voted for this
| law they are not allowed to use the software as a
| historical wall of shame.
| 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.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I actually don't mind mandating the market take
| reasonable actions. The EU mandating USB C was an
| excellent move that materially improved things.
|
| However I think mandated actions should to the greatest
| extent possible be minimal, privacy preserving, and have
| an unambiguous goal that is clearly accomplished. This
| legislation fails in that regard because it mandates
| sharing personal information with third parties where it
| could have instead mandated queries that are strictly
| local to the device.
| iamnothere wrote:
| Under no circumstances should we be "mandating" how
| hobbyists write their software. If you want to scope this
| to commercial OSes, be my guest. That's not what was done
| here.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I'm not sure where the line between "hobby" and
| "professional" lies when it comes to linux distributions.
| Many of them are nonprofit but not really hobbyist at
| this point. Debian sure feels like a professional product
| to me (I daily drive it).
|
| We regulate how a hobbyist constructs and uses a radio.
| We regulate how a hobbyist constructs a shed in his yard
| or makes modifications to the electrical wiring in his
| house.
|
| I think mandating the implementation of strictly device
| local filtering based on a standardized HTTP header (or
| in the case of apps an attached metadata field) would be
| reasonably non-invasive and of benefit to society
| (similar to mandating USB C).
| jolmg wrote:
| > I'm not sure where the line between "hobby" and
| "professional" lies when it comes to linux distributions.
| Many of them are nonprofit but not really hobbyist at
| this point. Debian sure feels like a professional product
| to me (I daily drive it).
|
| "Professional" means you're being paid for the work.
| Debian is free (gratis), contributors are volunteers, and
| that makes it not professional.
| thayne wrote:
| What about Ubuntu? Its a combination of work by
| volunteers and paid employees, it is distributed by a
| commercial company, and said company sells support
| contracts, but the OS itself is free.
|
| And there are developers who are paid to work on various
| components of linux from the kernel, to Gnome, does that
| make it professional?
|
| Is Android not professional, because you don't pay for
| the OS itself, and it is primarily supported by ad
| revenue?
| jolmg wrote:
| I would argue they're not, because they're not fully
| under the responsibility of a commercial entity, because
| they're open source. Companies can volunteer employees to
| the project, even a project they started themselves, but
| the companies and employees can come and go. Open source
| projects exist independently as public goods. Ultimately,
| it just takes anyone in the world to fork a project to
| exclude everybody else from its development.
|
| Mint started off as Ubuntu. Same project, with none of
| the support contracts, no involvement from Canonical
| needed at the end of the day, etc.
|
| On a practical level, it doesn't make sense to put
| thousands of dollars per user in liabilities to non-
| compensated volunteers whatever the case may be with
| regards to the employment of other contributors.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| At some point it seems to devolve from a meaningful
| discussion about how things should be done into a
| semantic argument (which are almost always pointless).
|
| > it doesn't make sense to put thousands of dollars per
| user in liabilities to non-compensated volunteers
|
| I agree when it comes to individuals. But it probably
| does make sense to hold formally recognized groups (such
| as nonprofits) accountable to various consumer laws. I
| think the idea odd that Windows, RHEL, Ubuntu, and Debian
| should all be regulated differently within a single
| jurisdiction given that they seem to me largely
| equivalent in purpose.
| Brian_K_White wrote:
| You've confused and confabulated like 11 different things
| there. None of what you said has anything to do with
| either what I said or what the law says.
|
| The way this currently exists is basically unenfoceable
| because the critical terms are not even defined. It's not
| even ultimately intelligible, which is a prerequisite to
| enforcing, or even being able to tell where it does and
| does not apply, and whether some covered entity is or is
| not in compliance.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > You've confused and confabulated like 11 different
| things there.
|
| Feel free to elaborate. As it stands that's nothing more
| than name calling.
|
| I wasn't speaking to the current CA or CO proposed
| implementations (which I don't support as it happens). I
| responded specifically to your statement:
|
| > It's not that it's difficult, it's that it's arbitrary
| and a form of commanded speech or action.
|
| My response being that I think it's acceptable for the
| regulator to require action under certain limited
| circumstances.
| 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.
| fsckboy wrote:
| "Linux" is just the source code to the kernel, pure free
| speech, and it can't run by itself in order to ask anybody
| anything. Underage programmers will benefit from the
| education of reading it.
