If I’m reading this correctly, the 18+ part is for the paid AI service, not the editor itself.

They sent a clarifying email today

> Our email yesterday was imprecise relative to our actual new Terms. To be specific:

> You must be at least 18 years old to use the Service (Zed’s AI-enabled software-as-a-service offering, including features like account creation/sign in, Zed Free and Zed Pro, and collaboration). See https://zed.dev/terms#21-eligibility. We set the threshold at 18 due to children's data privacy obligations under COPPA, equivalent international frameworks, and an increasing number of state and regional laws that extend protections to anyone under 18. Those regulations require parental consent verification, age-gated data handling, and separate retention policies for minors. Building and maintaining that infrastructure is a real cost for a small team, and getting it wrong carries regulatory risk. Setting the line at 18 lets us maintain a single privacy framework for all account holders without carve-outs.

> Zed's Software (open source code editing software) is governed by our open source licenses. In cases where the open source license can govern, it will over the Terms. See https://zed.dev/terms#24-restrictions.

Time for kids to learn vim.

I use Zed, but not the AI bits of it. Works really well as a plain code editor. I hope they remember there are folks like me who just want a better code editor than the miserable shite that is VSCode, without all the LLM stuff in it.

Not that I have a problem with the LLM stuff, I just use the LLM in a shell and then use Zed to fix the problems in the output.

This entire effort at “age verification” needs to die in a fire.

Headline soon:

You must be 18+ years old to use a Raspberry Pi.

Time to short Raspberry Pi stock then.

Earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47240158