- Fork a project that you have a problem with;
- Write a strong worded manifesto;
- Revel in those sweet sweet internet clicks;
- Try to gather a team of seasoned engineers to keep and evolve the project;
- Most likely fail, look for the next controversy, repeat.
Someone Forked Systemd to Strip Out Its Age Verification Support
Submitted 3 weeks ago by themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com to technology@lemmy.world
https://itsfoss.com/news/systemd-fork-strips-out-age-verification/
Comments
Quazatron@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
fluxx@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
Yes, but what’s wrong with this? If you gather engineers that are capable to maintain it - what is the downside? Systemd could always have used a bit of competition, I think most of us can agree. Most of the forks of systemd will fail, but most of all projects fail after some time. I don’t think this situation will harm systemd ultimately and it shouldn’t.
Quazatron@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There’s nothing wrong with forking a project, IF you can and intend to maintain it – hell, that’s the whole basis of FOSS.
Forking it to make a point with no intention to maintaining it is just an easy way to gather clicks and stir drama.
IMHO the effort is better spent fighting the politicians that are shoving this down our throats, or should we fork all the tech that gets affected by bad political decisions?
ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 3 weeks ago
Try to gather a team of seasoned engineers to keep and evolve the project;
What is there to evolve? Just keep it up to date with the mainstream project while applying this one patch. This is as useful as the signatures that prohibit use of comments to train LLMs.
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
What is there to evolve? Just keep it up to date with the mainstream project while applying this one patch. This is as useful as the signatures that prohibit use of comments to train LLMs.
That sounds super easy on paper. In practice nobody is going to do this long-term.
The kind of people who get massively upset about this are not the kind of people that are going to make a long term commitment to actually doing anything. Forking systemd is performative activism, that’s it.
Quazatron@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Forking projects to put a different coat of paint on them is just silly. It’s still the same project, it’s just got your sticker on it now. You still dependent on upstream decisions. If things change too much for your liking, you have a growing patch management issue on your hands, and that’s not fun. But hey, you’re free to do it, that’s the beauty of FOSS.
Reminds me of the Linux distros that just fork Debian, stick a new theme and logo, create a website and voilá. Nah, mate, it’s still Debian.
Dathknight@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
This is bs …
Instead of fighting the laws and the people behind it, ‘we’ (as in ‘the community’) infight about some minor commit?
If the reason is data privacy, why not also remove ‘realName’, ‘emailAdress’ and ‘location’? 🙄
Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
As far as I can tell the Name Email and location are all voluntarily provided by the user.
This is something that will be used whether you want it to or not (that makes it invasive) because of the laws around it (of course depending on where you are).
Having fields I can ignore as a user isn’t the same as this guided attempt by lawmakers to eventually get you to give ID and retina scans just to use a computer.
This is step 1. That is why people are freaking out about it.
And I know systemd isn’t doing this out of spite, but I do wish the scene would stand up for the user more… Just say no California or whatever other shit place decides to enact that and boom problem solved. Not their fault or problem anymore.
FauxLiving@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
As far as I can tell the Name Email and location are all voluntarily provided by the user.
So is birthDate.
This is something that will be used whether you want it to or not (that makes it invasive) because of the laws around it (of course depending on where you are).
How? First and most importantly, systemd doesn’t do anything to enforce, require or verify the field.
Second, I control what is installed on my PC, that’s the ENTIRE POINT of using a FOSS OS. The FREEDOM to install whatever I want, or not. If there is an application that is using that field to enforce some bs law, then I simply won’t install it.
This isn’t Windows, there isn’t a Microsoft to force you to install software updates that you don’t want. You’re FREE to not install software that does things that you don’t like. This includes any hypothetical future software that would require this field or validate this field.
themachinestops@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I think these laws will be similar to prohibition. They will try for a while, but then realize they can’t succeed. Governments can’t even handle cyber security, how will they handle this?
nuxi@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They should also remove the phone number prompt that UNIX has had since before systemd even existed. Your phobe number is an optional part of the GECOS field and has been there for a very long time without anyone freaking out like this.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
It’s a slippery slope, I can’t imagine organizations won’t want more and more control over the public.
metakrakalaka@lemmychan.org 2 weeks ago
Instead of fighting the laws and the people behind it
We can’t use the system to change the system.
yardratianSoma@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
None of the id fields in the systemd db are required to be filled. This is useless. Simply don’t put any personal info in, and bam, you’re already liberated, from laws that aren’t even in effect yet!
