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I wish larger and more popular distros like arch, debian or mint would take a stand aswell. I get ubuntu or fedora having to comply as these are run by american companies, but debian and mint opinion would probably have major sway over the entire ecosystem

They’re being the adults in the room by seeking legal guidance and not prematurely putting their foot in their mouth. We must be patient. The penalties on some of these laws could be fatal, even to the biggest foss players.

Legal guidance for what? If California of the USA wants to ban Debian for not requiring age verification, let’s see how that pans out for their tech companies.

Legal guidance is not necessary because these laws should not be followed. Stop letting the US impose it’s will on the rest of the world.

This is my thought process as well. Its ridiculous that a single state of the US - not even the entire country - can have so much sway over a global project.

Im just curious, but how would arch implement age verification if it wanted to? I mean, its basically just the linux kernel, with supporting software like systemd, no? I know systemd is making moves to add “age verification” in the form of an environment variable or something, but that would be trivial to remove as I think about it off the top of my head, or worst case you would just get a fork of systemd without the age verification if they bake it in too deep and make it so the entire systemd ecosystem doesnt work without that variable set

it’s not just the U.S. The UK, EU as well as malaysia are all pursuing some kind of digital age-gating legislation.

And what would those penalties be? If you are not based in the country having these moronic laws, they can’t do shit (see: fines for 4chan in the UK, fines for Google in Russia), except maybe ‘banning’ your distro, which amounts to nothing, since whoever is determined enough can just find it online anyways.

I know systemd is making moves to add “age verification” in the form of an environment variable or something

That’s not true. Systemd isn’t making moves to add age verification. They added a field to STORE a birth date, which is not enforcing anything. It’s like a field in a database. It can be there, but you don’t have to use it.

Systemd is not in the position to do anything. The age verification has to be implemented by the OS vendor, not by Systemd. That lie is spread by people with very little knowledge of how linux actually works.

Im just curious, but how would arch implement age verification if it wanted to

No idea, but there are lots of ways. You could put it into the archinstall script and just never finish the installation if there is no age set. You could also prevent a user from logging into an account that has no age set, this could be achived by modified core packages in the base package.

However, you will ALWAYS be able to circumvent it as there is no central server to manage it. Nobody is stopping you to put 01.01.1970 into the birthdate field. It’s basically as pointless as cookie banners.

The issue about this age verification shit isn’t the present, but the future when governments start extending the laws that, at this point, are already in place.

I think they’d just rather not find out. Or, rather, would like to be as prepared as possible to “get away with” not implementing it, or will find some middle way.

The hardliners here will complain that they’re not saying “fuck you” to The Man forcefully enough. In reality, they do that just by existing. These guys are the backbone of digital sovereignty. If some of them fold and comply in advance, then yeah, fuck them I’m particular, but let them cook. They’re fighting for survival, not engaging in fan service.

The weird thing about this is that this wouldn’t be against any law anywhere, except the state of California… So, why wouldn’t this be adequately solved by not giving a fuck?

Because America runs off of shirking responsibility to blame someone else: using presidents as loopholes to not have to argue a case.

1 state does it: 25 others follow suit immediately and it gets insta-passed because “there is a precedent”. See: flock cameras, Bibles in schools, book banning, abortion banning, sweeping climate protection rollbacks, etc… Once one does it, the rest of the cowards use it as a shield like children: “B-B-But theeey doooo iiiit!”

You could put it into the archinstall script and just never finish the installation if there is no age set. You could also prevent a user from logging into an account that has no age set, this could be achived by modified core packages in the base package.

My (rather limited) understanding is that Arch can be installed both without the archinstall script and without a user. Also, the rest of your comment covers how stupid it is to require a value anyway since people can put whatever they want.

Outside of that, it’s all open source. It’s possible to fork and remove the field entirely from an install script, distro, or even systemd itself.

Nobody can enforce this in the open source world. This is honestly the strongest argument for an open source exemption in these laws. It cannot be enforced on open source OSs.

that Arch can be installed both without the  archinstall  script

Yes. But it would protect them from legal liability.