{"id":254950,"date":"2026-05-25T10:46:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-25T14:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/california-moves-to-exempt-linux-from-its-upcoming-age-verification-law-after-backlash-over-forcing-operating-systems-to-collect-users-ages-amendment-proposed-by-the-same-lawmaker-w\/"},"modified":"2026-05-25T11:00:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-25T15:00:11","slug":"california-moves-to-exempt-linux-from-its-upcoming-age-verification-law-after-backlash-over-forcing-operating-systems-to-collect-users-ages-amendment-proposed-by-the-same-lawmaker-w","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/25\/california-moves-to-exempt-linux-from-its-upcoming-age-verification-law-after-backlash-over-forcing-operating-systems-to-collect-users-ages-amendment-proposed-by-the-same-lawmaker-w\/","title":{"rendered":"California moves to exempt Linux from its upcoming age-verification law after backlash over forcing operating systems to collect users\u2019 ages \u2014 amendment proposed by the same lawmaker who wrote the original law"},"content":{"rendered":"

California moves to exempt Linux from its upcoming age-verification law after backlash over forcing operating systems to collect users\u2019 ages \u2014 amendment proposed by the same lawmaker who wrote the original law<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.tomshardware.com\/software\/linux\/california-moves-to-exempt-linux-from-its-upcoming-age-verification-law-after-backlash-over-forcing-operating-systems-to-collect-users-ages-amendment-proposed-by-the-same-lawmaker-who-wrote-the-original-law<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-05-25 10:46:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: www.tomshardware.com<\/a><\/p>\n

California lawmakers may be backing away from a controversial age-verification requirement bill that alarmed Linux and open-source developers earlier this year, after a new amendment bill proposed exempting most open-source operating systems from the state\u2019s upcoming Digital Age Assurance Act. In practice, that would likely exempt most mainstream Linux distributions \u2014 including Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch Linux, and Mint \u2014 from compliance requirements scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2027.<\/p>\n

Assembly Bill 1856 (AB 1856), currently moving through California\u2019s legislature ahead of committee reviews in June, would amend the state\u2019s earlier age-assurance law by excluding software distributed under licenses that allow users to \u201ccopy, redistribute, and modify the software.\u201d<\/p>\n

The proposed amendment specifically states: \u201cOperating system provider\u201d does not mean a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software.<\/p>\n

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The amendment follows months of backlash after California passed the original Assembly Bill 1043 (AB 1043), formally known as the Digital Age Assurance Act, in late 2025. The law sought to shift online age verification away from individual websites and apps and down to the operating-system level instead.<\/p>\n

Under the original law, operating systems would be required to request a user\u2019s age or birth date during device setup, then expose an \u201cage bracket signal\u201d to apps and app stores. The law, which defined brackets such as \u201cunder 13,\u201d \u201c13\u201315,\u201d \u201c16\u201317,\u201d and \u201c18+,\u201d immediately raised questions about how such requirements would apply to decentralized, open-source software ecosystems.<\/p>\n

Unlike Apple\u2019s iOS or Google\u2019s Android, most Linux distributions are not centrally controlled commercial platforms. Many are community-run projects…<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

California moves to exempt Linux from its upcoming age-verification law after backlash over forcing operating…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":254951,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net\/Nhs4yvdLbHSMdgjnZmv4wn-1024-80.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[99,91,97,71,79],"class_list":["post-254950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-arch-linux","tag-debian","tag-fedora","tag-linux","tag-ubuntu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254950"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254950"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254952,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254950\/revisions\/254952"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/254951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}