Comment by upofadown
1 day ago
>This bill applies to all "operating system providers", ...
Not really.
>...for the purpose of providing a signal regarding the user’s age bracket to applications available in a covered application store.
So the OS has to provide an age signal to apps from a "covered application store" defined as:
e) (1) “Covered application store” means a publicly available internet website, software application, online service, or platform that distributes and facilitates the download of applications from third-party developers to users of a computer, a mobile device, or any other general purpose computing that can access a covered application store or can download an application.
(2) “Covered application store” does not mean an online service or platform that distributes extensions, plug-ins, add-ons, or other software applications that run exclusively within a separate host application.
So things like Windows, Android and iOS...
It doesn't say "only if there's a covered application store present on the system". But maybe everyone in power will interpret this non-logically in exactly the right way that this doesn't become abusive.
Laws are designed and intended to be reasonable. I think you are using an inappropriate form of logic here. The intent of the law is fairly obvious.
Wouldn’t that classification apply to Linux package managers as well?
They are publicly available online services that distribute and facilitate the download of applications from third party developers to users of a general purpose computing device.
That doesn't seem to be the intent for something like, say, Debian. How would that work anyway?
This would probably cover something like a Linux based Steam box, where there are different organizations providing applications.
That may not be the intent, but it seems like it would still apply. Many of the “app stores” on Linux are just front ends for the package manager in some way.
I assume the people behind this don’t know things like apt or dnf exist, so it likely wasn’t considered.
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