alt.hn

2/27/2026 at 3:37:53 PM

Open source calculator firmware DB48X forbids CA/CO use due to age verification

 https://github.com/c3d/db48x/commit/7819972b641ac808d46c54d3f5d1df70d706d286

by iamnothere

2/27/2026 at 6:29:22 PM

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.

by ziml77

2/27/2026 at 6:37:01 PM

> 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.

by iamnothere

2/27/2026 at 6:43:32 PM

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.

by drnick1

2/27/2026 at 7:56:45 PM

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.

by parasense

2/27/2026 at 11:17:29 PM

> 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.

by chungy

2/28/2026 at 9:49:37 AM

Or, heaven forbid, 8008135. Can't allow that!

by rockskon

2/28/2026 at 10:20:13 PM

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

by theodric

2/28/2026 at 9:34:18 AM

True. I can see 58008 on mine....

by benj111

2/27/2026 at 7:16:45 PM

You might say the bills themselves are theater. Respond to theater with theater.

by goda90

2/27/2026 at 11:48:52 PM

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?.

by hagbard_c

2/28/2026 at 1:03:50 AM

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.

by pixl97

2/27/2026 at 6:49:00 PM

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).

by tliltocatl

2/27/2026 at 9:12:37 PM

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.

by thayne

2/27/2026 at 10:10:09 PM

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.

by Brian_K_White

2/27/2026 at 11:05:17 PM

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.

by fc417fc802

2/27/2026 at 11:13:28 PM

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.

by iamnothere

2/27/2026 at 11:26:16 PM

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).

by fc417fc802

2/28/2026 at 6:59:02 AM

> 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.

by jolmg

2/28/2026 at 7:22:35 AM

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?

by thayne

2/28/2026 at 3:42:44 PM

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.

by jolmg

2/28/2026 at 8:27:12 PM

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.

by fc417fc802

2/28/2026 at 12:51:55 AM

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.

by Brian_K_White

2/28/2026 at 5:43:27 AM

> 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.

by fc417fc802

2/27/2026 at 10:20:33 PM

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.

by iamnothere

2/27/2026 at 7:47:43 PM

I believe Linus lives in Oregon.

by helterskelter

2/28/2026 at 4:04:12 AM

"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.

by fsckboy

2/28/2026 at 4:22:29 AM

Exactly. More bluntly, the Linux kernel isn't an operating system.

by josephg

2/27/2026 at 9:26:57 PM

I think Linus Torvalds lives in Oregon.

by pkaye

2/27/2026 at 7:13:05 PM

[flagged]

by mghackerlady

2/27/2026 at 7:43:13 PM

Stop spreading disinformation. Linus and others did most of the work in the kernel. GNU project on the kernel side was architecture astronaut vaporware aka "Hurd". They were much more successful in userland (coreutils, gcc and the toolchain, gdb, Emacs, to name a few).

by tliltocatl

2/27/2026 at 7:47:48 PM

I meant the userland specifically. By calling what is fundamentally a GNU system running on a different kernel just "linux" it makes people think linux and his crew made all of the userland, in part because saying a college student made "an entire operating system" is far more profitable for news agencies than acknowledging his important but overall relatively small role in what they call "linux"

by mghackerlady

2/27/2026 at 8:01:57 PM

Because the kernel is the irreplaceable piece. None of what GNU did is: there are numerous implementations of coreutils and shells and at least one non-GNU production-quality compiler toolchain (clang-llvm), a few alternative libcs. And many distribution do actively use the non-GNU parts. But none of this is useful without the kernel that is compatible with computers people have. And the only usable kernel we have is Linux (while BSDs are out there too, they take a much different tightly-integrated approach to userspace).

by tliltocatl

2/27/2026 at 8:14:11 PM

To add to this: I can appreciate the significance of GNU, especially in early Linux distributions, but the position of "GNU was the real OS, Linux was just the kernel" is also deceptive, IMO.

Sure, a lot of the userspace was GNU, but a lot of it ... wasn't. Things like PAM, the init system, and the network config tools, off the top of my head. A lot of system-specific tools come from "not-GNU", too.

You can't discount how much of early Linux was "GNU", and how big a deal GCC and GNU libc (and the rest!) were, but it's disingenuous in my opinion to call GNU an "operating system" that you just plugged Linux, the kernel, into. Even today, as far as I can tell, there is still not a true GNU system. Guix comes close, in terms of being "GNU-ish", but the most usable Hurd distro (AFAIK!) is Debian, where, again, a lot of components come from Debian, rather than GNU.

And, as you say, modern systems have drifted even further from being GNU. They have lots of GNU components, but so did, say, the Sprite OS, or a lot of 4.4BSD derivatives.

by spijdar

2/28/2026 at 12:44:06 AM

“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.

by altairprime

2/28/2026 at 1:28:48 AM

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.

by nwallin

2/27/2026 at 9:34:21 PM

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.

by burnte

2/28/2026 at 1:12:22 AM

> 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.

by aleph_minus_one

2/28/2026 at 12:44:24 AM

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.

by renewiltord

2/27/2026 at 7:58:13 PM

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.

by ronsor

2/27/2026 at 8:05:08 PM

[flagged]

by dmitrygr

2/27/2026 at 6:23:21 PM

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.

by lacoolj

2/27/2026 at 7:08:11 PM

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.

by netsharc

2/28/2026 at 1:17:48 AM

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.

by sgc

2/27/2026 at 10:17:59 PM

> Colorado residents may no longer use DB48x after Jan 1st, 2028.