| josephg wrote:
| Exactly. More bluntly, the Linux kernel isn't an
| operating system.
| 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.
| altairprime wrote:
| "can download" could refer either to transfers initiated by the
| user, or to transfers initiated from the device. The language
| "from [device] developers to users of [that device]" clarifies
| that this applies if _users_ can access a third-party directory
| and /or repository of applications.
|
| I strongly encourage the EFF to sue the FSF over not shipping
| age verification in Emacs, since in every respect Emacs fits
| these criteria; it is a computer environment that avid users
| can reside fully within to operate their system, and its
| publisher operates a directory+repository system at
| https://elpa.gnu.org. I think that both organizations would be
| excited to pursue that lawsuit pro bono, since it would
| evidence such significant flaws in the law that it might be
| struck by the court.
|
| Incidentally, this likely also implicates Tesla and BMW as not
| requiring age verification before allowing users to download
| updates containing new pay-to-unlock applications from their
| vehicles' in-app purchase marketplaces. I'm sure they would
| both be happy to help overturn this law once implicated in
| violating it.
| renewiltord wrote:
| If you are providing legal advice as a legal professional,
| happy to follow your advice. Are you willing to provide legal
| indemnity to me? I assume it will be cheap, say $12/year.
| aleph_minus_one wrote:
| > So DB48X provides a covered application store?
|
| Developers are not lawyers, so they cannot be expected to know
| every subtle detail of the law, and not how these laws are then
| interpreted (in a often non-logical way) by courts.
| nwallin wrote:
| The law pertains to providers of covered application stores
| _or_ operating system providers. Or, not and.
|
| They are not a covered application store, but they are an
| operating system provider, so the law does apply to them.
| tliltocatl wrote:
| IANAL, but the whole thing feels quite problematic. Should we
| interpret the prohibition as a licensing condition "a resident
| using our IP is violating the contract" or as an informative note
| "we are not compliant and we are not ever going to be compliant
| so a resident using the IP is violating local laws"? I'd expect
| the intent to be the latter, but would it hold in front of a
| judge? If the notice is a licensing condition, the whole thing is
| problematic as hell:
|
| - Does such prohibition has any legal force at all? Does it do
| anything to prevent responsibility according to the bill?
| Wouldn't just saying "CA/CO have zero jurisdiction over us, get
| screwed" be a saner choice (of course it would be better if the
| project wouldn't host on M$'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.
| kelnos wrote:
| Exactly. OS makers should build fine-grained parental
| controls into their OSes, and parents, and only parents,
| get to decide how much (if any at all) of that to enable
| for their children.
|
| (And OS makers need to get better at this; from what I
| understand, it's not difficult for savvy kids to bypass
| parental controls on iOS and Android.)
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| If this were the late 80s I would wholeheartedly agree with
| you. But it isn't. Every device under the sun seems to have a
| web browser and wifi built into it at this point. Even most
| TVs are "smart" these days. If you told me that your
| refrigerator had a web browser and an app store I would
| assume you were entirely serious.
|
| The internet is full of amazing things but it is
| simultaneously a largely unfiltered cesspool.
|
| Imagine you live in the suburbs, but at some point the house
| to your left got demolished and replaced with a casino that
| doesn't ID anyone. The house to your right got demolished and
| replaced with a liquor store that doesn't ID anyone. And the
| house across the street got demolished and replaced with the
| headquarters of a local group of political extremists.
|
| Sure, there also happens to be an award winning library a
| couple houses down. But that's largely irrelevant when it
| comes to the question of how you're supposed to raise
| children in this environment.
| tliltocatl wrote:
| You shouldn't apply that kind of thinking to _global
| things_. Because what you end up doing is nuking library on
| earth - there might be a casino somewhere near there. I see
| your concerns, but, ultimately, parent 's carving for a
| comfortable illusion of control is _less important_ than
| child 's rights. And yes, I'll repeat it again, it's not
| child's best interest to have their surroundings controlled
| and censored.
|
| And for reference, when I was talking about my personal
| experience, I wasn't talking about 80's. More like mid- to
| late- 00's Russia. The internet was already quite a
| cesspool at the time, the local IRL even more so. Just I
| wasn't interested. Once a teen is interested in getting
| into the edgy stuff there is no amount of regulation can
| stop them.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > there might be a casino somewhere near there.
