Debian Project Leader Andreas Tille has addressed the ongoing debate over age-verification laws and their potential impact on free software operating systems. Long story short: he clarified that Debian has not adopted a position and is awaiting legal analysis.
In his latest “Bits from the DPL” message, Tille stated that the main question is whether operating systems and package distribution mechanisms might be required to provide age-related information to applications.
He noted that Debian and other projects are discussing the issue, and that Software in the Public Interest, a non-profit corporation founded to act as a fiscal sponsor for organizations that develop open-source software and hardware, has begun seeking legal guidance.
How is this not reasonable? Everyone’s potentially got a lot to lose here.
Asking an expert for their opinion, even if that expert is a lawyer, is not “lawyering up”, nor is their any evidence whatsoever that the Debian Project or the SPI is going to “probably sue over it”.
The summary under the heading “TL;DR” was nothing more than an inflammatory opinionated interpretation of the headline and as interpretations go, it was not in any way, shape, or form, anything that might be considered a summary, which is what the “TL;DR” implied.
Hence my “WTF?” response and subsequent top level reply with the actual text and its source as sent by the DPL.
I note that the issue of “age verification” is an extremely troubling trend and I think that discussion about it needs to be considered and nuanced, neither of which were in evidence.
There was nothing inflammatory about that comment. It was just reasonable speculation and not harmful at all.