California lawmakers unanimously passed Assembly Bill 1856, which exempts open‑source operating systems from the state’s Digital Age Assurance Act, a law set to require age verification at account setup beginning January 1, 2027. The bill, amended by the Senate on August 21 and passed 39‑0 on August 26, modifies the definition of “operating system provider” and narrows the scope of the age‑verification requirement. The amendment excludes software distributed under licenses that allow copying, redistribution and modification, covering distributions such as Debian, Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch and other BSD‑licensed projects. It also exempts libraries and dependencies delivered through package managers, and removes storefronts that distribute extensions that run only inside a host application. The original definition of “user” that treated all device owners as children was removed, and a new provision bars requests for age signals unless required by law, providing a safe harbor for developers against inaccurate age‑gating data. Commercial operating systems including Windows, macOS, iOS and Android remain subject to the age‑verification rules, which will apply at account creation from January 1, 2027, with a secondary compliance deadline on July 1, 2027 for pre‑existing devices. The status of SteamOS remains uncertain because its core system components are open source while Valve provides a proprietary client. GrapheneOS, which announced in March that it would refuse to comply with age‑verification mandates, is now outside the law’s scope because it is distributed under open‑source MIT and Apache licenses, though Brazil’s Digital ECA still applies. Assemblymember Buffy Wicks, who authored the original act and the amendment, introduced the exemption after criticism from Linux developers and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The bill now awaits Governor Gavin Newsom’s signature; if signed, the exemption will take effect before the age‑verification requirement becomes operational.