Colorado is considering something no other state has done: carving out an explicit exemption for open-source software from its proposed age verification law. If it happens, it would be the first meaningful acknowledgment by a U.S. state legislature that these broadly written child safety bills have a serious collateral damage problem.
The development was first reported by Phoronix, which noted that Colorado’s HB25-1243 — a bill requiring age verification for online platforms — may be amended to exclude open-source projects. System76 CEO Carl Richell has been one of the loudest voices pushing for this change, posting on X about his ongoing advocacy in the Colorado legislature.
This isn’t an abstract policy debate. It’s a fight over whether volunteer-run software projects could be forced to implement identity verification infrastructure they can’t build, can’t fund, and don’t want.
The Problem With Blanket Age Verification Laws
A wave of state-level age verification bills has swept across the U.S. in the past two years. The stated goal is protecting minors from harmful online content. The mechanism is typically some form of mandatory identity or age verification before users can access certain platforms or services. But the drafting of these bills has been remarkably sloppy when it comes to defining scope.
As WebProNews previously reported, System76 has argued that these bills serve a dual purpose that has little to do with child safety: giving Big Tech companies a liability shield while creating surveillance infrastructure that benefits government data collection. The bills are written broadly enough to potentially cover any software platform where users interact — including open-source communication tools, code repositories, forums, and Linux distributions with built-in app stores.
California’s AB 1043 is a prime example. As WebProNews covered, that bill would impose verification mandates on developers regardless of their size, funding, or organizational structure. A solo developer maintaining a chat application used by a few thousand people would face the same compliance obligations as Meta. That’s not a hypothetical. It’s the plain text of the legislation.
Open-source projects are particularly vulnerable. Most don’t have legal departments. Many don’t have formal organizations behind them at all. They’re maintained by volunteers writing code on weekends. Asking them to implement age-gating systems — which require collecting sensitive personal data, integrating with third-party ID verification services, and maintaining compliance documentation — is like asking a neighborhood library to install TSA screening equipment.
And the consequences of non-compliance aren’t trivial. These bills typically include civil penalties, injunctive relief provisions, or both.
Why Colorado’s Exemption Could Set a Precedent
Carl Richell’s advocacy in Colorado appears to be gaining traction. System76, the Denver-based Linux hardware company, has a direct stake here — its Pop!_OS operating system and associated software infrastructure are open-source projects that could theoretically fall under age verification mandates. But Richell has framed the argument more broadly than just his own company’s interests.
On X, Richell has been documenting his engagement with Colorado legislators, making the case that open-source software is fundamentally different from commercial platforms. The argument is straightforward: open-source projects are typically distributed freely, maintained by communities rather than corporations, and don’t monetize user data or attention. They lack both the financial resources and the philosophical motivation to build surveillance infrastructure into their products.
The proposed exemption in Colorado’s HB25-1243 would acknowledge this reality. Per Phoronix’s reporting, the amendment would specifically exclude open-source software from the bill’s verification requirements.
If Colorado passes this exemption, it becomes a template. Other states drafting similar legislation would have a reference point. Advocacy organizations could point to Colorado and say: this is how you write a child safety bill without accidentally criminalizing volunteer software development.
But there’s a catch. The exemption isn’t guaranteed. It’s being discussed, not enacted. And even if Colorado gets it right, dozens of other states are moving forward with their own versions of these bills, many without any consideration for open-source impacts.
The broader pattern is concerning. Legislators drafting technology regulation consistently demonstrate a poor understanding of how software is actually built and distributed. They write rules imagining a world where every piece of software is a product sold by a company with revenue, employees, and a legal team. That world doesn’t exist. A huge portion of the software infrastructure that powers the internet — from web servers to encryption libraries to entire operating systems — is open-source, community-maintained, and unfunded.
So what happens when a state attorney general decides that a popular open-source forum platform needs to verify users’ ages? Does the maintainer in Finland comply with Colorado law? Do they just block Colorado IP addresses? Do they shut down the project entirely? These aren’t edge cases. They’re predictable outcomes of poorly scoped legislation.
What Industry Professionals Should Watch
Three things to track going forward.
First, whether Colorado actually passes the open-source exemption. The legislative process is unpredictable, and amendments can be stripped at any stage. Richell and System76 are pushing hard, but opposition from child safety advocacy groups — who tend to view any exemption as a loophole — could complicate things.
Second, whether other states follow. Utah, Texas, Louisiana, and several others have already passed or are considering age verification laws. None currently include open-source exemptions. If Colorado creates a model, the question is whether other legislatures adopt it or ignore it.
Third, the federal angle. Congressional proposals for nationwide age verification have been floated repeatedly. If a federal bill passes without an open-source carve-out, state-level exemptions become irrelevant. The EFF and other digital rights organizations have been sounding alarms about this for months.
The tech industry has largely treated these bills as someone else’s problem — specifically, as a problem for social media companies. That’s a mistake. The language in most of these bills is broad enough to sweep in any interactive online service. SaaS companies, developer tool platforms, open-source project hosts, and even self-hosted applications could be affected depending on how enforcement agencies interpret the statutes.
Colorado’s potential exemption is a small but significant crack in what has been an undifferentiated legislative assault on online platforms of all kinds. Whether that crack widens into something meaningful depends entirely on whether more people in the industry start paying attention — and showing up to state capitol buildings the way Carl Richell has.
The code is open. The question is whether the law will be.
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