Comment by anymouse123456
18 hours ago
Every single Linux kernel currently operating within the borders of any of these states should turn itself off and refuse to boot until an update is installed after these bills are rolled back.
We should also update all FOSS license terms to explicitly exclude Meta or any affilites from using any software licensed under them.
I probably don't have all the info on the various laws across the US and EU that are being pushed, but I'm confused why Linux distros don't just update their licensing and add a notice on the installation screen that it is illegal to run their OS in places where these laws exist?
Heck, Linus Torvalds should just add an amendment to the next release of the Linux Kernel that makes it illegal to use in any jurisdiction that requires age verification laws.
This would obviously cause such a massive disruption (especially in California) that the age laws would have to be rolled back immediately.
This seems like a no-brainer to me but I am admittedly ignorant on this situation. I'm sure there's a good reason why this isn't happening if anyone cares to explain.
That would be a violation of the copyright law or the GPL licence - you aren't permitted to take GPL code and redistribute it with some extra restrictions added on to it.
If it's not (fully) your code, you aren't free to set the licence conditions; Linus can't do that without getting approval from 100% (not 99% or so) of authors who contributed code.
What one can do is add an informative disclaimer saying "To the best of our knowledge, installing or running this thing in California is prohibited - we permit to do whatever you want with it, but how you'll comply with that law is your business".
You can if you own the copyright to the content. I don't know the state of Linux, but this is a reason the FSF (and many other projects) requires people assign their copyright to them when they submit code.
It also helps when you take an offender to court. If I contribute to a project but don't assign copyright, then they cannot take offenders to court if my code was copied illegally. The burden is on me to do so.
Of course, all code released prior to the change still remains on the original license.
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The Linux kernel is licensed GPLv2. The GPLv2 license forbids adding addition terms that further restrict the use of the software.
A "Linux distro" is not the Linux kernel. It's possible for some distros to add such license terms to their distribution media, but others like Debian and Debian-based ones adhere to the GPL so no go.
Because they want market share, and throwing a hissyfit over being asked to add an "I am over 18" checkbox is not good PR. If Debian starts refusing to work in California because it doesn't want to add a checkbox, it will simply be replaced by someone who adds that checkbox and doesn't throw the fit.
As the article says, it's not about just checking a box:
"Every OS provider must then: provide an interface at account setup collecting a birth date or age, and expose a real-time API that broadcasts the user's age bracket (under 13, 13 to 15, 16 to 17, 18+) to any application running on the system."
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I disagree slightly. It may not be good business, but it could be good PR, situationally. I expect a lot of 2nd-tier distros will refuse to implement it, and see a boost in their installs as a result.
Debian, Ubuntu, etc., they'll all fall right in line because the clear and immediate losses will outweigh any PR issue.
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Would be funny indeed... And also curious why nobody does that.
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.en.html
It would be in violation of the GPL and such a license would not be an OSI approved license.
https://opensource.org/osd
> should turn itself off
If this was somehow introduced without anyone noticing and deployed, imagine the damage it would cause.
If we're fantasizing here, I like to imagine two major OS makers trying to comply these laws, fail miserably, and let FOSS OSes and kernels more recognition in the desktop market.
Honestly, like the Left-pad incident [1], getting things to go suddenly dark is extremely effective at getting people to drop everything else to fix an issue.
Ideally, getting these servers to auto turn off the day this goes into effect ("In compliance with this new law, Linux is now temporarily unusable. Please <call to action>.") would be glorious for getting the bill staved off, or killed.
It would hurt some productivity, but that is a risk these lawmakers taking donations are probably willing to make.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Npm_left-pad_incident
It would make people move quickly to use a forked version of the kernel and would be an all around blunder by the Linux foundation
My comment was half in jest (I wasn't super serious about it.) In another sibling comment below I wrote how it's still possible to leverage this without actually implementing it.
Side note, this comment is evidently quite controversial, it went from +3 to +1. If anyone is angry at me I would like to assuage them that I am not, in fact, any owner or maintainer of anything in the linux distribution system.
"some"? It would hurt a lot of productivity lol. If all linux boxes turned themselves off suddenly, I think the internet would fall over pretty fast. I dont know how much of the internet runs on windows or apple (or others), but I cant imagine it's very much
> It would hurt a lot of productivity lol.
I know. That's exactly the point.
In such situations where one party (Meta) has enough money to lobby and is playing dirty, it's a massively asymmetric situation. In such cases, if you really want to make sure you're heard (which I'm not sure distributers want or care about tbh), you've got to play the game too.
Malicious compliance, if you will.
PS: For a "practical" variant, simply a warning might be sufficient - given how many hospitals/critical infra uses linux. For eg "There is a chance this server will fail to work on x date due to this y law. Not as glamorous/all-guns-blazing, but probably much more sensible and practical.
PPS: For an even more "safer" variant, one could go "Post x, please note that using linux/this server is a violation of law y. Please turn off the server yourself manually. Failure to comply with these instructions and violating the law will be borne entirely by the (no informed) sysadmin/manglement.
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It still blows my mind that anyone trusts npm after this whole incident.
Someone would just submit a patch overriding this
> Every single Linux kernel currently operating within the borders of any of these states should turn itself off and refuse to boot
What exactly do you think Linux is? I would say that Linux would be forked in like 2 seconds, a bunch of different companies would start offering "attested Linux," and all you'd have to do was change your repos and update.
I would say that, but what would really happen is that we'd find out that Canonical, Red Hat, and a bunch of other distributions had been talking to the government for a year behind closed doors and they're already ready to roll out attested Linux. Debian would argue about it for six months, and then do the same thing. Hell, systemd will require age attestation as a dependency. Devuan and any other stubborn distribution would face 9000 federal lawsuits, while having domain names blocked, and the Chinese hardware necessary to run them seized at the ports with the receivers locked up on terrorism charges.
I have no idea where the confidence of the IT tech comes from. You (we) are something between a mechanic and a highly-skilled janitor.
Obviously not a serious proposal, but I do like the alt mentioned below:
Update the terms to indicate that you can do what you want, but this OS is probably not compliant with states run by evil dipshits.
Microsoft would love that.