This is a lot of fuss about realistically nothing but I completely understand why and frankly I am pleased to see it. People should be pissed off about age verification laws and the way they're being implemented.

systemd doesn't enforce anything about birth dates, this is totally optional and completely falsifiable, and if anyone ever tried to enforce anything based on it that would be a totally separate system and purely hypothetical at this point. This is never going to actually be a realistic part of any implementation that actually works (not that there is ever likely to be any implementation that ever works) because that's the beauty of open source. As soon as anyone ever develops an implementation that actually works, it will be forked and removed just like this. Nobody is going to voluntarily use that, and if the law requires us to, nobody's going to comply with the law either.

This is more like a shot across the bow to say "we will never put up with this and we'll show you exactly what we're going to do if you try" than it is a realistic need at this point. Still, good for making sure they understand we are armed and we are not going down without a fight (that they won't win).