California Exempts Free Software

SacramentoCalifornia nearly outlawed distributing Debian legally.

The exemption now keeps free operating systems legal to distribute in the state.

Age-verification laws regulate operating systems as products with an owner, and free software has none.

The fix applies only in California, leaving other states’ maintainers unprotected before January 2027.

How each outlet framed it

Hacker News: GPL/MIT/BSD/Apache license requirement precisely exempts open-source from age-verification mandate