|
| That's approximately my whole point. We have zoning laws.
| We have age verification laws. We have lots of ordinances
| about what is and isn't appropriate in public and around
| children and similar. You can't open a strip club across
| the street from a public school _and I think that 's a
| very good thing_.
|
| The vast global unfiltered internet is increasingly
| pervading our lives. I think it is entirely reasonable to
| enact minimal regulation that stems the tide with respect
| to a narrowly defined goal.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _Once a teen is interested in getting into the edgy
| stuff there is no amount of regulation can stop them._
|
| That's really the thing too. I _did_ grow up in the 80s
| and 90s, and I managed to find porn and all other sorts
| of things that my parents didn 't want me to have or do.
| And I wasn't even a bad, difficult-to-parent kid. I was
| just a pre-teen and teen who wanted to do stuff my
| parents didn't approve of, just like pretty much every
| other kid on the planet.
|
| In the end, I turned out fine! Not perfect (I have my
| issues, like most of us), but I'm happy and successful. I
| have no doubt that the same would be true if I'd grown up
| in the 00s like you did.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I don't agree. It's still ultimately up to the parent to
| keep an eye on what their kids are up to, talk to them and
| prepare them to handle ugly things (which they _will_
| encounter at some point whether you prepare them for it or
| not, no matter how hard you try to keep them in a bubble),
| and if they feel necessary impose restrictions on a
| household basis.
|
| Even if I did agree, the implementations being rolled out
| present far more danger to _adults_ than requiring an ID to
| enter a physical establishment ever could. Internet ID
| systems are rife for political abuse for example, and
| requiring age attestation at the OS level endangers general
| purpose computing, adds yet more hoops for free open source
| OS projects to jump through, and risks making FOSS OSes
| illegal to use for those who need an escape hatch from
| their commercial counterparts the most.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| I agree with you about the proposed implementations. I
| don't think ID checks are justifiable and I _definitely_
| don 't think attestation is acceptable as a public policy
| under any circumstance.
|
| I agree with you that it's up to the parent to keep an
| eye on their children. But I also think that society has
| a duty to facilitate that. To that end, I think some
| minimal regulation regarding self reported content
| ratings for websites would probably be a good thing.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _But I also think that society has a duty to facilitate
| that._
|
| I don't think anyone disagrees with that. The
| disagreement is around how intrusive the government
| should be in facilitating that. And some people (myself
| included) believe that these sorts of age checks and
| attestation are too intrusive, even if the stated goal is
| a good one.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| Did you perhaps miss the part in the comment you're
| replying to where I said that I disagree with both
| attestation and ID checks? I went on to suggest a
| concrete method of facilitation whereby websites are
| legally mandated to self report content ratings.
|
| Notice that the context here is a comment farther up the
| chain decrying the enablement of totalitarian parental
| control.
| kelnos wrote:
| You be a parent and set limits on your children's behavior.
| You enforce it through the usual means. You don't rely on a
| nanny-state government to do it for you. That's abandoning
| your responsibility as a parent.
|
| And let's not seriously try to say internet availability is
| the same as free-for-all liquor stores and casinos on as
| your physical neighbors. It's just not. It's still easier
| to restrict what a kid does online than it is to restrict
| their physical movements.
|
| (And frankly, it's not that hard to restrict a kid's
| physical movements.)
| kelnos wrote:
| > _GPLv3 clearly has no provisions to introduce arbitrary
| prohibitions into the license without losing compatibility._
|
| It's not even just that. The license expressly forbids adding
| other conditions and restrictions, and says that people who
| receive software, licensed under the GPL, with added conditions
| ore restrictions, can just remove those restrictions.
|
| If the author really wants to add a restriction like this, they
| have to switch to a different license.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Maybe they don't really want to add this restriction. Maybe
| they want a fig leaf, so when California asks them why they
| don't comply with the law, they can point to this and state
| it's not legal to use in California.
| 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.
| 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.
| croes wrote:
| The point is, it's not about verification but a simple date
| field.
|
| Like those sites where you have to enter a birthdate before
| you can see the content
| red_admiral wrote:
| Microsoft may in future permanently disable the local-account
| workarounds. Being able to hind behind "legal reasons" just
| makes it worse.
