California lawmakers unanimously pass Linux exemption from age-verification law

What do you want people to say? "Yay, the terrible law that threatened to make free computing illegal has an exemption for Linux. Now we only have to deal with unwanted mandatory age verification on all our non-linux devices. I'm so happy."

Yeah, this is fantastic. Should be top of the page. I’m honestly shocked, I’ve fully internalized that everything is corrupt and beholden to big corporations. Somehow, a victory! Looks like the Linux Foundation and EFF pushed back, but they’re not exactly big. Good job, California lawmakers!

This is not wanted, its duct taping a bad idea even further and i half-wish MS/apple/co sue against it. This may cause lawmakers to bounce back in the wrong direction though.

The age verification requirement wasn't dropped, what are you talking about? Linux getting an exemption isn't a win.

It delivered an arbitrary exception to a stupid law. If all someone wanted was an exception for Linux, they don’t understand the problem with this law.

Indeed, this is very generous of them, and we should be thankful.

The bill exempts:

> a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software

which at least doesn't choose specific winners and losers among licenses. It does disfavor license-free and public domain software, which isn't great.