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California amended AB 1043 to exempt open-source OSes from age tracking rules, narrowing liability as the bill moves toward a final vote.
May 26, 2026 17:56 EDT
California legislators have amended the state's Digital Age Assurance Act (AB 1043), introducing an amendment under AB-1856 that gives open-source projects, including Linux distros like Debian, Arch, Ubuntu, and Mint, a free pass.
For context, AB 1043 is a law that legislators passed late last year to enforce age checks at the Operating System (OS) level. The law requires your device to collect your age during the initial device setup process, which then generates an "age bracket signal" that the device transmits to websites and applications. The original framework meant that every single operating system in California had to build a centralized tracking system to verify if a user was a minor.
