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Comment by miohtama | Hacker News Reader

This should be the time for open-source developers to use their common sense to decide whether we should push back.

If California wants to create its own Protect the children operating system, it should bear the cost and responsibility for this alone, and not export any of the sketchy political agenda to the wider open source community.

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Did you consider that companies want to sell laptops/PC with Linux in California? This is open-source, you can modify software to align with your business goals, including complying to regulations. If you have something against regulations, take that with lawmakers, not businesses which actually trying to promote Linux.

> This is open-source, you can modify software to align with your business goals, including complying to regulations

Just do it.

The news is literally about someone doing it.

It's the law. If you live in the United States, and a minor in California uses your OS that didn't check age, you could be liable for up to $2500 per occurrence. That can add up quickly if California schoolkids discover your OS does an end run around the law. When ruin is the alternative, compliance becomes non-negotiable.

Many distros disagree and are not complying. It’s very likely that this (and all similar bills) will be overturned after legal challenges. Noncommercial projects especially have a strong 1A case and we have already beaten one of these bills. Keep fighting.

> It's the law

"There is no justice in following unjust laws." - Aaron Swartz (Guerilla Open Access Manifesto)

Nobody in their right mind can explain how locking down operating systems will protect children. It does not make sense. This is just another way to sneak in more mass surveillance and kill anonymous online presence, with most ridiculous excuses.

California laws apply to people living in California. Not the whole country.

Let alone the world.

At some point you have to pick a jurisdiction. It's impossible to support all jurisdictions laws as a company, much less as a FOSS project.

California can't govern outside California. Other states have discovered the legal limits of their soverignty quite recently. But it certainly argues against hosting in CA and furthermore, consulting an attorney.

If you have a connection to California, you can be sued in their courts. I don't know whether providing (not selling, that certainly counts) an OS to California residents from outside California counts as a connection, that's something you need to review with your legal team. One thing is certain though: you need legal counsel to do OS dev; the Terry Davis era has come to a close.

Then let Californians do their dirty work. They have no place in the broader open-source community or in the rest of the world. Nobody should care about them, except now about caring about blocking them.

The owner of the computer should decide what the computer does.

California is a soon failed bankrupted US state, and no one outside its borders cares what's going on there. Companies are leaving, people are leaving. Let them sink to the ocean with their idiotic laws.

Except systemd isn't an OS. xdg-desktop-portal is not an OS. None of these projects need to flop over and acquiesce to this overreach.

This is optional functionality which a subset of their important customers want. You will continue to have options that do not make use of this feature.

As someone with children, I see benefits in how age verification will help me manage my kids relationship with technology. Even if it was not the law, I would choose products with support. The point of open source is to allow for both options.

Linux and OSS has customers?

7500$ per instances

Gasing the Jews was the law as well.

The two couldn't be more unrelated. The idea that age verification in an OS is bad is a niche position by a select few. You don't hear dissenting views on hackernews because the majority here belong to that group and going against the grain is down voted. On the other hand, you're comparing it to killing humans. Making everything into a moral dilemma cheapens the argument. Just because you disagree with the law doesn't give you moral high ground to ignore it. I think cookie consent questions are terrible but I'd not dream of not adding one if compelled by law

This is an argument that the law sometimes is clearly in the wrong.

> The idea that age verification in an OS is bad is a niche position by a select few

I am pretty sure that's not true.

just because the state called their demands and threats a 'law' doesn't give them a "moral high ground" to force everyone to comply with their demands.

What if the OS had a mandatory ethnicity check?

Let’s ask IBM.

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