It's not a matter of OSS vs proprietary
It's not a matter of OSS vs proprietary
Posted Mar 13, 2026 5:49 UTC (Fri) by wtarreau (subscriber, #51152)Parent article: California's Digital Age Assurance Act and Linux distributions
The issue is the lack of understanding of what a computer and what an operating system are. An operating system is just a piece of software that share resources between applications (RAM, storage, power, time, etc).
First, a lot of operating systems do not even have any user. Think about all the RTOS running in various home appliances like heaters, wash machines, music instruments, "smart" light bulbs, connected power plugs etc. You certainly don't want an ESP32-based light button to ask you your age when you press it. And whose age should a heater ask ? All people in the room ? And what if a minor enters the room ?
Second, a very large number of operating systems are automatically deployed without a human using them. Think containers/VMs used by CI/CD jobs for example, or many containers used to start network services. Who's the user there ? If I start Apache in a container, are visitors the users ?
Third, many operating systems support plenty of users, so the notion of download/installation of an OS/application etc has nothing to do with the user. What about enterprise or campus servers ?
Fourth, many operating systems are just not connected to the net. Some of the ones above are in this case, many internal enterprise servers as well, same for factory robots and machines. Do you imagine a concert where each member of the group asks all the ages of the attendees to start their synthesizer ? I'm purposely exagerating but it's to illustrate the total disconnection of this bill with reality. I think the authors confuse operating system and web browser because their only contact with a computer was their smartphone and they don't understand what is what on it. Not to mention the lack of understanding of the impacts on existing deployments. It's really pathetic.
Name and shame should be used there: every application, OS that has to block access to comply with this stupid bill should just indicate "in order to comply with censoring imposed by Mr XXX and his party YYY we're no longer allowed to let you use this application".