this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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Hard disagree. This represents the pot getting turned up on the frog.
I acknowledge you are factually correct. However, once this field exists, it enables later reference and/or mandatory dependencies.
There is no positive use case , but lots of possibly negative use cases. For that reason, it shouldn't exist.
Do you really draw the line at a date of birth field, when every linux system has fields for full name and address for every user account?
You do know that this is a slippery slope argument, right?
You would have to demonstrate that there is an intention there to require third party services to validate the age of users using Linux... Or that there is an intention to do so by systemd and the broader open source developers.
I don't think it will be easily possible to lock out every Linux system from the internet that doesn't implement some kind of hardware DRM mechanism to make sure that the user cannot just change the date of birth with root permissions.
I'm not really sure you can argue birthdate is the thin edge of the spear when the standard Linux user database already had fields for location, email, phone number, and real name. None of which have been used for anything up to this point, and systemd-homed is not as widely used.
We are more than mere frogs in a pot though. We have made note of this. We outraged. We argued and counter argued. We will not forget so easily, no matter the view point on it.
If nothing comes of it, some of us can say "I've told you..."
If the next step gets implemented and the field becomes mandatory, some of us can say "See!! Froggies"
If it becomes mandatory and a further implementation also adds the framework to submit the data to some idp service, then we can get the pitchforks out.