GreatBlueHeron@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
This is perfectly logical and I agree. Except that this controversy has prompted me to go learn about Lennart Poettering. I’ve been using systemd forever and I like it - I like journald and remote journald, I like networkd, I even deleted cron off my systems and use systemd timers exclusively. I knew there was some controversy about Lennart, but I didn’t really care. Now that I’ve read a bit about his background and, maybe more importantly, his new company - I don’t have a good feeling for the future of systemd.
silverneedle@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Finally someone who’s read into the issue
silverneedle@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Will you still say that when they implement ID checking functionality?
RIotingPacifist@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Will you still say that when aliens from the 19th Dimension verify your age rectally?
bdonvr@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
Obviously not, that would be something very very different than what they’ve done.
yardratianSoma@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
when that happens, I’ll build my own ISO with that part stripped out, or just move away from systemd
Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Yupp 100% optional.
for now
BlackLaZoR@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
There’s no age verification in systemd. That field doesn’t verify anything
iglou@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
But my clickbait!
reksas@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
well, obviously. that happens on some external service. There shouldnt be any support or ways to connect to such services.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Not yet, it doesn’t. We’ll see how far we go down this hole.
9tr6gyp3@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Good luck maintaining it
org@lemmy.org 3 weeks ago
They’ll just keep forkin’ and removing that field haha
bruhduh@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Its forkin’ time
bdonvr@thelemmy.club 3 weeks ago
Honestly it’s such a minor change, I’m pretty sure they could just grab all the upstream patches in the future and not do anything and it’ll be fine.
Tarambor@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Lots of tin foil hat wearing morons making mountains out of molehills. All that happened is a DOB field was put in so people can add their DOB IF THEY CHOOSE TO. It is not mandatory, you can leave the field blank.
Fjdybank@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
Hard disagree. This represents the pot getting turned up on the frog.
I acknowledge you are factually correct. However, once this field exists, it enables later reference and/or mandatory dependencies.
There is no positive use case , but lots of possibly negative use cases. For that reason, it shouldn’t exist.
cmhe@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You do know that this is a slippery slope argument, right?
You would have to demonstrate that there is an intention there to require third party services to validate the age of users using Linux… Or that there is an intention to do so by systemd and the broader open source developers.
I don’t think it will be easily possible to lock out every Linux system from the internet that doesn’t implement some kind of hardware DRM mechanism to make sure that the user cannot just change the date of birth with root permissions.
iglou@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Do you really draw the line at a date of birth field, when every linux system has fields for full name and address for every user account?
goldman60@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I’m not really sure you can argue birthdate is the thin edge of the spear when the standard Linux user database already had fields for location, email, phone number, and real name. None of which have been used for anything up to this point, and systemd-homed is not as widely used.
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
However, once this field exists, it enables later reference and/or mandatory dependencies
Yeah, this is a devious plan that has been going on for years, when they added the
realNamefield!dubyakay@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
We are more than mere frogs in a pot though. We have made note of this. We outraged. We argued and counter argued. We will not forget so easily, no matter the view point on it.
If nothing comes of it, some of us can say “I’ve told you…”
If the next step gets implemented and the field becomes mandatory, some of us can say “See!! Froggies”
If it becomes mandatory and a further implementation also adds the framework to submit the data to some idp service, then we can get the pitchforks out.
zbyte64@awful.systems 2 weeks ago
This is why we should lock down the OS to prevent people from creating databases of people. There are so many applications out there asking for people’s DOB and that’s because we let people just install whatever app they want.
Tarambor@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
So why do you not have any problem with the RealName and Email fields in systemd?
UltraBlack@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
How do commercial distros prevent getting blocked if not through this?
