On 3/9/26 11:12 AM, Jelle van der Waa wrote:
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.
Hey Jonathan,I really do appreciate your passion and position on this topic, but in interests of keeping this ML from descending into poorly organized and directionless rants about politics (wasted energy and anger), lets tone it down and lighten up on this topic.
>> Not only is California law not national law, it's clearly a political >> movement designed to sew dissent among us.The mere existence of politics and our red/blue system divides us plenty as is... I doubt this legislation is _only_ a move to divide operating system users.
>> 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.I rather Arch leadership take a while to think through their decisions that affect a significant population of computer users. To call them "weak-spined" because they haven't taken a strong stance or action is disrespectful to them with regards to the weight they carry with this project.
These politicians have legal ground until someone brings their case to trial and argues it's unconstitutional. Now of course, that usually costs more than the fines which means even more difficult getting this garbage out of law.
Ultimately, I agree and support the stance that age verification should be kept out of operating systems and instead parents should parent their children instead of throwing an unsupervised iPad or computer at them.
But that doesn't matter, this law is in and the Arch Linux leadership must make a decision that mitigates detrimental impact to the project as a whole. I'd like to see more discussion about what _we can do_ on a technical and practical level rather than "this law sucks, why aren't we opposing this law harder".
> 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.As Jelle van der Waa brought up, campaigning against this law and expressing your opposition is the most we as the people can do. I have personally reached out to my local representative in Colorado to express my opposition on this legislation (SB26-051). I suggest you do the same if you live in a state with applicable legislation going around in session currently.
P.S.Please be cordial and respectful to your representative, hear out their perspective on why they're sponsoring such legislation. If they have no good reason or refuse to discuss the topic with you in any _reasonable_ and timely form, that's when you raise the proverbial pitchforks and vote differently next round.
Cheers, Louis
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