The open-source community is looking for a way out of the wave of new laws requiring operating systems to collect users’ ages.
In January, Colorado lawmakers introduced a proposal to make operating systems collect users’ ages and pass them to app developers. The bill, SB26-051, had clearly been designed for commercial platforms like iOS and Android — one of numerous plans to age-gate the internet through users’ devices. It was intended to provide information that would let developers disable age-inappropriate experiences for kids. But as it made the rounds online, Linux laptop maker Carl Richell read the proposal with dismay.
Carl Richell is the founder and CEO of Dever-based System76, which also develops the Pop!_OS Linux distribution. The law, he realized, would likely apply to his own small business. Without the resources of a company like Apple and Google, complying with Colorado’s bill would be a major logistical headache. More broadly, Richell believed it would betray the principles of open source and limit its potential. Open source is “the best way to learn computing,” he told The Verge. “There is nothing like learning from example, and the Linux desktop is a free, open-source example of how to build an entire operating system.” A system that can restrict how children use it — by blocking their ability to interact with certain apps or denying them root access, both possible outcomes of an age-gating system — “breaks that.”
