California's Digital Age Assurance Act, and FOSS

4 hours ago

The text discusses the application of California’s Digital Age Assurance Act (AB-1043) to FOSS distributions and repositories.
It argues that traditional FOSS distributions can be considered both operating system providers and covered application stores under the Act.
Repository operators like Flathub are particularly at risk of being classified as covered application stores.
Upstream FOSS projects and some intermediaries may be considered developers due to the broad definition of 'owns, maintains, or controls'.
The statute’s exceptions are narrow and unlikely to exclude ordinary distro repositories.
Compliance with the statute is deemed difficult or infeasible for FOSS distros and developers.
The Act’s requirements for account setup interfaces and user identification are problematic for multi-user and non-traditional systems.

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