California Exempts Open-Source OS from Age Verification Law

The California State Legislature passed Assembly Bill 1856, exempting open-source operating systems from the state's Digital Age Assurance Act (DAAA). The amendment removes software distributed under licenses allowing recipients to copy, redistribute, and modify the code from the law's scope, effectively exempting the BSD family and Linux distributions including Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, and Arch.

Scheduled to take effect January 1, 2027, the DAAA requires operating system providers to collect user birth dates during account setup and provide age-bracket signals to applications via an API. Commercial platforms such as Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows remain subject to these mandates. The legislation also included corrections to the definition of user, which had previously classified all California device owners as children, and now prohibits requesting age signals unless required by law.

While the exemption covers most open-source projects, the status of SteamOS remains uncertain because Valve Corporation distributes proprietary components alongside its Arch-based system. The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other critics have condemned the DAAA as a barrier to online information access.