9488fcea02a9@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
FUCK THERE IS A WHOLE LOT OF STUPID USING LINUX
we wanted the year of the linux desktop… well the first raft of windows refugees seem to be a bunch of these privacy types who think they’re now a bunch of 1337 h4x0rs because they figured out how to get an nvidia driver working on mint… they have more paranoia than actual knowledge, and their only contribution to the community is sowing disseny, and shouting about something as trivial as an optional data field.
The debian subreddit is actually DOWNVOTING an actual debian developer when they tried to explain the situation
If i put on my tin foil hat, i’d say these people are being deliberately influenced to sow chaos in foss communities
Katana314@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
“C’mon, guys, they’re just ARMING the untrained soldiers. They’re not even sending them to your neighborhoods!”
tabular@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I can see it’s just an optional text field but the ick isn’t optional. It’s leaning towards submission in comparison to resistance. I’m hoping such laws get repealed, rather than spread.
vinyl@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Liberated systemd is a fork of mainline systemd started by Jeffrey Seathrún Sardina, a machine learning/AI researcher
I already have qualms about that.
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Call me dreamy-eyed, but the reference to “machine learning” might mean this person has respect for what the technology is and has been for decades before the chatbot flood
vinyl@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
yea but as to how this tech seems to me rn, leaves a really bad taste in my mouth.
MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Lots did. There are about a dotzend forks for this explicit purpose.
db2@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
And in a month none will be active at all.
rizzothesmall@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
- Optional dob field added to distro
- Stupid people freak tf out
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
In an ideal world, even that optional DOB field would have been blocked. Your first instinct on seeing techbros wanting to surveil us shouldn’t be “how we can comply”, but “how can I fight it”.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
You give a millimeter and the powers that be will take a whole kilometer.
No compliance.
Even something as “small” as this needs to be met with prejudice.
sudoer777@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Actually they’ll take a mile because its bigger and they hate the metric system also
Inucune@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Reject the age verification.
Charlxmagne@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Okay I’ve said this so many times but (open source) code is speech and thus protected by free speech laws. Also idk if anyone’s noticed but it’s pretty obvious ID verification is for mass surveillance and obbo purposes. Now why would this apply to software that we already know doesn’t spy on you? Until now, proprietary software and big tech platforms already spied on you, but it could - to an extent be pseudonymised. This isn’t about spying on people, they already do that, it’s about removing pseudonymisation - instead of your data being stored under: User #2044820 it’ll be your full govt name and address leaving no room for doubt or plausible deniability.
It is by every metric, useless to provide ID verification for software that collects no data, at best it would just give them a better idea of the demographic. Also it’s literally open source, the GPL prohibits disallowing people from forking/editing it and it prohibits restrictions on the way in which it can be edited, which is legally binding.
Digit@lemmy.wtf 2 weeks ago
Far many more than someone.
webkitten@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
They literally just added a field in the JSON schema to support a birth date field which is completely optional and has no relevance on the project. People are so dumb.
Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Well yeah, right now it is optional.
What about when the law passes that says it’s required on a federal level (yes I’m talking about USA). They added this one in pretty quick, do you think they would fold and be like “nah we stand for the users!”
Or do you think they will build on what is already being added here?
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This is why it’s so important to ensure that the USA continues its slide to irrevelance.
webkitten@piefed.social 2 weeks ago
If a law passes and you’re running your IT infrastructure and not enforcing it then you have bigger problems.
coolmojo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Not to mention that removing that field won’t make you adult. Without it you can either not go to certain websites or download applications from stores like Flathub or the system assumes that you are a toddler and only let you visit baby tv.
reksas@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
if there is no malicious intent in adding this, they really should learn to read the room.
cley_faye@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The biggest defense for this I see is:
- it’s not bad now
- it’s not mandatory
- it will remain unused like the other fields that were previously there
- you can put anything in it
Then, tell me, why bother adding this in the first place, exactly at the time governments are looking toward full control of everybody’s computers? If it’s that innocent and useless, either someone really likes throwing shit up, or it won’t stop there.
And given the slate of other things that “didn’t stop there” in the past few years, you know, it cost nothing to be cautious. Especially if it’s “so useless you won’t even notice it’s there” after all.
