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Open Source Friday - Age assurance laws and open source: what maintainers need to know - 5-22-2026 12PM #217

@AndreaGriffiths11

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@AndreaGriffiths11

Title: What maintainers need to know about age assurance laws and how to design policy with open source in mind
Speakers

Anne Dickison, Deputy Director, FreeBSD Foundation
Katie Steen-James, Senior US Policy Manager, Open Source Initiative
Margaret Tucker, Senior Developer Policy Manager, GitHub

Policymakers throughout the world are advancing age assurance proposals to address youth safety concerns, including approaches that reach down the stack to operating systems, devices, and “app stores.”
In this Maintainer Month panel, we’ll break down the current policy landscape and key developments in U.S. states, alongside emerging approaches in Brazil and Europe, and what they could mean for maintainers of open source operating systems and the broader open source ecosystem. We’ll explore how frameworks designed for consumer-facing services with centralized control can misalign when applied to software that is freely shared and collaboratively developed, and how open source expertise can help improve policy design—ensuring laws better reflect technical realities while fostering a new generation of open source champion policymakers.

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