Linux developers are grappling with California's age-verification law that goes into effect in 2027 (#1447266).
Most recently, a proposal was submitted to the XDG specifications maintaind by freedesktop.org:
The proposal recommended adding a new D-Bus interface, org.freedesktop.AgeVerification, to allow applications to query the operating system for a user’s age bracket.
The draft specification stated that the user’s birth year would be stored locally, and only the calculated age bracket would be accessible to applications through methods such as GetAgeBracket.
The plan was for the data to be stored in the AccountsService user configuration directory (/var/lib/AccountsService/users/), ensuring the underlying information remained private while applications accessed only the derived age category.
There seems to be a lot of pushback to the idea and the proposal was closed.
Concerns included privacy implications, embedding jurisdiction-specific policies into the desktop infrastructure, and whether this functionality should be part of the freedesktop core namespace.
Unclear how OSs like Ubuntu and Debian will handle these increasingly common regulations.
I strongly agree with these reservations.
I'm also fairly confident they'd get forked in a heart beat if they went ahead with that proposal.
If the OS cares more about market share than the spirit of freedom in open-source, and they can be effectively sued, they're very likely to comply.
If they don't care about market share, or not enough to override their freedom principles, then they may choose to disallow use in jurisdictions requiring age verification of that calibre.
And if there is no registered foundation with people that can be sued effectively, there is no need to comply.
I imagine that aggressive states might try to go after developers who work on a project, even if the project has no entity beyond a github repo.
Roman Storm and the Samurai guys are a different case in many ways, but I'm not sure that attorney generals have to stretch too far to start claiming that lead maintainers for FOSS operating systems are responsible for implementing their tyrannical age verification laws.