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I Spoke To The Developer Of The Systemd Birth Date PR - YouTube (www.youtube.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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[–] 6 points 7 months ago (4 children)

As a thought experiment: please recommend them a better way than bullying

We could:

  • reject the PR: no, because it's already accepted by the lead.
  • try to argue with the project maintainers: already failed. This is systemd we're talking about. They are used to just plowing on regardless of what the wider community thinks.
  • reject the software: systemd is fundamental to a lot of systems, so this is very painful.

It's not hard to see why people have resorted to bullying. It's not right, but there's no way to make your voice heard. OSS development is not a democracy. It's a do-ocracy. Those that d"do" dictate. Fine when the developer is aligned with the users. Chaos otherwise.

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  • [–] -3 points 7 months ago* (3 children)

    You missed this option:

    • Ignore the feature and don't use it.

    systemd is quite modular. For example, if you abhor systemd-resolved (not at unreasonable stance) it's NBD to disable it.

    Recently (<1 year?) I frequently see the notion that software is "tainted" by having been touched by Bad. I find this a bit silly. Especially if it's from a user who's not even spending time in the codebase.

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    If the law creates this new API, nobody will be able to get away without leaking PII to the web (I think it will have a javascript API). 1970 jan 1 identifies *nix users, 1900 jan 1, even an "unset" will leak info on people, etc. entropy and shit. Websites will also try to use the API. One could set the function to crash JS, or disable all JS, but that already breaks 90% of the web. One could also: either not install userdb (like I do), or install a non-systemd linux, but those still will leak "unset" or "API disabled".

    There's no getting away from this, it really is the law that we should push back against. Unfortunately it's a fight currently only Americans and Brazilians can participate in properly. Donations won't work well, govts these days often clamp down on NGOs because they often get money internationally, and therefore, they are "foreign interference" etc.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    "user is likely accessing service from a *nix device" isn't PII. of course anything can be used for fingerprinting, but this type of "leak" is about as insignificant as it gets. It's not what most people would consider a violation of their privacy.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    I agree with most of what you said, however, I'm not worried about most people. I'm more worried about people who are trying to act against tracking. Maybe I shouldn't, and we cannot "personal responsibility" our way out of this, but I still haven't processed that loss.

    I'm also not worried about “user is likely accessing service from a *nix device” in itself. It's hard to say how insignificant this particular bit is. I'll prolly need to spoof this info, too.

    The systemd change is fairly insignificant, yes. That the xdg-desktop-portal people will implement this is more worrying. I'm also worried that the systemd addition will be used as "proof" that the linux landscape is perfectly capable of adding age attestation and verification, and therefore they will dismiss any possibly amendment to the US bills and the EU wouldn't even consider adding an exception.

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