The Quiet Clause That May Save Linux From Age‑Verification Laws

One of the big stories concerning free software and open source lately has been legislation in Colorado and California to enforce age restrictions at the operating system level. These are regulations that require, out-of-the-box, operating systems to determine with a degree of certainty the age of the holder of a computer’s user account.Colorado’s law, which won’t go into effect until 2028, already exempts open source operating systems, thanks in part to efforts by CEO Carl Richell and his team at System76, which manufactures servers, desktops, and laptops preinstalled with in-house developed Pop!_OS or Ubuntu Linux distributions.The law now officially exempts...