For Residents of California

California has recently passed a law entitled Age verification signals: software applications and online services.

Part of this bill states: "A developer shall request a signal [of age verification] with respect to a particular user from an operating system provider or a covered application store when the application is downloaded and launched."

It is entirely possible that any software I have written and that you download from this site will require me, the developer, to request such a signal. Furthermore, if it does not, I (as the developer) am at risk of fairly severe penalties. (Note that the law says the developer has to request an age-bracket signal, not the application.)

Therefore, at some point before 1 January 2027, I will be blocking downloads of my software from California IP addresses. I will also, where possible, add a restriction to my software stating that it cannot be used or distributed in California after 1 January 2027. This restriction may be incompatible with the GNU General Public License, which means I might need to relicense my software (if possible) or just stop distributing it (if not). I am not willing to put myself at financial risk.

If the foregoing makes you angry, and I hope it does, contact your representatives. In the worst case, agitate for a constitutional challenge to this law, since mandating code to do something is an infringement of the First Amendment (code has already been ruled as being "expression".)

For Residents of Colorado

A similar bill is not yet law in Colorado. If it passes, then I will have to extend all of the restrictions mentioned above to Colorado as well.