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Inside the Systemd Age Verification Debate: Developer Responds to Criticism (itsfoss.com)
submitted 7 months ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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Dylan M. Taylor is not a household name in the Linux world. At least, he wasn’t until recently.

The software engineer and longtime open source contributor has quietly built a respectable track record over the years: writing Python code for the Arch Linux installer, maintaining packages for NixOS, and contributing CI/CD pipelines to various FOSS projects.

But a recent change he made to systemd has pushed him into the spotlight, along with a wave of intense debate.

At the center of the controversy is a seemingly simple addition Dylan made: an optional birthDate field in systemd’s user database.

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[–] -4 points 7 months ago (10 children)

Y'all are going after this guy rn but in a few months we should expect more and more distros to do changes like this. So lets think, what is the real issue going on here? The real issue is that these distros are hosted on GitHub, which is a Microsoft company, and they will comply in a heartbeat and take that shit down if the software is against the law. So the two options are to move off Github or wait until it gets taken down, and lawyer up and fight California and Colorado, which if so, we'd better start a fund as a community for some lawyers for these devs.

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

    What fucking distro would make this change besides redhat?

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (4 children)

    Look, it sucks that they're complaying early with no push back ok. Like not even watiing until the law goes into affect at the least. But what else are they supposed to do besides comply, get off Github or lawyer up when the time comes. If you don't belive they can move off GIthub then we, as a community, should try to support these devs for a legal battle with the state. I don't care about this guy, I care about long term solutions to protect our privicy. And to answer your question I don't think many distos are going to switch off Github, that is a laborus task. I just don't know what other solutions to this problem are besides this

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  • [–] -1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

    Lawyer up? Who are they going to sue? Most Foss projects are not a legal entity.

    For the few that are (eg connnical) they can just move the org to Canada or Mexico or wherever in Europe that doesn't have insane laws.

    Everyone continues to work remotely. It's easy.

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

    They will get kicked off Github by Microsoft when they get somthing in the mail by the state of California for hosting content that vilolates the law.

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

    So they push to codeberg. What's your point?

    Git is decentralized. You're not citing a problem that can't be fixed in a few hours.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago

    That is literally my point. But i think you're underestimating how difficult a task like that is not only just to migrate but also to learn new tools, if it were so easy, why haven't they done it yet? Not to mention the servers and fiscal activity done in the US that will also be targeted and moving to places like the EU where they are already implementing ID verification laws isn't a good idea. They'd have to move them to other countries that are less likely to do such a thing, but there are no guarantees those countries will stay safe. So do you think the devs would rather do all that or add an age field that is stored locally? If the laws get worse (which they very well might), we should start funding campaigns that try to fight these laws through legal means and through awareness, this is personally what I think is the best idea but I'm open to hearing other methods. Getting mad at this one guy is doing nothing and if anything, will make devs not want to maintain these projects.

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

    Why would I want some stupid verification field needed only in one state in one country I don't even live in? It shouldn't be in my FOSS when it is not required in my home location. I would like to stay as far away from a dystopian police state as possible, tyvm. No lawyers needed; I'm not in their jurisdiction.

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

    Like ur right, it's total bull that this shit affects you. But the only way they could keep you totally isolated would be to host and finance an entire instance in your county, which ain't easy for a FOSS project. Like it absolutely sucks that large parts of the world have to bend to the will of American and, to a lesser extent, European tech.

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  • [–] 1 point 7 months ago (1 child)

    One place in one country wants one law. That place in that country will have to isolate its citizens from the rest of the world. Not force the world to play by their rules. Everyone who bends the knee to this kind of overzealous information gathering should be excised from FOSS communities as it only leads to worse things down the line. Every single piece of PID can be connected to all other previously disclosed PID even after "anonymisation" has been applied. Google and Meta do nothing else on the daily.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago

    That's sadly not how the world works. The code for the most popular distros is posted and maintained on Github which is owned by Microsoft, a US company. If the state of California sees that Github is hosting illegal content, they will block that site and Microsoft isn't going to want that site to be blocked in the state that Sillicon Vally is located in. All financial institutions that are located in America are also not going to let themselves be open to any form of lawsuit from the state of California for allowing transactions for "illegal" software and will instead block donations. It sucks but most FOSS projects rely on these shitty companies to run, and these corps would rather sack any project than let the smallest possibility of a lawsuit happen. So basically, the USA sucks and other countries will hopefully stop relying on this shitty country

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