Fork time? Maybe all the anti-systemd zealots were right all along…
Edit: To address whether it is likely that this change will affect users: Gnome is planning a stronger dependence on userdb, the part of systemd where this change is being implemented. https://blogs.gnome.org/adrianvovk/2025/06/10/gnome-systemd-dependencies/
Has anyone even looked at the PR? Why is there such a big stink about adding an optional birthday field to a JSON schema? It’s opt-in and can’t be validated in any way.
That’s like saying OpenSSL is the thin end of an anti-encryption wedge because they provide FIPS compliant modules. Or complaining that it puts your privacy at risk when you generate an SSH key and it asks for your address.
Just think of all those Azure and AWS VMs needing age verification as they’re spooled up, destroyed and receated every few minutes…
…Practically, what does this even mean for a systemd user like me?
What app would use this? And If anything actually uses the field, can’t I just enter a random date, like I have across the internet forever?
Self reporting has long been honored as the gold fucking standard for honesty! How dare you sully that with your very discrete scrolling to a random year, and not even bothering to select a date! Our data mining overlords will be displeased.
They implemented part of the the low level works needed to implement birth date verification. Commercial distros like Ubuntu, RHEL and SteamOS might use it for law compliance. It’ll very likely be as easy to bypass as it can be since no one really wants this.
You mean tied to IDs or something?
Commercial services would’ve just implemented that anyway. And yeah, likely with “absolute bare minimum effort.”
I’m still a bit confused. This thread is acting like this is a slope to systemd distros requiring an ID check, if I’m reading it right.
You mean tied to IDs or something?
Anything goes, ID is one way to do it.
This thread is acting like this is a slope to systemd distros requiring an ID check, if I’m reading it right.
The post itself is phrased like that for engagement.
We graybeards tried to warn you about systemd but you acted as fools.
It does not help that non insignificant amounts of systemd criticism comes from Lunduke and gang, often ignoring the actual technical problems with systemd and turning into culture war.
I don’t mean you, just my thoughts.
Guilty as charged xD
I know the debate around systemd is going on for quite some time, I understood the basic reasoning behind it but I don’t have the technical knowledge required to truly decide for myself, so I just didn’t pay too much attention to it and followed what my distro of choice does.
The good thing about this “new development” is that it’s not just a tech debate anymore, it has such wider implications that it’ll be much easier for people to decide where to be.
i’m going to start dyeing mine so that people won’t just keep ignoring me like some old man yelling at the neighborhood kids to get off his lawn. lol
I didn’t need one more reason to hate systemd
It’s so hilarious that the most recent thing that’s happened on this shitty PR is a request for Claude to review their code.
i think it’s really wholesome that a lot of 126 year old people use linux
While I think it’s amazing that not only are 95% of Linux users 56 years of age, but they even share the same birth date!
Yes, the Unix epoch is the obvious choice of birth date here
We should all agree on a common birthday, until operating systems enforce ID upload
you missed the joke I think: Thu Jan 01 1970 00:00:01 GMT+0000,
UNIX timestamp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time
I never cared about the systemd debacle, now I do. I don’t want that shit on my PC.
So, declare your system users’ birthdate as Thu Jan 01 1970 00:00:01 GMT+0000 and get on with life.
You did care, or else you wouldn’t be having this meltdown.
You must be the most dramatic person in the universe, calling that a “meltdown”.
What part of “now I do” you didn’t understand?
As usual, poettering is a piece of crap.
Successfully merging this pull request may close these issues.
None yet
Time to move to Guix !
Has the lack of software ecosystem improved much lately?
Why would anyone on Linux, having free choice of all Linux OSes, choose one that actively compromises your privacy?
This is why Linux should never be a corporate, paid-for ecosystem. The nerds that keep all this shit running for free will not be interested in maintaining spyware OS.
Problem is, most distros use systemd, if they accept this implementation, distros will inherit it.
I don’t know what it would mean for distro maintainers to revert this change, but I guess it wouldn’t be easy.
I’m personally just happy sysvinit distros still exist, hopefully sysvinit won’t cave like systemd seems to be doing.
Very true, and this is a good argument for the importance of diversity in everything Linux.
The fact that there are distros not using it at least means there’s room to fuck off to those if this gets out of hand.
