California unanimously exempts Linux and open-source OSes from age-verification law
California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law
California lawmakers unanimously passed Assembly Bill 1856, exempting open-source operating systems from the state's Digital Age Assurance Act, which takes effect January 1, 2027. The amendment redefines "operating system provider" to exclude software distributed under licenses like GPL, MIT, BSD, and Apache, covering Linux distributions such as Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, and Arch, as well as the BSD family. The bill now heads to Governor Gavin Newsom, who signed the original act last October.
The amendment ends almost a year of uncertainty surrounding whether Linux distributions and SteamOS would be forced to collect user age data during account setup alongside Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android.