This law hasn't even passed

by creatonez

2/27/2026 at 6:17:54 PM

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.

by lokar

2/27/2026 at 6:20:01 PM

Well, it’s a programmable calculator, so…how does the law define “applications”?

by wrs

2/27/2026 at 7:17:01 PM

(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.

by meatmanek

2/27/2026 at 8:37:11 PM

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!).

by riskable

2/27/2026 at 9:59:48 PM

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?

by onionisafruit

2/27/2026 at 11:08:36 PM

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.

by idle_zealot

2/28/2026 at 1:26:40 AM

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.

by sgc

2/27/2026 at 8:40:52 PM

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?

by kmeisthax

2/27/2026 at 11:10:39 PM

> 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.

by fc417fc802

2/28/2026 at 2:14:11 AM

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.

by adamtaylor_13

2/28/2026 at 4:04:41 AM

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?

by rngfnby

2/28/2026 at 2:00:44 PM

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.

by direwolf20

2/27/2026 at 8:51:04 PM

*Formerly open source

Seems to violate the open source definition paragraph 5, no?

by hotsalad

2/27/2026 at 6:36:45 PM

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.

by tliltocatl

2/28/2026 at 6:03:29 AM

> 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.

by kelnos

2/28/2026 at 1:59:50 PM

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.

by direwolf20

2/27/2026 at 7:37:39 PM

> 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.

by cosmic_cheese

2/27/2026 at 7:43:34 PM

> 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.

by mcmcmc

2/28/2026 at 6:05:35 AM

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.)

by kelnos

2/27/2026 at 7:59:38 PM

I agree fully. Limits should be on the shoulders of parents, not the government or any other institution.

by cosmic_cheese

2/27/2026 at 11:16:51 PM

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.

by fc417fc802

2/28/2026 at 1:21:21 AM

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.

by cosmic_cheese

2/28/2026 at 5:37:52 AM

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.

by fc417fc802

2/28/2026 at 6:09:41 AM

> 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.

by kelnos

2/28/2026 at 7:50:41 AM

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.

by fc417fc802

2/28/2026 at 6:08:17 AM

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.)

by kelnos

2/27/2026 at 11:32:47 PM

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.

by tliltocatl

2/27/2026 at 11:59:42 PM

> 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.

by fc417fc802

2/28/2026 at 6:12:47 AM

> 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.

by kelnos

2/27/2026 at 9:02:28 PM

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

by croes

2/27/2026 at 9:30:48 PM

Why would I need a Microsoft account to use Windows.

by conartist6

2/28/2026 at 11:08:46 AM

Microsoft may in future permanently disable the local-account workarounds. Being able to hind behind "legal reasons" just makes it worse.

by red_admiral

2/27/2026 at 11:42:22 PM

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

by croes

2/27/2026 at 9:52:36 PM

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?

by mijoharas

2/27/2026 at 10:15:17 PM

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.

by iamnothere

2/28/2026 at 2:56:52 AM

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.

by zarzavat

2/27/2026 at 10:28:19 PM

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?

by cyanydeez

2/27/2026 at 10:50:58 PM

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.

by iamnothere

2/27/2026 at 11:10:13 PM

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.

by tliltocatl

2/28/2026 at 3:31:33 AM

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.

by hotsalad

2/28/2026 at 11:24:14 AM

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.

by shakna

2/28/2026 at 3:40:45 AM

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.

by Buttons840

2/28/2026 at 5:57:29 AM

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).

by kelnos

2/28/2026 at 6:39:55 AM

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?

by Buttons840

2/28/2026 at 1:58:18 PM

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.

by direwolf20

2/28/2026 at 3:44:56 AM

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.

by hotsalad

2/27/2026 at 9:32:41 PM

Performative indeed!

by vincent-manis

2/27/2026 at 11:41:15 PM

so they outlawed a calculator?

by m3kw9

2/28/2026 at 5:23:30 AM

what a stupid law

by MangoCoffee

2/28/2026 at 1:54:40 PM

All these stupid unenforceable laws, like GDPR which is being watered down, only create strong incentives to lie on compliance officers.

by jgalt212

2/27/2026 at 9:50:19 PM

[dead]

by ConanRus

2/27/2026 at 6:21:42 PM

Clickbait title, the legal notice explicitly states that an open source project cannot and will not implement age verification.

by drnick1

2/27/2026 at 6:31:48 PM

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.

by hlieberman

2/27/2026 at 6:38:32 PM

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.

by drnick1

2/27/2026 at 6:46:13 PM

> 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.

by mhurron

2/28/2026 at 3:52:25 AM

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.

by rescbr

2/27/2026 at 7:53:47 PM

> 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.

by tliltocatl

2/28/2026 at 1:50:26 AM

>There is no one to turn to and bully for compliance.

They can and will go after anyone that distributes it.

by delfinom