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  "path": "/t/how-bad-is-the-linux-age-gate-thing/36046#post_5",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-07T01:56:50.000Z",
  "site": "https://discuss.privacyguides.net",
  "tags": [
    "encryption algorithms were illegal to export"
  ],
  "textContent": "People who call this and similar legislation the “end of open source” remind me of those doomers who think GenAI is the AI iteration that is sentient and self aware  that will rise up against us. People need to read up on history, specifically how encryption algorithms were illegal to export outside of the United States during the cold war. I hope we never get back to a place where we’re debating if algorithms and code are speech and we have a government willing to enforce violence over it. But even when that happened, there were plenty of creative ways to exchange ideas when a government tried to lock things down. Now that encryption is everywhere it’s almost impossible to stop private free exchange between people without tearing down internet lines.\n\nThe government only has real leverage applying these rules to for-profit companies distributing their open core versions of Linux. I’m not sure if those sponsoring these bills are doing so for optics to flex to their constituents they are “keeping kids safe\" or “stopping guns from being printed\" or if they genuinely don’t understand how little these types of policies work on the internet. Maybe they believe in the apparent success of DMCA, which had more to do with people enjoying the convenience of early streaming services rather than people fearing the law. As streaming services enshittify, sharing copyrighted materials freely is back in vogue. Whatever the reason though, it doesn’t actually “kill” all of open source - whatever that is intended to mean.\n\nOne of the big concerns I’ve heard people say is that it may just be a couple states now, but eventually it will become standard everywhere or it becoming a law that mandates only government verified code is legal to run on computers.\n\nYou can play out quite a few scenarios here but I don’t see a world where any government can truly enforce policies that could end open source. It’s similar to the folly of governments trying to stifle free speech, it only moves it to the shadows. I believe the age checks legislation will actually just cause more issues for Microsoft and MacOS. For those companies that build on Linux like Red Hat, System76, and Canonical, the open nature of the code makes malicious compliance too easy.\n\nCanonical already has Ubuntu source code out in the open. Any code they add can easily be removed, especially if it’s well labeled in the commit history. It wouldn’t be a lot to imagine some mystery maintainer familiar with the project makes a replica of the compliant operating system with a version of the code that simply doesn’t have that code and sits in a package url that looks similar to canonicals. You get the gist.\n\nSo yeah it’s a nothing burger making headlines.",
  "title": "How bad is the linux age gate thing?"
}