Categoría: Editoriales

Grado de dificultad: 3 (Por el idioma)

Columnista: Roberto

All operating systems but one

Una sorprendente noticia

El anterior artículo de TMN terminaba con una sorprendente noticia:

California introduces age verification law for all operating systems, including Linux and SteamOS — user age verified during OS account setup

El primer instante de sorpresa suele provocar reacciones excesivas y contraproducentes. Esta oportunidad no fue una excepción.

Me tomé una noche de descanso para procesar la novedad y me desperté descubriendo una gran oportunidad para Linux.

Siendo una noticia notoriamente gringa, mi opinión será en inglés, para dar una amplitud internacional al mensaje.

Supposedly protecting children

California passed a law requiring to identify the age of any new account registered in any operating system. This law was (is?) supposed to protect children from downloading and using damaging apps.

Let’s put this in context. California is fatherland to all private operating systems for personal computers.

Namely, I am talking of:

  • Microsoft Windows, for PCs,

  • Apple macOs, for their Mac desktops and laptops,

  • Apple iOs for their iPhone smartphones,

  • Alphabet (Google) ChromeOS for PCs,

  • Alphabet Android, for all Android smartphones.

I could add Tyzen, WebOS and Android TV for our smart TVs.

All of them use their closed structure to extensively harvest data on their users (AKA us!), preferably the young ones. So much for protecting the children, an easy and lazy claim.

Kids are better armed that old folks

A far more global issue

There is a notable exception to that rule: Linux doesn’t do any of this …

… Which may be exactly the point. Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet are very powerful (and wealthy) corporations. They can easily withstand any lawsuit on the matter, having all the resources and lawyers they need.

Dragging Linux in an arena it (and us) are not even part of is a cunning way to blur the lines. It is a new dirty trick aiming at disqualifying an adversary they already tried to dismiss in the past (unsuccessfully).

But this story is not for me to tell. What is interesting here is to see how lost are the lawmakers that are voting these laws. The issue is far more global, as cleverly stated in the following video:

Video retrieved from “Bellular” YouTube channel.

The perfect age

To sum up, the battle is already lost, the protections being overwhelmed by a long-lasting attack against our privacy.

Note: this is the privacy of everyone, not only 13 years children.

Ironically, Linux is the only operating system still able to stay on high (enough) ground. This other video describes the community consensus on the issue (System76 is among the targeted Linux distributions):

Video retrieved from “SavvyNik” YouTube channel

My memory is good enough to remember that, at 13 years of age, kids are better armed than old folks. It looks to me that this age is not too early to discover such an interesting OS as Linux.

It’s more like the perfect age, actually, to learn how to save us all.

Linux is straighter than the law