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News First OS changes license to exclude use in California effective 01/01/2027 due to unanimous passage of California bill AB1043

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Yikes looks like they might be implementing this in SystemD which means almost all major distros. Was really hoping the open source community would be fighting harder to stop this and not jumping on implementing it right away in a core function. Could be as simple as adding a line to the GPL that states the software is not allowed to be used in California and all open source products could geoblock the whole state from even being able to download the software. There's ways around that but the fact that they put effort into blocking it would hopefully protect the authors. Upon further reading it seems it only stores it locally though and doesn't connect to any government or outside servers. I can't see how this would be in compliance though, I imagine the government is going to want a database of every OS install with the age of the user and it will be tied to a specific device.

 
from what I've been reading it seems more of a facade appeal to the law rather than a total capitulation.

Interestingly I was asking chatgpt about replacing or switching init systems on my Debian 12 install and eventually mentioned systemd's announcement regarding the new laws; it basically said it couldn't see how such a thing could be implemented or enforced with systemd.

Either way, you can switch to a different init system without reinstalling and if this keeps going forward I bet a lot of distros will end up releasing versions with different default init systems.

I was interested in a debian based distro without systemd, but all that I tried have the archaic installer that looks like it's from 1998. I tried to get through it but did something wrong and install failed.
 
There is Devuan which is Debian without SystemD. I use it for most of my servers.
that's the one I wanted to try but couldnt get past the installer mini-boss. :sweatsmile:
that was before AI help existed though, so I might try again if this situation gets worse
 
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Init systems don't get me excited at this point. I'm a little skeptical of systemd, and how it's taking over gnu/linux installs, but I don't see a good reason to switch atm. I think people farther up the food chain need to make sure systemd doesn't own linux by default, but it's beyond my expertise to analyze the issues.
 
For desktop OS I don't care about SystemD myself, for servers I find it's just an extra layer of complexity. I have some servers that use it but for most general purpose systems I use Devuan.

I am skeptical too about how it almost feels like it's taking over. In some cases you cannot install certain applications without it. At least not easily. There's always a work around.

As long as there continues to be distros without it at least it gives people choice.
 
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