{"id":233236,"date":"2026-03-13T06:02:27","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T11:02:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/californias-os-based-age-verification-law-challenges-open-source-community"},"modified":"2026-03-13T06:02:27","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T11:02:27","slug":"californias-os-based-age-verification-law-challenges-open-source-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/californias-os-based-age-verification-law-challenges-open-source-community","title":{"rendered":"California\u2019s OS-based age verification law challenges open-source community"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/californias-os-based-age-verification-law-challenges-open-source-community.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>How Linux and BSD Distros Are Responding to the New Age Verification Laws <a href=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/news\/distros-response-age-verification-laws\/\">https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/news\/distros-response-age-verification-laws\/<\/a><\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>California\u2019s new online safety bill, AB 1,043 (the Digital Age Assurance Act), adopts a declared age model for operating systems. Under <a href=\"https:\/\/legiscan.com\/CA\/text\/AB1709\/2025\">the law<\/a>, which is set to take effect on January 1, 2027, when a user sets up a new device, the operating system is required to ask for their age or date of birth. This declared age will be used to curate what\u2019s available on the app store, and can be shared with developers on request to ensure age-appropriate experiences.<\/p>\n<p>An article in PC Gamer points out that this \u201csounds incompatible with many of today\u2019s open source software, including Linux.\u201d The open source community is wrestling with the problem of how to comply with the laws while also not violating core privacy principles.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pcgamer.com\/software\/operating-systems\/resistance-to-operating-system-age-checks-coming-from-checks-notes-open-source-calculator-and-an-os-that-may-just-exclude-californians-altogether\/\">piece<\/a> muses on technical solutions, quoting Jef Spaleta, project leader for popular Linux distribution, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fedoraproject.org\/\">The Fedora Project<\/a>, who says \u201cthis might be as simple as extending how we currently map uid to usernames and group membership and having a new file in \/etc\/ that keeps up with age.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How Linux and BSD Distros Are Responding to the New Age Verification Laws https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/news\/distros-response-age-verification-laws\/ California\u2019s new online safety bill, AB 1,043 (the Digital Age Assurance Act), adopts a declared age model for operating systems. Under the law, which is set to take effect on January 1, 2027, when a user sets up a new device, [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,1496],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-233236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=233236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/233236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=233236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=233236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=233236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}