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.
The problem isn’t the specific nature of the rule: having an api call in the background that can broadcast a user’s age range (if it isn’t a clearly identifiable marker) makes sense.
The problem is that if the government is able to tell open source developers “YOU MUST INSERT THIS CODE OR ELSE!!!” then what’s next?
Will in 5 years they require Persona in order to install an Operating System to combat terrorism?
Will in 7 years they require a closed source module created by the government to be running at all times and the kernel must check to make sure if the closed source module is running?
Part of open source software is creativity, freedom, and freedom of speech. Some software is created because developers like creating things.
I hope Debian fights back against this on first amendment grounds. Great code is not that different from a great work of art, there is unique creativity in something elegantly coded that functions well, and telling developers they can’t code how they want is the path toward totalitarianism.
It’s one thing to force this into Microslop and Android and iOS because those are large profitable companies who don’t actually care as long as they make money. It’s another thing to force FOSS developers who develop for free because of the love of software and great code that they must change their code in a certain way.
What’s next is that code gets a build flag that’s turned off in the makefile, and maintainers have to explicitly turn it on for that code to compile in. Distros maintain patches that add this sort of thing all the time, even if upstream refuses to do so.
And Debian is saying that, as a non-profit, all volunteer org? This bullshit doesn’t apply to them. They are building a legal basis for the makefile solution I’m describing above, and its default-off state in their repositories.
All of your catastrophising can be addressed this way. We need devs like you who can help make sure this solution is implemented exactly as described.
Debian repos are great - we can even blacklist official repos and replace them with bare, sketchy IP addresses if we like, and share binaries through them.
You cannot stop the signal. Quit thinking like a voter trapped in a Fascist hellscape, and start thinking like a hacker that the state cannot outmaneuver.