tl;dw?
A developer submitted a PR code change for systemd userdb.
My proposals (that’s really what PRs are) are to implement a solution that meets the regulatory requirements in several jurisdictions by providing a way to store a self-reported birthdate locally on the machine. These laws also require that this date is collected during account creation (hence why I made PRs against installers) and you can enter any value here, even January 1st, 1900. There is no proof required, no ID scanning, and no external tracking. Nor do I have any desire for that to ever change.
Apparently the developer is confirmed to be just a regular guy. He thinks it’d be worse if every desktop environment implements their own solution to comply with these laws. He’s against the various laws related to this incident.
As a fallout for submitting this pull request, he has been extensively harassed. His personal information being repeatedly posted online; his information used to sign up to a lot of sites, groups, churches, car dealerships, ordering food for him; threats of murder; regular textual harassment.
He thinks it’d be worse if every desktop environment implements their own solution to comply with these laws.
Sure he has a point there, but putting it in systemd means there will need to be at least one other implementation for systems that don’t use systemd…
Are you suggesting that we should put this field in the kernel instead.
I’m not suggesting anything specific. But the point of rushing to implement your way into software A to prevent each software having their own implementation does not make sense to me. This is not a proper way to standardise. There are many months left to make a proposal that works for everyone.
This shit is really getting out of hand. But that was always a given considering the uneducated and hyperbolic panic being stirred up around this. Brodie of course I think has a solid response. This should served as a constant reminder how easy it is for anyone to be manipulated.
Yep, the people losing their shit about this should be fucking ashamed.
On one hand I completely agree that people are overreacting to adding a field that anything actually implementing age verification could potentially make use of.
But on the other hand I think people are not overreacting enough (in ways other than pointlessly harassing the names on a pull request) because this is a ‘foot in the door’ and basically the only way to prevent these vaguely worded laws from fully rooting everywhere would be massive blowback that actually has consequences for the corporations and governments pushing the laws.
But on the third hand, every Linux distribution collectively refusing to abide by the law and blocking California, Brazil, ect. IPs probably wouldn’t have much overall impact so time would probably be better spent trying to get the average random person to care… and the average random person definitely does not care about systemd fields…
But on the third hand,
I know an AI comment when I see one /jk
Damn moties!