Y’all are making a mountain out of nothing. Adding a data field alone has absolutely no effect unless:
- Entering it is forced
- That entry is somehow verified (which would be the invasive part)
- The systems accessing userdb actually use it for anything (which would require it to be filled out and verified to be anything but performative)
As it stands, it’s a performative gesture to avoid law enforcement crackdown, which I think is perfectly reasonable for a private person with limited funds to fight a legal battle with. That doesn’t mean they can’t also fight that battle privately, but expecting volunteers to put their necks on the line over adding data field seems rather entitled to me.
If Gnome decided to implement age verification (beyond just “enter your date and please don’t lie”), using that field, the blame for that would fall on Gnome.
This is more like adding a field in the cookie of an adult website to store whether the user has clicked “Yes, of course I’m 18”, without even implementing the disclaimer for the user to click that button, let alone actual age verification.
dude, can you send me a picture of your government ID? I just wanna see?
Nope. I’m John Doe, living in Nice Try, Atlantis, and my email is “who@car.es”. But I draw the line at being asked for my birthday (which is 1970-01-01).
The userdb already has fields for other information. Nobody enforces putting anything there, nor verifies the contents. Why should DoB be different? And why should that be on the userdb?
Because this design does not come from the project, it is bowing down to a fascist funded movement.
is perfectly reasonable for a private person with limited funds to fight a legal battle with
Are you saying corporations like Red Hat sponsoring the development of systemd are thinking of “poor private devs” of whatever distro when taking such a decision than impacts the majority of distros?
Red Hat probably could afford to go to court over those laws. Maybe should, too. Maybe just passively ignore them until someone drags them to court for it. But all of that would be independent of this change.
impacts the majority of distros?
And just what is that impact?
“Here, you have a space to write stuff down.” So what? If I’ll never read it or verify the contents, what difference does it make?
And just what is that impact?
That every distro will inherit a field containing a birth date, whether they want it or not.
“Here, you have a space to write stuff down.” So what?
That “stuff” is a personal information that not everyone is legally equipped to deal with. In EU there are specific laws protecting storage and usage of personal information.
Your "stuff"can potentially create more problems than the ones it tries to solve, assuming good intentions.
That “stuff” is a personal information that not everyone is legally equipped to deal with.
You mean like email address, real name, location? Because those fields exist already. I’m not aware that they have ever caused any issues, even though real name and location should be more critical in a doxxing or surveillance context than “just” the date of birth.
I assure you, I don’t have my email, real name or location stored in my userdb. Nobody makes me enter them. Nobody cares. Nobody would verify if I did. What’s stopping me from entering 1970-01-01 as my DoB, if I enter anything at all?
If I’m the one storing, transmitting, querying and processing PII, I’m responsible for it. If my distro were to require email verification, proof of identity for the real name, records of my place of residence or employment to ensure the location is accurate, that would be an issue, and that would make the vendor liable for handling that data.
That is what the GDPR and related laws are actually concerned with, not the exact format or place they’re stored. Otherwise, you’d have to ban me from creating text files: I might store someone’s phone numbers in there.
Because those fields exist already
I’ve been using Linux for many years and not even once I’ve seen those info being requested by the operating system.
Otherwise, you’d have to ban me from creating text files
There’s a huge difference between YOU putting your info by your own accord wherever you want (look at what people do on Facebook) and an operating system requesting those.
In case you didn’t notice, this whole ordeal is pushed by Meta to avoid being accountable for the shit they do on their platforms, they’re trying to shift the responsibility to operating systems of all things, and that’s not acceptable.
being requested by the operating system
Is it though? As best as I could tell, this PR is literally just adding the field next to the others, not requesting shit.
In case you didn’t notice, this whole ordeal is pushed by Meta to avoid being accountable for the shit they do on their platforms, they’re trying to shift the responsibility to operating systems of all things, and that’s not acceptable.
Absolutely. I just disagree that this particular addition (particularly considering all the fuss about making sure it doesn’t show up in logs and dumps and what not) is a problem. I don’t think this is the hill that battle should be fought on. Adding or not adding it to systemd doesn’t make the OS / distro built on top of it any less responsible for their handling of that data.
It does provide a standard and (somewhat) central place to implement the security aspects of it though.
Everbody look at bro, he’s glowing!
?
They want to store the actual birthdays (not just a boolean stating it complies with an age bracket). And using claude to review PRs… fucking systemd
Just write a shell script that changes the birthday every few minutes lol
Or an alternate implementation of the API that fetches it to flag any programs that call it.
