The latest changes implemented in the Systemd repo, related to or prompted by age-verification laws, have made many people unhappy (I suppose links about this aren't necessary). This has led to a surge in Systemd forks during the last days ("surge" because there have always been plenty of forks). Here are some forks that explicitly mention those changes as their reason for forking (rough time ordering taken from the fork page):
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paramazo/systemd "The systemd System and Service Manager without age verification"
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ganitam/systemd "Systemd fork just before the Age Verification addition. Hoping more capable developers and maintainers do same.."
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GSYT-Productions/systemd-fork "The systemd System and Service Manager, without the stupid Age Verification"
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speedythesnail/unret arded-systemd "The systemd System and Service Manager, without the ret arded age-verification commits"
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ta13579/systemd "The systemd System and Service Manager WITHOUT THE FUCKING AGE CHECKS"
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r4shsec/systemd-no-age-verification "This is systemd but without the age verification made via pull request https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40978"
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Pingasmaster/fightthesystemd "Systemd without the nonsense: no age verification, no lighthouse built-in."
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Jeffrey-Sardina/system "Liberated systemd -- no surveillance. Ever."
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HaplessIdiot/systemd-saneagecheck "The systemd System and Service Manager with age verification bypass and polling rate options for said feature"
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Queer-Coded-LGBTQ/systemd-fuck-california "The systemd System and Service Manager, but without age bs added in."
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Codiak540/unshitted-systemd "A fork of systemd aiming to strip the Age verification. Sue me california."
Hopefully the energy of this reaction won't be scattered among too many alternatives, although some amount of scattering is always good.
Why?
What is so bad about having a optional age field for user storage? This isn't age verification just a optional age box.
It is a psychological reaction. The amount of digital surveillance has massively increased in the last couple years. US has just started, as you probably know too, discussing the possibility of adding mandatory age checks to any device connecting to the internet (that might fail due to its infeasibility, but that is another issue). So is this reaction really that surprising? People are afraid that this might be the first of a series of changes that make it more surveillance friendly, such as actual age verification. Indeed that would probably be the only feasible way one can turn something like systemd surveillance friendly. Even leaving everything aside, this is singularly the worst poasible time to suggest such a change to the level that I would almost look for malintent.
What is the point of it? If the are doesn't cryptographically trace to the right birth certificate for who is at the keyboard now it won't do anything - kids will lie about age if there is any issues. If it does trace back that well there are huge privacy problems.
None of that is being considered here
The PR in question just adds a age field. It is optional but some people expressed a usecase for it so it got merged. If you don't see a point it can be safely ignored.