Post #1396207

2026-03-21 15:34 UTC

@benjamineskola Not sure what I did to deserve such a tone in your response (first sentence being an exclamation, calling what I suppose is asking a question "armchair activism"), to me I've asked a genuine practical question, because I really don't know the answer to it and I don't think law has one either. The bill was clearly made in mind with proprietary operating systems, if it was otherwise I believe it would have been more thorough with its definition. I do agree that the judge would probably rule in one way or another against FOSS community, that's a real risk, though I really do question enforceability of such a bill in real scenarios for Linux (and therefore your statement that it's very obvious a specific project has to implement it) because it's unclear who is responsible for implementation and if anything it *should* be the legislative branch at fault. It is especially problematic, because newer bills are going one step further and requiring OSs to age assure users[1] (which is no longer a request to provide age by the user, but rather require OSs to verify age using a method). How is FOSS going to respond to that? Is every Linux distribution going to be equipped with spy tech? Where does this madness end? [1]: https://www.theregister.com/2026/03/06/os_age_verification/

Replies (2)

@Frisk@woof.tech 2026-03-21 15:36

@benjamineskola I'm not an US citizen, I do not live in US and honestly I don't want anything to do with US. I resist age verification laws in ways I can in my country currently. I consider myself a FOSS developer and therefore part of the community and I want to express my displeasure with compliance to something that affects creatures globally. Those functions have real world consequences, and I believe FOSS community should have a serious discussion on how to abide to draconian legislation like this one.

Open ##1396208
@benjamineskola@hachyderm.io 2026-03-21 15:48

@Frisk This is not directed personally at you, but I think a lot of tech people have a certain belief about the way they think the law 'should' behave. Laws should be written rationally and logically and if the law leaves something for interpretation then it's a bad law. But in practice laws are written in a somewhat abstract way, and it is up to the courts to decide whether they apply to a certain situation, and they will often try to understand what could 'reasonably' be meant by the text of the law and so on. That means it's not safe to rely on trying to find 'technicalities'. If you think 'well, technically Debian doesn't "produce, licence, or control" the software so it's safe'. It's quite reasonable to decide that Debian has some 'control' over the system (by selecting software for distribution and controlling the infrastructure by which it is distributed). So I think projects like Debian need to assume for their own safety that this applies to them until it's proven otherwise. (Btw: I am also not in the US and would love US problems not to affect the rest of the world.)

Open ##1396209