Software changes for compliance with age-verification laws are being pushed a bit everywhere in Linux-development; for example:
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In Systemd, already merged.
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In xdg.desktop.portal (a portal frontend service for Flatpak and other desktop containment frameworks), still open.
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In Arch Linux, still open.
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In Freedesktop.org, still open.
It’s interesting that it’s the same small group of people behind these pull requests, and that discussion threads in them have been locked owing to a great amount of negative criticisms.
They say “we have to comply with the law”. Which also means that if “the law” in the future will require proper verification, handling to 3rd-parties, or whatnot, then they will comply.
Well, it’s their right to. They don’t owe anything to anyone, and are under no obligation to report to users or to the community, nor to pay heed to anybody’s wishes.
If things proceed in this direction, we users may at some point have to choose between privacy-friendly Linux distributions or legal Linux distributions. People who, like me, are worried, need to start thinking about concrete actions to take before it’s too late: where to develop such distros? which channels to download and distribute them from? And so on. (And of course, more generally we need to write and protest to politicians, organize protest marches, go on strike, refuse to comply…)
It’s good to remind to those who keep on repeating the words “legal” and “illegal” that for example Nelson Mandela was, technically speaking, a criminal who did and promoted illegal activity. This happens when laws become immoral.
Luckily, OpenBSD does not do that,
What is stopping everyone from having the same birthday? I propose 1969-01-01
Your digital ID which needs to be linked with your user account. “Age verification” is the setup for this.
I don’t get why gnu/linux devs are even involved in this. They aren’t serving the content, how are they liable?
Because Facebook paid a lot of money to the courts to shift the blame from the social media companies (including themselves) to the operating system
I honestly don’t know because when it comes to Linux, it’s super complicated. Because it is essentially a collection of packages developed by various organizations and contributors from all over the world.
I suspect you won’t even be able to choose “illegal” distros either because the distro is only half of the equation. The app stores are required to require an age signal as well, and if you don’t provide one they probably won’t let you download. Flathub is run by GNOME out of CA, so they’ll most certainly comply.
I suspect this will result in new mirrored repositories located outside the US but who knows really?
I’m curious to see how it’ll develop.
It’s all one fucking guy! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS BOOTLICKER DOING?!
Dylan M. Taylor
dylanmtaylorthis fucker
If we’re going to blame one person, Zuckerberg comes to mind.
Zuckerberg didn’t fucking write the actual piece of shit making it real, this fucker, Dylan M Taylor did, and fuck him.
No, I disagree.
It is not one person’s doing. That is the deflection.
I will not downplay the effect of this by saying they are the only one involved. Every maintainer so far that has locked or approved any changes that they did are equally at fault here. In fact, one of those linked articles even stated that the primary reason they locked it is because they didn’t like the amount of coverage it got. This is a failure on the community as a whole, not the individual.
edit for clarification: By failure, I’m talking more on projects that are humoring it and actually going through with it without considering the potential side effects of just blanket applying that.
Currently considering that a handful of these are locked or posted as we don’t know if we’re going to be doing this yet, I haven’t quite put them in that same sector yet, but it’s rapidly approaching it.
I can synpathize with the devs as they are simply taking the minimal steps they can. To avoid being targeted by these failing states. But yeah, what’s this guys story. Someone suddenly contributing so narrowly to such a broad slate of projects isn’t common.
My bet would be ulterior motive.
Honestly with the way meta is playing the states with this. I could easily see them paying someone to do this. Just look at all the ignorant reactionary people this is stirring up. Attacking projects made of volunteer devs. It’s a good way to possibly hobble or even kill some projects. As the devs aren’t being paid enough to handle the BS from either end.
Don’t comply in advance, that’s what I say. Unfortunately, that’s what systemd is doing, and what archinstall, xdg-desktop-portal, and Freedesktop.org are on the verge of doing.
For the vast majority of people who don’t live in California, including myself, California law can go fly a kite.
Doesn’t the law expect “Operating Systems” to do this? I feel like everyone should point fingers and lean on bureaucracy. Systemd should say “well don’t look at us, we’re not an operating system, we’re just an init and services system”, and Linux says “well we’re just a kernel, usermode does whatever it wants”, and Debian says “well we’re just a distro, we didn’t write any of the packages we just stick them together.”
If the tech illiterate idiots who wrote the poorly thought out law can’t figure out who to ask, maybe they’ll do their due diligence next time.
This would be the funniest reality.
Praying for us ‘I use Arch BTW’ people to have our day in the sun. Don’t fail us!
I already have the distros downloaded that are against this.
If it comes for my favorite distro that I use everyday I will immediately uninstall it and instance one of the ones that isn’t bending over to let Uncle Sam and others take them from behind.
All they had to do was say they wouldn’t support people from the places that those laws were or would be enacted in. That’s it. That’s all they fucking had to do.
I will also add that it disappoints me so so much that so many of my fellow Linux enthusiasts aren’t more upset or even just plain old cautious about this.
It actually hurts my head to think about. I don’t get it. Don’t we all usually have about the same goals in mind with this? Open, meaning not invasive. Not windows (spyware) and no telemetry meaning privacy respecting?
What the fuck is happening?
When privacy is outlawed, what do you think?
I think the community needs to ddos every CA website into oblivion.
That would kill the entire SSL infrastructure?
Already a thing. We can choose between Ubuntu, who restrict your freedom and privacy in the Snap store, and have experimented with weird things like forward your desktop search to the internet or integrate Amazon into your desktop. Or you can pick a different distro. Some have telemetry, some ask you for your permission and even patch user software so it doesn’t send telemetry per default. Some were kinda illegal and distributed libcss2.
