Debian Project Leader Andreas Tille has addressed the ongoing debate over age-verification laws and their potential impact on free software operating systems. Long story short: he clarified that Debian has not adopted a position and is awaiting legal analysis.
In his latest “Bits from the DPL” message, Tille stated that the main question is whether operating systems and package distribution mechanisms might be required to provide age-related information to applications.
He noted that Debian and other projects are discussing the issue, and that Software in the Public Interest, a non-profit corporation founded to act as a fiscal sponsor for organizations that develop open-source software and hardware, has begun seeking legal guidance.
He also noted that, from a non-lawyer perspective, it remains uncertain how these regulations would apply to a non-commercial, volunteer-driven project like Debian, which does not sell software and distributes it in a decentralized manner.
FUCKING THANK YOU.
I think the position to adopt is very clear:
- You stand upright facing the nearest government building.
- You extend your right arm horizontally in front of you.
- You rest your left hand, palm down, on top of your right arm, next to your antecubital fossa (the opposite side of the elbow).
- You make a fist with your right hand.
- Without opening your fist, you extend your right hand’s middle finger straight up.
- You decisively bend your right arm at the elbow, standing your forearm, fist, and middle finger straight up.
Thus you achieve the only reasonable position towards this nonsense.
You extend your right arm horizontally in front of you.
Uh oh…
You rest your left hand, palm down, on top of your right arm, next to your antecubital fossa (the opposite side of the elbow).
Oh, phew! I thought this was going to get dark for a second.
Right now the only Debian system I have is on Oldstable. If Debian decides to implement age verification/attestation, do you think it’s going to be backported to that version? 🤔
You could just rip out the age verification bits, you have root access, it shouldnt be that hard. If it ever happens
Imagine having to verify your age for every docker container spun up by GitHub/forgejo actions.
Only restricted material will require an age verification.
So, what about an operating system is restricted material? That’s what this law requires.
Edit: wow, you’re all over the place here. Are you paid (perhaps run?) by Meta?
Software in the Public Interest is a US- based non-profit organization that legally represents and handles donations for Debian, Arch, LibreOffice, systemd and a lot of other projects. And if they’re in violation of US law, they can unfortunately be sued into oblivion. So they’re right to check with their legal team before making an informed decision.
Not providing an age signal is not illegal, you just won’t be able to access restricted material like social media.
The problem isn’t the specific nature of the rule: having an api call in the background that can broadcast a user’s age range (if it isn’t a clearly identifiable marker) makes sense.
The problem is that if the government is able to tell open source developers “YOU MUST INSERT THIS CODE OR ELSE!!!” then what’s next?
Will in 5 years they require Persona in order to install an Operating System to combat terrorism?
Will in 7 years they require a closed source module created by the government to be running at all times and the kernel must check to make sure if the closed source module is running?
Part of open source software is creativity, freedom, and freedom of speech. Some software is created because developers like creating things.
I hope Debian fights back against this on first amendment grounds. Great code is not that different from a great work of art, there is unique creativity in something elegantly coded that functions well, and telling developers they can’t code how they want is the path toward totalitarianism.
It’s one thing to force this into Microslop and Android and iOS because those are large profitable companies who don’t actually care as long as they make money. It’s another thing to force FOSS developers who develop for free because of the love of software and great code that they must change their code in a certain way.
What else would you expect after FOSS was forced to deplatform and steal code developed by Russian contributors.
I sadly don’t know what this means! Oh, you mean Debian blacklisted Russian contributors but didn’t rebuild the code and kept using it?
