Dylan, useful idiot with commit access, pushed age verification PRs to systemd, Ubuntu & Arch, got 2 Microslop employees to merge it, called it 'hilariously pointless' in the PR itself, then watched Lennart personally block the revert. Unpaid compliance simp.
  • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
    10·
    12 hours ago

    You want the user to put their age somewhere?

    Have a simple script that asks for a number and echos it into a file called “age”. Done.

    And they can only run the script if they want to.

  • AeonFelis@lemmy.world
    30·
    20 hours ago

    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.

  • ffhein@lemmy.world
    561·
    23 hours ago

    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.

      • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
        82·
        15 hours ago

        So… if the law interferes with your goals, apparently it is now perfectly fine to just ignore it.

        That seems to be the approach the US government is taking.

        • mathemachristian[he]@lemmy.ml
          4·
          15 hours ago

          I mean yes, the dems have been breathlessly going on about how that thing that Trump’s doing is illegal but nothing seems to happen. There is no opposition at all

  • glitching@lemmy.ml
    615·
    24 hours ago

    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?

    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
      2216·
      20 hours ago

      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

      • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
        145·
        15 hours ago

        Those are also entirely optional and not having them filled in doesn’t cause other software to stop doing what the user wants.

      • MonkeMischief@lemmy.today
        182·
        19 hours ago

        I think back then it was generally assumed this simply assisted with office communication.

        Imagine telling a UNIX engineer in the 70’s how almost everything you enter into a machine would eventually be used to manipulate or entrap you by the State and surveillance capitalism.

        • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
          912·
          19 hours ago

          Imagine telling a UNIX engineer in the 70’s how almost everything you enter into a machine would eventually be used to manipulate or entrap you by the State and surveillance capitalism.

          This isn’t a hypothetical. North Korea uses a version of Linux which does exactly that.

          It still doesn’t make these fields inherently dangerous, and that same argument applies to birthDate. Even if systemd build a verification system that required photo identification and a DNA sample it wouldn’t be a problem.

          The community would just fork the project before the totalitarianism update. The FOSS world already has a process to avoid massively unpopular changes. This change isn’t massively unpopular, this is a vocal minority who is stirred up by web articles leveraging clickbait and outrage to drive ad revenue.

          The age verification laws are unpopular, I’m personally completely against them. However, they do exist and adding an optional field in order to allow project, who choose to do so, to store that data is not a red line or the start of a slippery slope.

          In the future, if there was a red line that was crossed, we would fix it with a fork and not with a harassment campaign.

        • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
          58·
          16 hours ago

          Who cares why it is stored, these fields exist for every user in every Linux system and they have existed for decades.

          Either birthDate the field is dangerous or it isn’t. If it is, how?

          It is no different than data fields that ask for way more identifiable and personal information such as Real Name and Office number which have, again, existed for decades without issue.

          • Shanmugha@lemmy.world
            112·
            16 hours ago

            I care. One thing is “you know, fields with this name have been around since before you were born”, another thing is “some idiots passed the law half the globe away, now we are preparing your system to comply. Someone has to ©”. The field is not the danger, the thinking, attitude and act is

            Edit: some local law, for fuck’s sake

            • Auli@lemmy.caEnglish
              21·
              12 hours ago

              Half a world away where do you live since this is happening everywhere. To be half a world away from any place doing this would be hard.

            • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
              44·
              16 hours ago

              That’s a fair argument.

              Is it fair to say: The field is benign but there is contention about if it should be added or not and users of the software are concerned that their voices were not heard on the issue. That can be handled in the normal project framework, perhaps by suggesting a publicly stated policy about these issues around legal compliance so the community can determine if they want to support the project or not.

              My argument is that I don’t think that the damage that was done justifies the hitpiece in the OP which is, almost literally, painting a target on the developer with the mugshot photograph and loaded language.

              So, if you’re not one of the people then we’re having different conversations. In that conversation, I do agree with what you just said. I’d like to see the very large projects, which affect a lot of users, such as systemd, have a more formal way to accept public comment and respond on contentious changes and feature requests.

              • kent_eh@lemmy.caEnglish
                3·
                15 hours ago

                Is it fair to say: The field is benign

                It is benign if it is optional, remains 100% local and under the user’s control and doesn’t prevent other software from functioning as expected.

      • jdnewmil@lemmy.ca
        12·
        19 hours ago

        You must be off by a decade. Your reference mentions no OS and Unic was developed around 1970.

  • Routhinator@startrek.website
    221·
    21 hours ago

    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.

  • petsoi@discuss.tchncs.de
    132·
    21 hours ago

    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?

  • trackball_fetish@lemmy.wtf
    423·
    1 day ago

    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).

    • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
      414·
      20 hours ago

      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.

  • duub@lemmy.ml
    133·
    23 hours ago

    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.

  • gasull@lemmy.ml
    271·
    1 day ago

    He didn’t just try. He succeeded in doing so. His pull request was merged into systemd and will land into your distro eventually (if it is systemd-based).

    There are distros free of systemd, like Devuan, based on Debian.

  • WorldsDumbestMan@lemmy.todayEnglish
    198·
    1 day ago

    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.