Samsy@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I’m not into this, but is it the nerd version of releasing forks and torches?
sudoer777@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
More like forks and patches
Blackmist@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
Feels like something systemd can solve with a compile time flag. Either have it on or off depending on if you want to legally sell it in those areas or not and away you go.
spicehoarder@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Give an inch they’ll take a mile.I see your instance is UK, so I assume you don’t understand how utterly insane US lawmakers are right now.
Fmstrat@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
After all, any and all age checks we have nowadays are a black box anyways
This is the only part I disagree with. Age verification is typically done via services like ID.me, Lexis Nexus, etc which do it via identity verification with documentation. The alternative method that most social sites have gone with is age prediction from a face scan, of which providers are more than happy to tout how they do it as differentiators. For the latter, there are even FOSS options.
HereIAm@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I think what they mean is, with a black box we know the input, documents, and output, yes you can buy beer, but we don’t know the internals. How and for how long is the data stored, who is it shared with, who has access to it, how much meta data can they pull together to build a profile on you and so on.
albert_inkman@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
The DOB field is different from name and address because it is a fixed attribute that never changes. Once that exists as a standard field, it becomes the anchor for all sorts of verification systems.
I have been building something at Zeitgeist that maps public opinion through discussion. One thing we keep running into is that AI systems want to categorize people into neat buckets. They will say “users under 18” vs “over 18” and move on. But real human disagreement does not work that way. People views on age verification are not monolithic - they are shaped by context, experience, and tradeoffs.
We are seeing this play out everywhere now. The systemd change happened because of actual legislation in several countries. It is not theoretical anymore. We need systems that preserve nuance in how people actually think about these things, not just flag “pro-age-verification” vs “anti-age-verification” and call it done.
nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I didn’t realize age verification had been put in yet?
maplesaga@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I am aware of the Orwellian privacy implication, but how do we deal with bots, now that AI is rampant?
Something like hashcash, or what?
tabular@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I’d like to try an alternative to SystemD but I don’t know quite enough to filter the list of OS options for a gaming PC. I have Mint on desktop (modern GPU) with and OpenSUSE 14 on a server.
favoredponcho@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Called it
sem@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Not sure what is worse:
- The political fight re: should the OS store your age at all. (Linux will be illegal because they didn’t bend).
- The political fight re: should OSes be required to verify your age / identity?
To me, fighting at step 1 has the advantage of keeping the infrastructure from getting built, and the disadvantage of people saying “well, actually, there’s nothing concerning or new here.”
Fighting at step 2 has the advantage of being a clearer threat, but a disadvantage since the prior infrastructure has been built, society has adapted it, and politicians say “think of the children.”
I feel like it is more strategic to fight at every step.
Blemgo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I find that move extremely funny, since it’s purely made for sensationalism and nothing else. I mean, if you hate how systems implemented age verification, then why don’t you remove its identity verification too, i.e. also optional fields for stuff like your address an e-mail that most users don’t even fill out.
There is no mechanism verifying what birth date you type in - you can type whatever date you want and systems doesn’t care.
I’d say no matter where you stand with age verification, this is the best solution to handle the situation. After all, any and all age checks we have nowadays are a black box anyways. There is no real knowing how other systems are checking ages, and there is AFAIK no real government mandated rules on how it is verified. They could make you scan your ID’s front, back, nuclear composition and dietary preferences and give you a result that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike a proper age verification procedure.
If the government wants to introduce age verification, they have to do it themselves - build an API that handles the age verification, similar to how the digital ID in Germany works, as an example. If they want proper age verification, they also have to take the blame themselves if things go wrong.
ada@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
My line in the sand is when a distro/app starts enforcing entry of birth date data. Having a database field to store it, or even an optional prompt for it isn’t the point where I bin it.
belazor@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
This is the most sane take I’ve read in this entire debacle. Between arguing the semantics of attestation vs verification and whether we need five hundred forks and PRs, I’m glad to read this.
The biggest mistake the original PR did was not make it more clear it’s not directly because of the laws themselves, it’s to support higher level systems that may want to or need to comply. Systemd is no more complying with any present or future laws than a keyboard manufacturer is violating the law if the user uses it to type racially motivated hate speech.
