On 09/03/2026 16:13, Jonathan Whitlock wrote:
I hope it doesn't.
Not only is California law not national law, it's clearly a political
movement designed to sew dissent among us. Already people seem to be
making posts that read as if it is a given that all linux distributions
will abide by it. That's setting aside the fact that linux being a
user-first and distributed ecosystem can not possibly be made to comply
-- it's simply not possible. If some implementation were made it would
simply be disabled. If somone was fined, I would hazard a guess that
such a fine would be unenforceable if they aren't already in California
to begin with.
Setting aside the obvious fact that this law was written haphazardly by
imbeciles, it's a clear political statement: politicians in California
want to create a world where everyone on the internet is identifiable:
This is the first step towards that. Their actions are the very
embodiment of the phrase "Ask for a Penney before you ask for a pound".
This is a clear affront to anyone who values their privacy and we should
all unanimously agree: Age verification is a terrible idea that will end
terribly. We've already had numerous examples of doxing that has
occurred as a result of ID verification services -- why are we even
entertaining the possibility of moving in this direction?!?!?!
I'm going to kindly ask you to not call anyone an "imbecile" on this list.
I'm not a mainatiner of Arch, but I have made some small contributions
and I would hate for this distro to suffer because of weak-spined
individuals who don't know how politicians think. Politicians are the
enemy. This is an attack. They have no legal grounds to do anything,
and if they did I would still argue for resistance. The first step in
any totalitarian regime is identification and it should be resisted at
all costs.
I hate to break it to you, but politicians make the policy and you can
influence politicians with your vote or public campaign. Either way,
this rant does not belong on the Arch mailing list.
I'll ignore the fact that you might imply that the Arch Linux
maintainers are weak-spined.
