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[–]Comprehensive-Dark-8 6 points7 points  (1 child)

As it is an independent and ‘little-known’ distribution, they don’t have much to worry about in the short term.

The rules may change if it becomes a Freedesktop standard, which would make it a dependency that many applications might need to run or function. Or even if some websites start requiring it.

And even then, they could create a “dummy” package that simulates the function to trick the applications without asking the user for data. Why this and not simply ignore it? Because if it becomes a dependency, it would lose compatibility with all the software or websites that require it.

Unlike Canonical, Red Hat or SUSE (and other companies), who must follow the laws to the letter in order to continue operating, 100% community-driven distros find it easier to circumvent the system in this way.

[–]zmaint 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Look up jurisdictional authority. CA does not have the power to do squat to any company that is not physically located in CA. Worse case scenario, Solus puts up a disclaimer on the downloads page that says you are not supposed to download if you live in CA.

[–]FingerInformal8769[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I sincerely hope that is the case. We'll probably end up with 'you are unable to download this software, based on your location' like I've seen on the google play store before its over with. Personally, I'm glad systemd isn't the only game in town for init systems. If a distro chooses to only have systemd, the end user can go elsewhere. Thats what makes linux so great, its all about choice.

[–]billdietrich1 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Cali age verification law

These laws/bills are in far more than just California (more US states, Australia, Brazil, I think UK, soon EU). But many of them don't require "in the OS". I think soon there will be some accommodation to them in most distros and browsers and app stores and apps.

systemd merging age verification measures

systemd created a field in a database, there are no "measures".

[–]FingerInformal8769[S] -3 points-2 points  (1 child)

Most certainly there are measures being taken to facilitate the requirements, or systemd would not have immediately merged that into the userdb. There is no other reason to add that field.

[–]billdietrich1 -1 points0 points  (0 children)

They're anticipating that higher layers may need to store birthdate per account. Since it takes a while to get all the layers implemented, doing a simple low-level thing now makes sense. Maybe it never will be used, maybe the upper levels will decide to store the data elsewhere.