Bloefz@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I would but I’ve always been opposed to systemd anyway.
But for me it’s a slippery slope I don’t think we should even get on.
magic_smoke@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Distros will push a dob of 1970-1-1, marks my fucking words.
Blemgo@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That is a valid point. Of course it still would be rather anonymised, but it could always be a ‘frog in the pot’ type situation, where most drastic changes are introduced very slowly. My main concern at the end of the day is how much info will be required to be given to services and how much data will be actually stored. If it’s anonymised, then I don’t see much of a threat. If a service requires me to fully identify for an age check, that’s an entirely different thing, especially considering the last of Discord’s data leaks.
Skankhunt420@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
You know I remember when age verification was a thing on porn sites.
No big deal, I was like 12 and could easily say “yupp, I was born April 20th, 1969” and there was no problem.
Now, in several states that has escalated to you showing your ID.
Do you think this is the end game? Systemd made it clear with this move that any kind of US law passed will be able to be honored by their architecture. They didn’t take a stand that you would expect from pretty much the entire Linux community as a whole.
And see the funny part is where you talk about “if the government wants age verification they have to do it themselves” they pretty much do in USA its called your social security number. Banks, auto dealerships, landlords etc use it all the time and its very effective.
By not taking a strong stance against what is happening here you are paving the road brick by brick to having to provide full on SSN and very plausibly retina scans or something similar in the not so distant future before you can even login to your computer or phone.
I don’t understand, how people here are missing that. Fuck we are on Lemmy because we see how shit worked with things like reddit and others. Things always escalate when control and greed are the primary motivators.
This will escalate. And when it does I want you to remember that people were rightfully making a HUGE FUCKING DEAL about when systemd started doing this because by then you will be able to see clearly how it led to whatever surveillance wet dream they are absolutely going to force on us. It will be clear, and this will be step 1 .
Blemgo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I don’t think that systemd is really bending the knee too hard on this one. Actually, I think this move is actually a great way to render any sort of age verification, when using systemd, inert. Because, let’s think about it: it’s an optional field, in a JSON file that NEEDS to be editable at all times. If a distro decides to implement any serious age verification, it will have to store the data, namely the date of birth, somewhere. The /home folder would be wrong, as the user could edit that at all times. The userdb on the other hand can be restricted, meaning that the user can only edit it with user privileges. So if a government questions the seriousness of this verification method, distros can just claim that it is the administrative duty of the parent to prevent their children accessing things they shouldn’t, and that the Linux kernel itself provides the proper tool to do it without constant supervision. Yet systemd cannot enforce any stricter rules because service users, especially root, are not real people and thus cannot have any age verification. The only solution would be to tie these accounts to a person. This would cause an outrage at companies, considering that this role would most likely be the CEO or CIO, and if that device is stolen their identity could be linked to a crime, and I doubt any police station would bother trying to retrieve that laptop.
So this change will most likely be the maximum systemd can do without breaking distros for corporations, while at the same time allow classic Linux users, who most likely give themselves admin rights, a way to render any verification null and void by editing this optional field on their own.
fluxx@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
I agree with all that you’ve said. But why add it now? Why haven’t they added it a long time ago? Or if now they remembered, why not other extra optional fields that some people might want, like gender, sex, any other field? Oh, it would be too political? I see…
Blemgo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I mean, the introduction of the date of birth field is obviously done to make it easy for distros to comply with age verification by simply saving the birth date and nothing else.
As for the other fields: what use would it have to have such info at OS level? What application would use these fields and how? I mean, some fields, like the ‘location’ one, already are pretty useless, as, for example, the ‘location’ field doesn’t seem to bhave any firm consensus on how it should be formatted. Even the documentation lists both “Berlin, Germany” as well as “Basement, Room 3a” as valid values.
So I doubt not introducing such fields has any sort of political agenda to it, but just raises the question on why such fields would be useful to begin with.
wholookshere@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
you mean like adding it to a bunch of optional details already?
ieGod@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
Yup. All this crying about the field is a big nothing burger.
zr0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
This. And forking is easy. Maintaining a big piece of software is not. This is why every popular repo has hundreds of forks, but non of them are active or in sync with upstream.