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I Spoke To The Developer Of The Systemd Birth Date PR - YouTube (www.youtube.com)
submitted 5 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Some of you need to watch this video, and hang your head in shame.

Dylan Taylor has been receiving constant harassment, including threats to his life and safety, for actions done collectively by SystemD. The article by Sam Bent was explictly mentioned as part of the harassment campaign, and rightfully so.

I don't think enough people realize that this is catastrophically bad. It'll discourage people from becoming open source developers, it'll discourage people from using Linux, and it'll discourage legislators from taking the Linux community seriously.

If you ever wished ill upon another human being for complying with a relatively inconsequential law, you are better off never touching a computer again. The Linux community has collectively gone so far beyond what is acceptable here.

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[+] -8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

No, it literally just can't violate your privacy in any way. You have complete control over what, if anything, is placed in that field. No information about you can be gained or disclosed by virtue of the systemd change alone. You can think it's a bad change because it signals intent to follow a trend of supporting privacy-invading age verification, but you can't say this specific change in itself is privacy-invading.

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  • [–] 8 points 5 months ago* (2 children)

    You'd have complete control for now.

    Don't give them an inch.

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  • [–] 0 points 5 months ago

    Systemd is free software. The four essential freedoms necessitate that you have complete control forever.

    The only way that you could lose control is if your hardware manufacturer took away the ability for you to install your own operating system. But then the choice isn't going to be Windows or a Linux flavour personally blessed and tivoised by Lennart, it's going to be Windows or a brick.

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  • [–] -1 points 5 months ago

    I don't support the change. That's not my point. My point is that if we're going to argue the dev being threatened isn't a victim because he's actively harming privacy, we should be aware that the changes he proposed are not actually harming privacy at all.

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