While not as good as repealing AB 1043 outright for requiring operating system providers to ask for a user's age or birth date at device setup, open-source Linux distributions and other open-source OSes may end up seeing some reprieve before this law goes into effect at the start of 2027.

AB-1856 is currently undergoing committee reviews and could be voted on by the California State Legislature in June. AB-1856 makes some important adjustments to exempt most Linux distributions from being affected by California's age verification law.

One of the important pieces of AB 1856 is amending their age verification law with:

"(2) “Operating system provider” does not mean a person or entity that distributes an operating system or application under license terms that permit a recipient to copy, redistribute, and modify the software."

And on the application side:

"(2) “Application” does not include software components that are not themselves offered to consumers as a stand-alone executable application through a covered application store."

Saihaj Sraon who was involved with this ammendment hopes it addresses much of the concerns from the Linux and open-source communities.

While this does clear the vast majority of open-source Linux distributions from being impacted by this law in California, it would still impact platforms like Valve's SteamOS. With Steam shipping the proprietary Steam client by default it would still be treated as a covered application store and likely still affected by California's original law along with any other similar Linux distribution with proprietary apps.

At least AB-1856 if passed in California will hopefully clear up the situation for the vast majority of the Linux distributions and other open-source operating systems out there.