For those interested, the Systemd release that's planned to include the controversial 'birthDate' field to user records, complying with age-verification laws, is v261 (see 'milestone' in the pull request). This release seems to be planned for May.
The current release, from some hours ago, is v260.1. I see that Ubuntu Noble (24.04) just updated to v255.
21 Comments
mech@feddit.org · 40 pts · 157d
What I don't understand:
Why is everyone hating on systemd for adding the birthdate field, but no one is bashing xdg-desktop-portal for adding the actual age
verificationattestation system?Is it because systemd makes for a better target?
Or because most don't know what xdg-desktop-portal actually does?
By the way, Freedesktop.org's Accountsservice is doing the exact same thing for non-systemd users.
mrbigmouth502@piefed.zip · 18 pts · 157d
You raise a very good point. systemd isn't the only thing we should be bringing attention to. Everything in the Linux ecosystem that's pushing for age verification/attestation should have attention brought to it.
mech@feddit.org · 6 pts · 157d
Yeah, but also let's not lose sight of the fact that the SPI (the legal representative and donation distributor for Arch, Debian, Gentoo, LibreOffice, Systemd and a lot of other open source communities) can easily be sued out of existence if they don't follow the law.
And several large corporations have a big incentive to pursue that.
So there is room for discussion whether a maliciously compliant age field that only the local admin can edit is worse than the death of community-driven Linux development as we know it today.
Maybe this isn't the hill to die on.
ascend@lemmy.radio · 4 pts · 157d
I think everyone should pick their battles, but I'm also happy that there are enough people picking this one. I also don't think this is the hill to die on and don't think the anger should be solely focused on the Linux Dev community but should be more focused on the people implementing this law in the first place.
mech@feddit.org · 3 pts · 157d
I applaud any devs pushing back against this.
But users harassing, berating or villifying devs just for following the new law can go get fucked.
mrbigmouth502@piefed.zip · 1 pts · 157d
pglpm@lemmy.ca · 8 pts · 157d
You're absolutely right. And it's the same group of people pushing for this in all these places.
Skullgrid@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 157d
Dylan M. Taylor
Ooops@feddit.org · 18 pts · 157d
Oh, no! Yet another field I will simply leave blank like all the others.
fox2263@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 157d
What’s stopping anyone like not filling it in or putting a false one in?
mech@feddit.org · 1 pts · 157d
Nothing, and that's legal, too. The new law only requires a method for putting in an age or birthdate, no age verification.
kibiz0r@midwest.social · 0 pts · 157d
So in 5 years we’ll all be running v260.182.1?
Ooops@feddit.org · 3 pts · 157d
Don't be rediculous. By then Debian will be on 258 at best...
forestbeasts@pawb.social · 3 pts · 157d
Debian actually has 260 in testing, now.
Which fucking sucks, because systemd 260 ALSO just dropped sysvinit script support. Which... hey, we on alternate init systems kind of need those??
They better not try to use that as leverage to make Debian drop (or just bitrot) the "old" and "outdated" init scripts that work with all the normal init systems.
-- Frost
Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club · -5 pts · 157d
They already rolled it back.No longer sure what I saw.fruitcantfly@programming.dev · 7 pts · 157d
It hasn’t been rolled back. You can go to the systemd repo and look at the main branch for yourself.
Here’s the commit. Just click through and see if the code was subsequently removed from any of the files. You’ll find that it wasn’t.
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/7a858878a03966d2a65ef9e8f79b5caff352ac53
dancingtigergames@mastodon.social · 1 pts · 157d
@fruitcantfly @Quibblekrust governments want to spy on linux machines because they love sending police to my door just because I use linux
mech@feddit.org · -1 pts · 157d
Then why don't they require age verification in this new law, only a method for the user to enter any date (without forcing them to enter one)?
starsoaked_lily@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 157d
where do you see that?
Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club · 0 pts · 157d
Someone posted about it here in one of these linux communities. It was a big blog post.
starsoaked_lily@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 157d
not seeing anything when searching for it, do you have a link? looking on the github it's still merged so it's difficult to believe
Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club · 0 pts · 156d
Maybe I dreamed it. Maybe it wasn't systemd.