Post #1624398

2026-03-21 05:41 UTC

@wwahammy @k3ym0 So that's clearly (scumbag) Dylan M. Taylor's intent and belief. But I think it is valid to separate them for the purpose of evaluating folks-other-than-Dylan; I don't think bluca did anything wrong by merging it (nor poettering for lgtm'ing it). I don't think it's valid to say "welp, systemd added age verification, I have to switch to a non-systemd OS now to avoid age verification."[1] I think it's totally valid for bluca and poettering to look at the PR and think "the author's motivation is bad, but this specific change is fine." "They build the tracks and plead innocence as to what is in the trains." I feel that way about a lot of stuff, but... this is even more removed than that? There's no policy engine. "They approved a standard for the width of train tracks."? [1]: There are plenty of valid reasons to prefer other init systems, but I don't think "birthDate" showing up in a json schema is one of them.

Replies (2)

@lukeshu@social.coop 2026-03-21 05:43

@wwahammy @k3ym0 As someone who was once noted on Wikipedia for maintaining a fork of systemd, I think this is a really silly reason for wanting to fork systemd.

Open ##1624399
@sirtao@social.sirtao.it 2026-03-24 08:54

As somebody who intends to switch distro over this: it's not the addition of the field. It's the reason behind the addition: in-advance compliance with laws with limited geographic scope and no actual implementation details. Plus absolutely the utter and complete dismissal of all critiques by the systemd people. Basically this poisoned the trust on the maintainers ESPECIALLY because it's such a "minor" change. No reason to get the users angry if it's something "you just can not use".(and the presence of other PII is not the gotcha they think it is) The insistance means it's either ego, malice, or both. (I'm going with "ego": the person responsible for this first suggested it on twitter, got people telling him don't do it, and went and did it anyway) I'll also add this was the straw tha broke camel's back for me(never been the biggest systemd fan). CC: @wwahammy@treehouse.systems @k3ym0@infosec.exchange EDIT 23/03/2026: grammar

Open ##1624406