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.
Every single one of these will fail. Every single one. Because none of them need to exist. The only purpose these serve is harassing the systemd devs for nothing.
These people are pathetic.
'forks are harassment' lmfao weirdest weakest shit ever
The slurs the forkers included in their descriptions would suggest that. I don't suppose you actually looked at them tho, performative outrage can't motivate that kind of minimal effort.
Pathetic is implementing age verification in the first place.
The laws are just authoritarian nonsense, and the same nonsense thats been fought against for decades. It had nothing to do with protecting children then, it has nothing to do with protecting children now, and merging given that context is a failure on the part of the maintainers.
I am enough of a dick that I will shift systems I'm responsible for over to Devuan, AntiX, MX, Alpine - hell, Gentoo if it came to it.
But there is no verification. Just a standardized field in an optional component you can choose to ignore.
Systemd has not implemented age verification
Also, you should absolutely tell your local government rep that you don't support age verification. Don't get mad at Linux distros for following the law.
systemd is not a distribution.
Its also not under Californian, Coloradan, or Brazilian jurisdiction.
systemd has merged a PR specifically for this use, so yes, they have implemented it.
Systemd is used by a lot of organizations and companies including those who want to operate in jurisdictions with the BS verification laws.
This doesn't impact anyone outside of those places
The field is added regardless of your country, therefore all users are impacted.
Why the fuck are you defending this shit so much?
You are all over the place pushing a complete fabrication about what has happened.
Where was your performative outrage when systemd added the full name data field in the same place? That is far more invasive information. Oh wait, they don't require that data field to contain a value either. It's almost like none of the technical details of the PR have anything to do with your stance on it and you're just big mad about something unrelated to systemd.
Youre making quite a few assumptions here, as well as ignoring context.
It won't protect children, but you can't igore the law. You can get lawyers and fight that way. However too many eevelopers live in CA to ignore and every one of them is at risk of the law going against them. Small distros can say they don't have anyone who maintains it in CA so the don't allow their distro to be used in CA. Large ones cannot ignore the law just because it is stupid and won't work.
I didnt realize systemd was under the jurisdiction of California and Brazil.
Also, yes you can, and bring about a legal challenge against it for the plethora of reasons why its stupid, useless, creates new threat attack vectors, exposes PII unnecessarily, and so on, and so forth.
You want a California patch? Go for it.
It does not belong in the main branch.
Age verification bills are being introduced in a lot of places
Not this kind that have passed, no.
Edit: whole couple words missing.
If we don't fight back they will become standard everywhere.
Instead of being mad at devs be made at those who passed and are considering passing age verification laws.
SO WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU DEFENDING IT.
I'm not?
I've been contacting my local reps like any citizen should do. Being mad at devs does nothing. Open source developers gets tons and tons of hate I don't need to contribute the shortage of FOSS maintainers.
Your shitty misinformation meme post would certainly disagree.
where do the maitainers of the linux distro of your choice live? I mean every single person because if even one lives in CA (Brasil...) you have to either 'fire' that person or follow the law for their sake. I agree systemd shouldn't be the place for this, but systemd wants to take over everything and I'm sure some of their maintainers live in CA thus they feel they must.
All over the globe, much like systemd.
Also like systemd, their operation is not determined by Colorado, California, and Brazil.
And before anyone gives me the "hurt durr other states have it proposed" - other states have had all kinds of stupid laws that make it absolutely nowhere.
And no, they wouldn't have to "fire" anyone from CA, CO, or Brazil. Because it has fuck all to do with systemd in the first place.
systemd is not an operating system. The laws do not have any application to systemd. Including it in systemd as a field, as specifically stated for these three jurisdictions is idiotic in so many ways.
Edit: Also, just to be clear - this PR did not come from maintainers. It came from one person who submitted multiple PRs for age verification across multiple projects.
It was merged by a maintainer though, which is why they deserve criticism.
Exactly
People are mad even though the only age is just to have a optional age field for a user
It literally means nothing
Maybe they will, but this is beside the point. Regardless the forks, look at the wider response. I can't imagine Linux users will accept this, not because of any thechnical impact or systemd haters hating. This is people actively preparing to make a stand against enshittification and techbros funded legistlation.
Why?
What is so bad about having a optional age field for user storage? This isn't age verification just a optional age box.
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.
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 incremental changes would probably be the only feasible way one can turn something like systemd surveillance friendly. Even leaving everything aside, this is singularly the worst possible time to suggest such a change to the level that I would almost look for malintent.
I'm not concerned with the wider response, I'm concerned with this specific response to systemd which isn't motivated by any noble goal. These unwashed simpletons have coalesced into a smelly mob that needs to be quarantined. Maybe we can find a way to herd the sheep towards the thing they are actually mad at, but until that finally makes it through their thick skulls I'm fine with mocking them.
You had me in þe first two sentences. Right conclusion, wrong reason.
Forking systemd is like forking þe Linux kernel: it's a massive monoliþic mess noone is going to be able to maintain, unless it's a group of dedicated people wiþ corporate support.