Post #1496750
2026-04-21 13:39 UTC
Replies (27)
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@neal@social.gompa.me 2026-04-21 13:42
@carlrichell Is there any communication with California and New York yet?
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@McNeely@indieweb.social 2026-04-21 13:47
@carlrichell I'm not from Colorado but I do follow tech policy somewhat closely; it's my understanding that Colorado likes to view itself as one of the leaders in tech policy at the state level. I think it would be very helpful if you pointed at the carve outs for Open Source OSs and Apps and compared that to the state of CA AB1043 and the vagueness of who it applies towards as "Operating System Provider" and "covered app store". Clarity is better here IMO https://trackbill.com/bill/california-assembly-bill-1043-age-verification-signals-software-applications-and-online-services/2670347/
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@thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io 2026-04-21 14:26
@carlrichell idk if this is anything, but my whole career as a programmer and software creator is thanks to being able to freely tinker with computers and the software running on them back in the late 80s and 90s
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@jackryder@infosec.exchange 2026-04-21 14:46
@carlrichell It might be a tad dated but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avi_Schiffmann Avi Schiffmann built a Covid-19 tracker when he was in Highschool.
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@moonleay@mastodon.de 2026-04-21 15:00
@carlrichell I am using Linux since I was 15 or so. I wouldn't know half as much about computers, servers and networking, if I hadn't had access to Linux, FOSS & open computer equipment at a young age.
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@ernmander@squatch.online 2026-04-21 15:17
@carlrichell Good luck on Thursday Carl
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@human3500@ottawa.place 2026-04-21 17:36
@carlrichell Linus wasn't quite a kid when he started Linux, but you don't start a big project like that without some small ones under your belt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds
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@evanwolf@mastodon.social 2026-04-21 17:42
@carlrichell Computer literacy starts young. I started coding at age 12. Kids are citizens too. And civic life, learning what's going on and using your freedoms of speech and assembly, is thru computers. This steps on constitutionally protected civil rights from the first amendment on...
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@Xech@mastodon.xech.io 2026-04-21 18:00
@carlrichell this has vital implications for the big brother H.R.8250: https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8250/text
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@vandorb12@infosec.exchange 2026-04-21 18:11
@carlrichell most would rather this bill not going forward. This does nothing to protect those at risk. Seeing a carveout for FOSS is not enough of an olive branch.
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@Tom_ofB@23.social 2026-04-21 19:00
@carlrichell dunno if this anywhere near what you aimed for, but my son made this game using the open source game engine Godot and also used Krita to create some of the art: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3565330/Squinky/ He's still 13, started at the age of 11 with this project.
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@Chip_Unicorn@im-in.space 2026-04-21 19:00
@carlrichell Just visit https://scratch.mit.edu/ for some adorable projects that kids wrote.
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@kgf@hachyderm.io 2026-04-21 19:18
@carlrichell I started learning programming in high school (around age 16) and was messing around with QBASIC years before then. Can't say I would've known to pursue computer science if not for all of that. I also attribute a significant amount of my Linux literacy to an amazing Swedish friend I met online, who IIRC was around 17 years old at the time. He got me started on Slackware in 2002 or 2003. (He was a couple of years younger than me, and unfortunately passed away due to cancer not long after that.) So yeah kids do some pretty cool stuff and can even teach their elders new tricks that can help shape their entire careers.
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@sparrows@calamity.world 2026-04-21 19:30
@carlrichell I learned programming by mucking around in GameMaker, I made a brute force factorizing program to check my math homework. That freedom to build whatever I needed would have been restrained if I couldn't access GameMaker as app at all due to my age.
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@qbit@mammothcirc.us 2026-04-21 19:51
@carlrichell can we just not pass the bill? Is that even considered?
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@DrewNaylor@mastodon.online 2026-04-21 22:10
@carlrichell Really hoping all these bills fail.
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@dylanmtaylor@mastodon.social 2026-04-21 22:41
@carlrichell Thank you so much for your work on this! I love that there is now a FOSS exception in CO. I'd love to see the same in CA, NY, and the federal bill that was just proposed. Ideally we don't need to implement any age verification at all and the only thing added is a mechanism parents can use to control content if they wish to.
