California bill exempts open‑source OS from age verification

California lawmakers have advanced an amendment that would exempt most open-source operating systems from a sweeping state law requiring age verification at the device setup level. The amendment, Assembly Bill 1856, aims to narrow the scope of the Digital Age Assurance Act, which was passed in late 2025 and is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2027.

The original law required operating system providers to collect a user's age or birth date during initial device setup and then transmit an "age bracket signal" to applications and websites. The brackets were defined as under 13, 13-15, 16-17, and 18-plus. The mandate applied broadly to any operating system used in California, raising immediate concerns from the open-source community.

Critics argued the law was impractical for decentralized, community-driven projects like many Linux distributions, which often lack centralized user accounts, telemetry systems, or formal corporate structures. Privacy advocates, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, warned the framework risked creating infrastructure for broader identity tracking. Developers also questioned how the state could enforce such requirements on software that can...