I still don't understand why it needs to be implemented as part of systemd, and not - say - as a service. Or, if we want to "go with" the law - make it a kernel module, which sounds more impressive ("we are complying at the kernel level!") but in practice so much easier to opt out of.
this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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Is there an Arch fork that is not implementing this shit or do I have to go non systemd now? Because this BS is not going on any of my machines.
I have the strong feeling, that some guys have crossed some red lines. Verbal abuse is also a form of violence. What will happen next? Will you beat, kill?
Then he said Arch Linux should implement it anyway because the law requires it. archinstall PR #4290
Well, it's not "the law", it's your local law. To most people on the planet, it doesn't apply any more than for example North Korea's laws. As far as I can find, Arch Linux is not owned by a foundation or similar legal entity (i.e. which could have been located in California), but the lead developer appears to live in Germany.
Germany has a similar law already active
§12 Jugendmedienschutzstaatsvertrag
(1) Anbieter von Betriebssystemen, die von Kindern und Jugendlichen üblicherweise genutzt werden im Sinne des § 16 Abs. 1 Satz 3 Nr. 6, stellen sicher, dass ihre Betriebssysteme über eine den nachfolgenden Absätzen entsprechende Jugendschutzvorrichtung verfügen. Passt ein Dritter die vom Anbieter des Betriebssystems bereitgestellte Jugendschutzvorrichtung an, besteht die Pflicht aus Satz 1 insoweit bei diesem Dritten.
(3) In der Jugendschutzvorrichtung muss eine Altersangabe eingestellt werden können
But yes, neither such laws nor the implementation into systemd is in any way positive and should be fought
to all y'all with the "it's just a text field": what if the field is "race"? "sexual orientation"? "jerks_off_to"? what the fuck has a system managing daemon got to do with any of that? and why would you preemptively put it in there without even a pretense of a fight?
fuck you make us! make linux illegal, in Cali of all places. guess how long that will last?
Yeah, scary.
What about some other scary fields like:
- Real Name
- Office Address
- Office number
- Office telephone number
- Home telephone number
- external e-mail address
I mean if those fields were stored, could you imagine the danger that Linux users would be in?
You don't have to imagine, because those fields have been stored in UNIX/Linux since 1962. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecos_field
Someone add the default to 1/1/1970
A mistake without regret must be punished. They are not kids acting silly. I don't feel comfortable with a foot on my neck, even when that foot isn't pressing very hard.
Linux Community: It's Free Software. You can do what you want!
Also Linux community: BUT NOT THAT!
Please stop with the (indirect) personal attacks on open source maintainers.
Developers are not a protected class. They do not get special social protections when they do ignorant things.
The key phrase is Personal Attack.
If the law was the only thing stopping you doing that, it reflects on you.
Any criticism should be directed primarily at the laws, not the person who suggested adding a birthdate field to the user.json.
Open source is dependent on volunteers contributing their time. The developers at SystemD have been receiving death threats over this. This article includes his name, face, workplace. I know that information is publicly available but the Geoguessr experts aren't the people we need to worry about.
He did not just suggest it. He went on and implemented it. All while the community was telling him "we don't want this", "stop with this" – look at the comments on GitHub. Yet he neglected all this feedback.
As an open-source volunteer, you work for the community, right? If you go ahead while the community is telling you "we don't want this", then whom are you working for?
As an open-source volunteer, you work for the community, right?
- They don't work for anyone.
- Even if they did, it sure as hell wouldn't be for you.
- Even if they did work for you, they are under no obligation to even think about breaking the law for you.
Of course there are no obligations and he's'free to do as he pleases. Likewise, the community or I are under no obligations of not criticizing him for what he chose to do.
This isn't criticism.
Taking a person, photoshopping their picture to look like a dossier on a criminal and writing a hit piece which includes all of their publicly available information is doxxing for the purpose of harassment.
Lemmy is a small community, read some of the comments in this post and you'll see people using violent language, calling him a traitor, etc.
I didn't even have to go far to find an example, literally the comment under my reply:
https://lemmy.world/post/44550728/22802099
A mistake without regret must be punished. They are not kids acting silly. I don’t feel comfortable with a foot on my neck, even when that foot isn’t pressing very hard.
Expand that to the tens or hundreds of thousands of people on Reddit (where this exact article is also posted) and the chances of some crazy person going out and doing harm to this man increases.
This is why public doxxing is wrong and anyone participating in this is morally corrupt.
Excellent. Just having his face out there will discourage him for good, once he gets the backlash.
He should just fuck off, we don't need free and open source anything that is in league with Palantir.
Lots of disingenuous comments in this thread regarding the change being "just json" considering they're already on a warpath of implementing id verification. They are testing the water to see what they can get away with. Furthermore, the Linux community has always been against shit like this (see: systemd outrage, open bios, gnu etc).
Lots of disingenuous comments in this thread regarding the change being “just json” considering they’re already on a warpath of implementing id verification. They are testing the water to see what they can get away with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
Argue against what is happening, not fictitious and hypothetical scenarios that are not happening.
Furthermore, the Linux community has always been against shit like this (see: systemd outrage, open bios, gnu etc).
We've had fields for storing way more personal information (like real name, home telephone number, location, etc) since 1962. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecos_field
There is nothing that a birthdate will tell about a person that their real name and location will not.
The criticism here needs to be aimed at the laws and politicians. This article is whipping up a lynch mob against a volunteer developer using a clickbait article for the purposes of ad revenue.
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Nah I don't buy it. Ain't no way this mf is 6'4".
Jesus fucking Christ guys. Regardless of your thoughts on age verification, hunting down someone just for complying with the (currently) rather inoffensive law is nuts.
Posting his face here is absolutely going to get him doxxed, and going to cause someone to actually hunt him down and hurt him.
Focus your anger on the people who actually passed and push for this law. Not the person who drew the short straw and had to implement it.
It's not inoffensive at all, it's being pushed by religious whackjobs https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/rep-finke-was-right-age-gating-isnt-about-kids-its-about-control
it's the public info on the accounts GitHub page it's not like anybody really had to dig at all
There's a huge difference between someone's information being available on github and someone taking their picture and photoshopping it to look like a mugshot and writing a hit piece article that's whipping people up into a lynch mob.
Systemd is NOT an operating system provider, so they didn't have to do absolutely anything.
It was their choice to do what they did, not the law, especially since it won't be active and enforceable before next year.
Witch hunts are despicable indeed but lets not use that an an excuse to justify what they did.
- He didn't draw any straw. Nobody asked him to work on such an implementation (or maybe Meta did?).
- In fact, he appeared out of the blue to do this implementation. This was his very first pull request on the Systemd git.
- From the very start he received a huge amount of critical comments from the community on GitHub, while he was working on this. He neglected their criticism and plowed on.
So he already had a warning that the majority of the community didn't agree on what he was doing. Nobody asked him to. He chose to continue – he could have imagined the consequences.
And the whole context on why and why now he did this is fishy.
Complying with this shit is nuts.
Not the person who drew the short straw and had to implement it.
That's the whole point, though, they don't have to implement it. They're under no obligation at all to do so. Try to rule Linux is illegal in California and watch Silicon Valley lobbyists damn near riot. They're just giving in, but even just procrastination would be a ridiculously effective tactic.
He "was only following orders". But yes this is a class war.
Nah useful idiots like this deserve the shit they'll get.
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