I’ve only absorbed bits and pieces of the story, but allegedly there’s an age verification push happening on Linux? What’s the full story here?
If I was cynical - which I absolutely am - I’d say maybe it’s a total nothingburger that’s being overplayed as a distraction from something else?
A bunch of US states (and other western countries) are flirting with, passing or have already passed laws saying operating systems must implement “age verification” for the completely disingenuous purpose of “protecting the children” or the companies that make the Linux distros will be liable for infringement and severe penalties. This, naturally, makes many of the companies involved that make Linux distros really eager to implement age verification. Many of said companies are backed and funded by large, powerful tech companies who are lobbying for exactly this legislation because it makes life extremely difficult and uncertain for Linux users, while at the same time it makes life easier for them and their extremely child-unfriendly content platforms that they want to maintain the ability to manipulate children with and blame Linux when children get manipulated by it saying that Linux should’ve told them the user was a child and it was actually Linux’s fault that the child got manipulated, not them.
Meanwhile, the users and maintainers of Linux itself, the systems that make up Linux, and even the maintainers and contributors to many Linux distros, who are real human people and not faceless corporations, think following unjustified laws is unjustified, see through this lobbying for the dishonest cop-out it is, think this is fucking garbage, and are telling the corpo scum to go fuck themselves with rusty knives. This is entirely appropriate and reasonable in this case.
Hope that helps explain what’s going on.
An optional field was added to the userdb to allow storing birthdate. That’s it.
The systemd project merged a pull request adding a new birthDate field to the JSON user records managed by userdb in response to the age verification laws of California, Colorado, and Brazil.
This is the same record that already holds basic user metadata like realName, emailAddress, and location. The field stores a full date in YYYY-MM-DD format and can only be set by administrators, not by users themselves.
An optional field in the userdb JSON object. It’s not a policy engine, not an API for apps. We just define the field, so that it’s standardized iff [sic] people want to store the date there, but it’s entirely optional.
–Lennart Poettering
As long as I dont need to install a GUI on all my headless servers I couldn’t give 2 hoots, also while I’m at it. As long as I dont need to workout how I get a GUI on an Aws instance that is headless
Fix: a useless field was added by a random non-core contributor, and merged by a Microsoft employee.
That’s it so far.
Also, it wasn’t a core maintainer who created the PR, which you want for something this sensitive.
Why would it matter who it was that contributed the code?
It’s just an extra field that was added to the UserDB. The methods used to access that information have not chaged AFAIK.
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entirely optional
Until its not. Rome wasnt destroyed in a day
Yes, but the slippery slope is also a fallacy.
Caution is better than panic.
There’s ample evidence there is an organised international push for these mass surveillance efforts in many countries all at once, do you deny this?
I would argue, for now, this is malicious compliance from the open source community.
Adding an optional field in the UserDB to store an age covers the requirements of the law, without trying to help with the spirit of the law
But I do understand the boiling the frog side
Assuming some jurisdictions implement some kind of device based age restrictions, should linux just not exist in those places?
Lets be cautious and remove the mechanism.
iff [sic]
In case you are unaware, “iff” is short for “if and only if”, i.e. bidirectional implication. It’s not a typo.
It is a word, but I don’t think it’s really applicable here. The standard exists even if no one wants to use it or ever does.
iff [sic]
Brought to you by the same people as HTTP_REFERER, I assume ;-)
iff = “if and only if”
Basically saying the field’s there if you need to comply with the law, but otherwise you don’t need to use it, just like the other fields.
Exactly, making it possible for admins (parents) to set up systems with rules based on age for their many children
They can install some parental controls from the package manager. This doesnot need to be in fucking systemd.
This was a good write-up of what’s going on: https://www.sambent.com/the-engineer-who-tried-to-put-age-verification-into-linux-5/
They have changed course, thankfully:https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/41179
edit: my mistake, I saw this briefly earlier today and thought it had been merged, not just closed.
They haven’t, whatever your opinion on it…
Pottering responded no and closed it, stating it’s just an optional field others can use how they please
Read the dam things you post >_<
Can you point to the part where the revert got merged?
Looks like Microsoft funds and maintains systemd so they can exert control over all the Linux bistros and force this shit in
Do you believe Microslop funds and maintains systemd because Lennart Poettering works there, or is there more to it than that?
If it’s just that Poettering works there, you may be interested to know that he left in January this year.
Lennart Poettering left Microsoft, not systemd
And they left for PR reasons, to literally appear not evil and to “build trust”
I’ve never followed the people or the politics - I just started using systemd when it appeared in whatever disto I was using at the time and liked it. I’m trying to catch up now because I have reservations about using projects that incorporate AI (and I’m learning this may be impossible to avoid) and I most certainly won’t use anything that implements age verification. (The irony of typing this on a device that has age verification via my credit card hurts)
I accept that Microsoft had significant influence over systemd when Poettering worked there, but I don’t understand how they do now.
I also understand that Poettering likes Windows, and wants to make Linux more like Windows. That’s not the same as Microsoft controlling systemd.
Are you saying that Amutable is just a front for Microsoft?
I don’t know, I barely follow it, I just see pattern and point it out. Systemd is a systemic risk and a ripe target for sabotage/compromise of all distros
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Some random foolishly submitted a systemd patch and it got rejected after some back and forth. I think there’s not much more to it so far.
I read in another thread that it was merged
Yeah there was some back and forth. It got approved by someone from Microsoft then unapproved by Lennart Poettering. Basically temporary kerfluffle. There’s a writeup from yesterday, I think this: https://itsfoss.com/news/systemd-age-verification/
There’s now an unpopulated field to hold a birthdate but it’s not being used by anything. I guess that is sub-optimal though. This kind of thing if it’s to exist at all should be on individual user accounts, not anything system-wide.
then unapproved by Lennart Poettering
No, you’ve misunderstood, here is a quote from your own source:
A merge request asking for this change to be repealed was struck down by Lennart
It was a reversion that Poettering rejected, the PR stands.
Hmm ok, maybe you could write up a quick summary. Yes it’s possible that I mis-read it. I thought that LP had rejected the PR. Thanks.
UserDB does hold data connected to individual user accounts
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A pull request to revert it was posted, but wasn’t merged
Edit: The revert patch being denied is when the drama started
