Developers resist OS age-verification rules from California and Colorado

California has adopted a law requiring operating systems to ask for a user's age or date of birth during setup, with enforcement beginning January 1, 2027. The bill says an OS should use that information to determine which applications are available in a storefront and share it with any developer that requests it in real time, a requirement that appears incompatible with many open-source projects, including some Linux distributions.

Fedora project leader Jef Spaleta said the team is still trying to get to grips with what the legislation requires and noted age information may need to be tied to account creation and stored in a file accessible to applications. "No telemetry… just a way for applications to query the OS… a local API… sounds a lot like a dbus service to me," Spaleta says.

Valve’s SteamOS would also be affected by the law. Some projects have taken a different tack. MidnightBSD’s developers say they will exclude California residents from using the OS on January 1, 2027, and have modified their license to that effect.

United States, California, Colorado

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