California AB 1856 would exempt some open-source software from age checks
The passed bill would narrow age-verification duties for software distributed under licences allowing copying and modification, but it was not yet law.
Assembly Bill 1856, titled “Age verification signals: software applications”, was introduced by Assembly Member Buffy Wicks on Feb. 11, 2026. The bill amends Civil Code §1798.500(g)(2), a provision connected to California’s Digital Age Assurance Act, which is generally operative Jan. 1, 2027, according to the latest legislative text.
The amendment excludes a person or entity distributing an operating system or application under licence terms that permit recipients to copy, redistribute and modify the software. That is the important bit for Linux and other open-source projects: the exemption is written around what the licence allows people to do, rather than around a list of approved software licences.
The bill text does not name the GPL, MIT, BSD or Apache licences individually. Those names appeared in reporting and are useful examples, but readers should not mistake them for a statutory whitelist. The legal test is the wording of the licence terms themselves.
AB 1856 cleared the Assembly on third reading May 26 by 68-1, with 11 members not voting. The Senate passed it 40-0 on Aug. 26. The Assembly then concurred in Senate amendments 69-0 on Aug. 27, with 10 not voting. Senate Appropriations had previously approved it 7-0 on Aug. 13.
California’s official status page listed the measure as “Active Bill – Passed”. Its latest history showed Senate amendments being concurred in before the bill was sent for engrossing and enrolling. There was no Governor approval, Secretary of State chaptering or chapter number shown in the available record by Aug. 30. In other words: passed, pending, not enacted.
Age-verification mandates are usually aimed at services that can identify, track or control access for users. Open-source software is a different beast. Code can be copied, modified and redistributed by people the original developer may never meet, making a compliance regime designed for centralised platforms a spectacularly awkward fit.
The exemption would not make every open-source project automatically safe from every Californian technology rule. It would create a targeted carve-out for software distributed under qualifying terms, while leaving the underlying Digital Age Assurance Act and its 2027 operative date in place. Developers still need to read the final text carefully rather than assume a familiar licence name is a magic password.
AB 1856 is a sensible bit of legislative housekeeping. Treating freely modifiable software like a walled-garden social platform would be technically clumsy and potentially hostile to the people California wants building things. But the victory lap should wait until the bill is actually enacted. For now, Linux users and developers have a promising exemption — not a finished shield.
Sources: [California Legislative Information — AB 1856 bill status](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billStatusClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1856); [California Legislative Information — latest bill text](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1856); [California Legislative Information — vote record](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billVotesClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1856); [California Legislative Information — legislative history](https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billHistoryClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1856); [Tom’s Hardware](https://www.tomshardware.com/software/linux/california-lawmakers-unanimously-pass-linux-exemption-from-age-verification-law-software-distributed-under-the-gpl-mit-bsd-and-apache-licenses-are-exempt)