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@Asymmetricblue@mastodon.social 2026-04-21 23:01
@carlrichell @jackryder Looking at text of the bill, I find the definition of Device and Operating System lacking. For example, if I had a car with the Android Automotive OS, would I need an account for every driver? What if a 12 year old tried to listen to a satellite radio station that has explicit content? There are so many single user mode devices out there that are basically general purpose hardware, with an OS and a GUI. Will they require whole industries to fit their mold?
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@GabeMoralesVR@mastodon.social 2026-04-21 23:35
@carlrichell During covid, my friends and I built a smart mailbox that would sterilize mail for people using UV lights back when people didn't know how the virus was transmitted. We used a raspberry pi for the project, which of course ran Raspbian for the OS. Much cheaper, easier to work with, and more well suited for the job vs a microcontroller. How in the ever loving hell would this project work if the "microcontroller" required age verification? Just an example of how dumb this idea is.
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@swee@mastodon.swee.codes 2026-04-22 03:44
@carlrichell This is going to be a bit long.. Heya, hopefully me counts, but am is 15 years old and me has used lin ucks since like uhh age 11 (mom introduced me to Zorin OS, and I explored more to Linux), me was already interested in programming and breaking software since age 9 and open source software helped me even more with that with good documentation and community. When I was 13 close to 14 I discovered IRC (with Libera.Chat), and that changed my whole life and it also became my comfort zone on the internet, the people there also inspired me to get a domain (https://swee.codes) and i also became a furry after using IRC :3 IRC also inspired me to start self hosting stuff, I currently selfhost a ZNC with 128 users (and also seen in https://wiki.znc.in/Providers), and some others listed on https://swee.codes/services oh and not to mention the many projects on my self-hosted git site - https://git.swee.codes/swee just has 63 public repos, not that much /s I've lost interest in looking at Linux distros and became more interested in exploring more unixes, my home server runs FreeBSD (https://oreo.node.swee.codes) and I've also tried Haiku and SerenityOS At least I'm not an idiot that searches "how to convert .bat to .exe" and uses Scratch anymore, thanks to open source software. :3 I really hope Washington doesn't copy California and Colorado, and that we find a way to fight for anonymity :nm_eatfish:
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@dgr@toot.li 2026-04-22 08:23
@carlrichell I would like to have the feature to enable parental control on my Linux for my kids but I'm not happy with the laws. I would like the law to require sites and apps that want kids as users/customers to be required to provide a PEGI like signal. This way I control if I enable the feature on my machine and the OS and the browser does the checking if the user can launch the app or open the site. Also distributions could add the PEGI class to the packages in their repos.
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@GabeMoralesVR@mastodon.social 2026-04-22 09:01
@carlrichell Idea: Challenge those pushing this idea to define operating system in precise technical terms. Do not allow them to use vague, layman definition for operating system. Because I guarantee you they will be conflating "operating system" with "desktop environment' and they are not at all the same thing. OSes exist because monolithic computer programs owning the entire processor was considered unsafe and outdated by 1998 when Apple finally was dragged screaming across the line.
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@paranormal_distribution@fosstodon.org 2026-04-22 13:19
@carlrichell I learned to use Kivy thanks to some kid (ShawCode) on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChB6no22fVJ-6dGNTfbb05w
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@paranormal_distribution@fosstodon.org 2026-04-22 13:23
@carlrichell if brilliant kids like him can't use open source tools growing up, it's not only a personal tragedy for said kids, but a loss in innovation, competitiveness and tax revenue for the country as a whole
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@cappsy@floss.social 2026-04-22 19:36
@carlrichell Thank you, Carl. Proper Linux leadership!
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@alexx@meow.social 2026-04-23 05:23
@carlrichell The story of Rudra Saraswat might be really relevant to your testimony I think. He is a teenager who maintains multiple operating systems, including an official Ubuntu flavor, from when he was around 12 years old: https://about.ruds.io/
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@deathkitten@firetribe.org 2026-04-21 20:20
@carlrichell@fosstodon.org I get why you're focused on getting open source excluded here, but we really need to be fighting this nonsense as a whole. Surveillance instead of holding toxic social media companies to account for their predatory behavior is insane. That said, an exception for open source is better than nothing. So thank you for at least trying that much.