California’s Digital Age Assurance Act slams into open-source reality. AB 1043 demands operating systems collect user birth dates at setup, then beam age brackets—under 13, 13-15, 16-17, or 18+—to apps via real-time APIs. No exemptions for Linux. Fines hit $2,500 per negligent violation per child, $7,500 if intentional. Effective January 1, 2027, with a grace period to July for legacy setups. AlmaLinux, the community-backed RHEL clone, just fired the latest shot. They don’t like it. Not one bit. Chair Benny Vasquez laid it out bluntly in a blog post : “Whether or not we like this legislation (we don’t) we believe that the DAAA may require operating systems to implement digital age verification, and communicate the results of this verification to applications working on top of our AlmaLinux.” So what’s their move? Wait and see. Courts first—laws like this draw suits fast, Vasquez predicts. Upstream next: Red Hat and Fedora responses will guide them, since AlmaLinux shadows RHEL. No rush.…