| 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.
| tliltocatl wrote:
| The fear is that being below 18 doesn't mean you have no
| right to privacy. It's not implementation that's the
| problem. The whole idea is stupid.
| zarzavat wrote:
| IMO it's more likely to lead to a renaissance in FOSS OS use.
| Not requiring a legal entity and being geographically diffuse
| makes them immune to this kind of pressure in a way that
| Apple and Microsoft are not.
| creatonez wrote:
| > Colorado residents may no longer use DB48x after Jan 1st, 2028.
|
| This law hasn't even passed
| m3kw9 wrote:
| so they outlawed a calculator?
| adamtaylor_13 wrote:
| What's with the recent push for age verification? This has been
| around forever but it seems like just recently a bunch of
| governments are pushing for this.
| rngfnby wrote:
| It's a cloak for digital ID disguised as child safety.
|
| There are many way to make the internet safe for kids without
| removing anonymity. But the they wouldn't get what they want,
| would they?
| direwolf20 wrote:
| A large number of entities are facing the same problem at the
| same time and coming to similar conclusions.
|
| There's also a cabal that wants surveillance, but since the
| California law doesn't require surveillance, this isn't that.
| The California law just mandates a parental control feature.
| hotsalad wrote:
| If I'm reading the (L)GPL correctly (but I'm not a lawyer), this
| notice should be completely ignored:
|
| Section 7 says: All other non-permissive additional terms are
| considered "further restrictions" within the meaning of section
| 10. If the Program as you received it, or any part of it,
| contains a notice stating that it is governed by this License
| along with a term that is a further restriction, you may remove
| that term.
|
| Section 10 says: You may not impose any further restrictions on
| the exercise of the rights granted or affirmed under this
| License.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| The copyright holder isn't bound by their own license though.
|
| Although, if there are many contributors to the project, there
| may not be a clear copyright holder.
| hotsalad wrote:
| Wouldn't they still need to switch to a license outside the
| GPL family in order to add those restrictions, even if
| they're the sole copyright holder? Otherwise it seems that
| upon receiving a copy of the software, the user can just
| remove the additional restrictions, as specified by Section
| 7.
| kelnos wrote:
| Of course, the copyright holder can license as they wish. But
| the quoted terms of the GPL are in the license that the
| author is distributing with the software, so we can _also_
| follow the terms of the GPL and remove the extra restriction
| they just added. The author is trying to do contradictory
| things: add extra restrictions, but release under the terms
| of a license that allow us to remove those extra
| restrictions.
|
| If they want to add that restriction, they cannot release it
| under the GPL; they need to pick another license, or modify
| the GPL to their liking and then call it something else
| (assuming the copyright terms of the GPL allow you to make a
| derived work of the license itself).
| Buttons840 wrote:
| If I have a license that says "you may use this, you may
| not use this", then can people use it? Honest question, I
| don't know how self-contradictory licenses work. Do people
| get to pick and choose what they want to follow, or does
| the whole thing become invalid?
| direwolf20 wrote:
| If you have a license that says "You may not use this.
| The preceding sentence is null and void. You may use
| this." then you may use it.
|
| You may also use software without a license, if you don't
| get caught.
| shakna wrote:
| The LGPL has:
|
| > This version of the GNU Lesser General Public License
| incorporates the terms and conditions of version 3 of the GNU
| General Public License, supplemented by the additional
| permissions listed below.
|
| Which points you over to this in GPL, Sections 7, Additional
| Terms:
|
| > Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, for
| material you add to a covered work, you may (if authorized by
| the copyright holders of that material) supplement the terms of
| this License with terms:
|
| > ...
|
| > f) Requiring indemnification of licensors and authors of that
| material by anyone who conveys the material (or modified
| versions of it) with contractual assumptions of liability to
| the recipient, for any liability that these contractual
| assumptions directly impose on those licensors and authors.
|
| This is a condition being imposed by a new law (if/when it
| passes). Its an attempt at indemnification that is compatible
| with the law. It seems to pass the reasonableness check.
| MangoCoffee wrote:
| what a stupid law
| jgalt212 wrote:
| All these stupid unenforceable laws, like GDPR which is being
| watered down, only create strong incentives to lie on compliance
| officers.
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