I Spoke To The Dev Behind The Systemd Birth Date Change
www.youtube.com
Today I spoke with the developer who introduced the PR to Systemd which added in a birth date field to userdb which spawned a massive drama and much worse as...

Some of you need to watch this video, and hang your head in shame.

Dylan Taylor has been receiving constant harassment, including threats to his life and safety, for actions done collectively by SystemD. The article by Sam Bent was explictly mentioned as part of the harassment campaign, and rightfully so.

I don’t think enough people realize that this is catastrophically bad. It’ll discourage people from becoming open source developers, it’ll discourage people from using Linux, and it’ll discourage legislators from taking the Linux community seriously.

If you ever wished ill upon another human being for complying with a relatively inconsequential law, you are better off never touching a computer again. The Linux community has collectively gone so far beyond what is acceptable here.

  • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
    3·
    5 hours ago

    i also wouldn’t put this past him given the reactionary tendencies he’s demonstrated in the past; but i suspect that a threat of non-compliance == treason from the federal government probably had a bigger impact.

    and if you’ve ever had the displeasure of working for the federal government; you’ll hear horror stories of how capricious and draconian the selective enforcement of treason can be.