Next they will mandate a “race” field, and the same kind of imbecile will implement it.
I’m so confused he adds a JSON field and corporate linux (who fund 95% of Linux development) need some sort of age auth mechanism for enterprise deployments. What do you guys want instead?
Like its not even enforceable, when the hardware attestation comes sure but before that why does anyone care (thats not going to stop you from changing a json field in systemd lmao)
Be careful now! His coworkers will act most silently.
I love the level of disdain the linux community has for this kinda bootlicking.
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.
$ cat /home/$USER/isUserUnderage.txt no $ ll /home/$USER/isUserUnderage.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 root rootDone. Now please let me through, mr. Caflifornia Immigration Officer
Collaborator
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.
I mean they kidnapped maduro and are trying him under new york law so…
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.
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
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.
I don’t see what’s wrong with implementing it as an add-on to the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecos_field as the PR in question does. It’s the most logical place as the location to store user information and is even easier to opt out of—you just edit a file—than choosing whether to compile Linux with/add to DKMS a kernel module.
Edit: One can see https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/8878df45c1a58afdfb500fdc53ec50e057a240ce/docs/USER_RECORD_BLOB_DIRS.md?plain=1#L103 for an example of a user record file and its path. Further documentation you can read at https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/8878df45c1a58afdfb500fdc53ec50e057a240ce/man/systemd-userdbd.service.xml#L36 and https://github.com/systemd/systemd/blob/8878df45c1a58afdfb500fdc53ec50e057a240ce/docs/USER_RECORD.md .
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
Those are also entirely optional and not having them filled in doesn’t cause other software to stop doing what the user wants.
(same for the birthDate field)
Depends how these new laws are written.
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog
That’s you. You have no issues giving anyone an inch and then wondering why you’re being lined up on the street afterwards once they’ve taken the mile.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slippery_slope
That’s you. You have no issue embarking on a creative writing exercise, painting the scariest possible scenario and pointing at that piece of fiction as if it were reality.
You think you can just make up lies about countries far away from you and no one will notice? Think again, whisu.
Stored “because law”, right?
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.
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
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.
Being half a world away from Americas is pretty easy, don’t ya think?
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.
To be fair, I am bit split on this. On one hand, name and shame is an effective strategy and should be used. On the other hand, “put age verification into Linux” is a hilarious stretch. And yes, it feels strange that I have yet to see any kind of response from other systemd maintainers and managers - after all, the man authored a pull-request, not merged into into upstream. I have not been looking for that kind of response myself though, which also serves your point: putting all the blame and anger on this one man (I purposefully omit name) is too much
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.
deleted by creator
You must be off by a decade. Your reference mentions no OS and Unic was developed around 1970.
Your reference mentions no OS
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.
Artix is one, but I have no experience with it.
+1 I spent years wondering if my decision to invest in learning systemd was worth it. The sunk cost fallacy blinded me for too long but I am now willing to ditch systemd if a fork is not made.
I believe this pissed of enough users and it’s likely we will see a fork
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/systemd-liberated-libs-git
systemd has already been forked
Don’t go around installing random AUR packages, this really shouldn’t need to be said.
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?
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.
Removed by mod
There is a special guillotine for this wannabe parasite.
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.
There are distros free of systemd, like Devuan, based on Debian.
AntiX, Artix, Guix System and a few others
Gentoo has 5 different init systems
systemd already stores your realName and location. It has stored that information since the beginning.
There is nothing that birthDate will tell a person that they can’t find out using your realName and location.
I agree with you but repeating your arguments in mass replies does not make it stronger.
I don’t think that it does, if this were a wikipedia discussion where bad faith arguments and trolling were removed then I’d agree.
But since the moderation on this topic doesn’t exist, the only thing remaining to Team ‘Don’t Dox and Harass Developers’ is the blunt instrument of repetition.
You are trying to protect the villain in the story.
Someone add the default to 1/1/1970
