I Spoke To The Dev Behind The Systemd Birth Date Change
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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.

  • Kogasa@programming.dev
    1·
    10 hours ago

    I don’t think the changes in question are “upholding” any law, but rather giving system admins and software devs a convenient/predefined way to attempt to comply with the law if they choose. “Upholding” the law would be requiring the field to be filled or checked.

    That said, to your point, if someone proposed a race field “so that devs can implement segregation if they choose,” I’d find that reprehensible even though it doesn’t do anything on its own. Similarly, I object to the systemd change.