California Passes AB-1856: Open Source Exempted from Age Verification

California's Digital Age Assurance Act had been giving the free software community a headache for several months: Linux distributions, BSDs and other projects distributed under open licenses risked falling under its wording. That worry has now been laid to rest — the state Assembly has passed AB-1856, which adds the necessary exemptions to the law.

The key addition concerns the definition of an “operating system provider.” According to the text, this does not include “a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under a license that permits the recipient to copy, distribute, and modify the software.” Such wording exempts Linux distributions, BSD systems and any other projects under open licenses from the law.

The second exemption applies to applications. Excluded from the requirements are “software components that are not themselves offered to consumers as a separate executable application through a covered application store.” In other words, package managers and similar tools are also relieved of these obligations.

As Phoronix reader Saihaj Sraon noted, AB-1856 passed through the state Assembly this week by a vote of 69 in favor and none against — a unanimity rare in lawmaking.

For software that does not fall under the exemptions, the law's provisions take effect on January 1, 2027. From that point on, it will be necessary to collect data about the user's age during a device's initial setup and to pass age-category signals to applications.

The amendment addresses one of the community's main objections to the original version of the law: the formal requirements for built-in age verification could have swept in systems that are distributed freely and have no centralized “provider” able to meet them. The outcome turned out favorable for the open ecosystem — at least in California.

Source: Phoronix