this post was submitted on 21 Mar 2026
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Genuine question, don’t we always say that we can change anything in the system on open source software like Linux and systemd etc? What’s stopping any of us from removing this age verification thing? Apps may break, true, but I’m sure there will be many one line scripts that replace that age verification with something that feeds it fake data?
Tbf simply following the development and criticizing bad design decisions is also one way to change opensource software no?
There's a massive difference between criticizing bad decisions and articles like the one in the OP who's painting the developer as a target.
There's plenty of ways for the open source community to handle this. This isn't one of them.
Brigading and harassing volunteer developer is way out of bounds.
No, the community should hold people accountable that fuck them over.
The people that you're looking for are politicians and companies like Meta who spend tens of millions of dollars to push these laws.
Not the random developer who created a PR to add an optional JSON field.
The ironic thing here is that this isn't even the guy that accepted the merge request... that's the person who actually added the code to the project. Anybody can submit a PR.
He didn't need to do this and you need to stop defending him.
Volunteering to do what? I would have paid him not to. Fuck that guy!
Feel free to fork the project if you don't like the direction it is going.
Engaging in a harassment campaign is far worse than adding a JSON field, you troglodyte.
Someone could fork systemd.
Also, some major distros might decide to use the fork
IMO the benefit and curse is you could fork it, maintain it, patch it yourself, etc if you wanted, but then its a full time job keeping it up to date with changes. As others have pointed out, this is a decisive change, so a fork probably wouldn't be a solo project, but the bifurcation in development would be a large impact, slowing development in other fixes and features.
Then what's stopping you from rallying the contributors to treat the fork as the primary target for development instead?
Ooo, I know the answer.
Because they're only interested in the low effort performative activism and have no interest in actually putting in anything resembling real effort because the next social media driven frenzy is just around the corner and they need to be outraged about that instead.
The fact you're being downvoted so heavily, when you're completely correct, really makes me question the quality of the lemmy "community". I'm Australian though so it's not like I have other options.
There are a few forks already like https://github.com/Jeffrey-Sardina/systemd and more will pop up for sure. I will try to build it maybe at least I can help with some infra to build it + an AUR package.
I never doubted the forks for a freaking second. That’s why however I think about it, I feel like it won’t work with free open source. Unless the government burdens the app developers to make their apps require age verification to an external source then distribution will have to implement it. Not sure how this shit is going to pan out. Fuck Zuckerberg
You could just put a fake date in at user setup from what I understand. It adds the field to the user database but there isn't any verification that that date is true
We were all born on 01/01/1970
I think it's blatantly obvious we weren't born on January 1970, year 1. January only has 30 days, not 1970.
I’ve heard somewhere that they’ll require a constant api calls from each system to an external verification system that is even paid. I don’t remember where I read this but if that’s the case then we are fucking doomed.
"I’ve heard somewhere that they’ll require a constant api calls from each system to an external verification system that is even paid"
or what? you can't use the software store? most of the stuff on there is open source and you can compile it yourself
if it comes down to it you can just compile your own kernel that doesn't do that.
what about airgapped systems?
It just doesn't work
Yes, it's exactly like the realName and location fields that have been in UNIX/Linux for over 60 years.
It's incredibly clear who is being whipped up into a frenzy by social media clickbait. Your birthDate is not nearly as privacy-destroying as your real name, location, office number, home phone number, e-mail address, etc. These fields have been in Linux since the beginning and, like birthDate will be, are typically left blank and ignored.
If you wanted to throw on your tinfoil hat you could ask 'Well what if, in the future, some bad guy forced you to actually put your REAL NAME in the realName field?' That's basically what is happening in this thread, in addition to brigading a lynch mob on a systemd developer.
There are a few forks already like https://github.com/Jeffrey-Sardina/systemd and more will pop up for sure. I will try to build it maybe at least I can help with some infra to build it + an AUR package.