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submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by pglpm@lemmy.ca to c/linux@programming.dev

For those interested, the Systemd release that's planned to include the controversial 'birthDate' field to user records, complying with age-verification laws, is v261 (see 'milestone' in the pull request). This release seems to be planned for May.

The current release, from some hours ago, is v260.1. I see that Ubuntu Noble (24.04) just updated to v255.

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[-] mech@feddit.org 42 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

What I don't understand:
Why is everyone hating on systemd for adding the birthdate field, but no one is bashing xdg-desktop-portal for adding the actual age ~~verification~~ attestation system?

Is it because systemd makes for a better target?
Or because most don't know what xdg-desktop-portal actually does?

By the way, Freedesktop.org's Accountsservice is doing the exact same thing for non-systemd users.

[-] mrbigmouth502@piefed.zip 18 points 1 month ago

You raise a very good point. systemd isn't the only thing we should be bringing attention to. Everything in the Linux ecosystem that's pushing for age verification/attestation should have attention brought to it.

[-] mech@feddit.org 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Yeah, but also let's not lose sight of the fact that the SPI (the legal representative and donation distributor for Arch, Debian, Gentoo, LibreOffice, Systemd and a lot of other open source communities) can easily be sued out of existence if they don't follow the law.
And several large corporations have a big incentive to pursue that.

So there is room for discussion whether a maliciously compliant age field that only the local admin can edit is worse than the death of community-driven Linux development as we know it today.

Maybe this isn't the hill to die on.

[-] ascend@lemmy.radio 5 points 1 month ago

I think everyone should pick their battles, but I'm also happy that there are enough people picking this one. I also don't think this is the hill to die on and don't think the anger should be solely focused on the Linux Dev community but should be more focused on the people implementing this law in the first place.

[-] mech@feddit.org 9 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I applaud any devs pushing back against this.
But users harassing, berating or villifying devs just for following the new law can go get fucked.

[-] pglpm@lemmy.ca 9 points 1 month ago

You're absolutely right. And it's the same group of people pushing for this in all these places.

[-] Skullgrid@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

And it’s the same group of people pushing for this in all these places.

Dylan M. Taylor

[-] Ooops@feddit.org 24 points 1 month ago

Oh, no! Yet another field I will simply leave blank like all the others.

[-] kibiz0r@midwest.social 2 points 1 month ago

So in 5 years we’ll all be running v260.182.1?

[-] Ooops@feddit.org 4 points 1 month ago

Don't be rediculous. By then Debian will be on 258 at best...

[-] forestbeasts@pawb.social 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Debian actually has 260 in testing, now.

Which fucking sucks, because systemd 260 ALSO just dropped sysvinit script support. Which... hey, we on alternate init systems kind of need those??

They better not try to use that as leverage to make Debian drop (or just bitrot) the "old" and "outdated" init scripts that work with all the normal init systems.

-- Frost

[-] fox2263@lemmy.world 2 points 1 month ago

What’s stopping anyone like not filling it in or putting a false one in?

[-] mech@feddit.org 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Nothing, and that's legal, too. The new law only requires a method for putting in an age or birthdate, no age verification.

[-] Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

~~They already rolled it back.~~ No longer sure what I saw.

[-] fruitcantfly@programming.dev 7 points 1 month ago

It hasn’t been rolled back. You can go to the systemd repo and look at the main branch for yourself.

Here’s the commit. Just click through and see if the code was subsequently removed from any of the files. You’ll find that it wasn’t.

https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/7a858878a03966d2a65ef9e8f79b5caff352ac53

[-] starsoaked_lily@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago
[-] Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Someone posted about it here in one of these linux communities. It was a big blog post.

[-] starsoaked_lily@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 month ago

not seeing anything when searching for it, do you have a link? looking on the github it's still merged so it's difficult to believe

[-] Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club 1 points 1 month ago

Maybe I dreamed it. Maybe it wasn't systemd.

this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2026
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