Announcing Ageless Linux
I built Ageless Linux. I am now an operating system provider.
Under California's AB 1043, the Digital Age Assurance Act (signed October 13, 2025, effective January 1, 2027), an "operating system provider" is defined as anyone who "develops, licenses, or controls the operating system software on a computer, mobile device, or any other general purpose computing device." This bash script modifies /etc/os-release, therefore I control the operating system software.
What Is Ageless Linux?
Ageless Linux is a Debian-based operating system distribution. Exactly like Ubuntu, which is unambiguously "an operating system", Ageless Linux inherits the Debian ecosystem. ...My contributions are a bit smaller than Ubuntu's, but can be characterized the same way.
Why?
AB 1043 requires operating system providers to present an age declaration prompt at account setup, then expose a real-time API signal indicating the user's age bracket (under 13, 13-15, 16-17, or 18+) to any application developer who requests it. The law's drafters were clearly thinking about Apple and Google — companies where "account setup" and "app store" are well-defined, vertically integrated concepts.
Linux distributions have neither of these things in any meaningful sense. What constitutes "account setup" for Debian? Is it adduser? What's a "covered application store", apt? Flathub? curl | bash? Here's hoping the website counts. I might add an "Ageless App Store", just to be sure.
Compliance Through Non-Collection
If you wanted to comply, returning {} as an "age API" might be sufficient. "didn't collect any information, and here's all of it."
The statute at Civil Code 1798.501(a)(3) requires that any age signal contain "only the minimum amount of information necessary." As I find age bracket information to be completely unnecessary, I'm not going to collect any.
Returning the empty object is arguably "a reasonably consistent real-time application programming interface" in the same sense that "/dev/null is a reasonably consistent storage device."
Contribute to my legal defense
Since the California AG can charge me $7,500 per child that uses my OS, I may need to lawyer up. If you'd like to give me some money, I'd appreciate support on Patreon.