So they added a date of birth field. Not technically doing anything wrong but a concerning direction morally. If it wasn't for the fash / authoritarian bullshit in the world that field wouldn't be a problem.

However, the question is how should the Linux community respond. Rather than grabbing pitch forks we should do what the Linux community does best. Support the alternatives, be it a fork or a replacement stack.

I'm watching for what lands and becomes popular. It seems inevitable that Devs in countries that aren't forcing ID checks will build what we need. I hope to see either a fork of systemd free from redhat influence (always suspicious of large corps), or a true set of alternatives that can realistically replace the systemd stack.

The community will drive the change. Put down your pitch forks, pick up your keyboard yourself, or just support the good Devs instead.

I expect someone will just make a systemd patcher package that removes the field and provides clean error handling for anything that tries to use it.