On 01/03/26 20:48, Aaron Rainbolt wrote:
At its core, the law seems to require that an "operating system"
(I'm guessing this would correspond to a Linux distribution, not an OS
kernel or userland) request the user's age or date of birth at "account
setup". The OS is also expected to allow users to set the user's age if
they didn't already provide it (because the OS was installed before the
law went into effect), and it needs to provide an API somewhere so that
app stores and application distribution websites can ask the OS "what
age bracket does this user fall into?"
Hi, thanks for starting this conversation. The text of the bill is quite
clear and I think it is easier to read it than to paraphrase it.
The bill not only imposes obligations on «operating system provider[s]»
(section 1798.501. (a)) but also on «[application] developer[s]» (ibid (b)).
The main obligation for the developer is:
1798.501. (b) (1) A developer shall request a signal with respect to
a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered
application store when the application is downloaded and launched.
In my reading this means that, at least:
1. the developer of `cp` (as in coreutils' `cp`) must add code to `cp`,
2. so that `cp` fetches age-related information of the current user from
the OS,
3. every time a user runs `cp`.
I don't see in the bill's text anything that would exclude the
developer(s) of `cp` from the need to at least make a request for this
age-related information.
(Obviously I'm using `cp` here as a silly example to make a point.)
Regards,
--
Gioele Barabucci
