However, 1) he is right, and 2) systemd's recent full-throated embrace of AI for programming make it clear that systemd really is in dire need of a fork. This project has gone full corporate insanity.
I was never one of the vocal anti-systemd folks (I think it's a huge improvement over SysV-style boot stuff), but the risk of this project was always the monoculture aspect. It's on approximately every Linux install, and it's going bad FAST.
Like... they could say they entirely ban agents usage in their repo but how likely is that someone that wants to use them just doesn't contribute because of the policy instead of hiding the usage?
IIRC it also effectively is the same policy as the Linux kernel.
I think this is the main reason why sane people are revolting against age groups, because mandatory KYC to use a locked-down Linux begins exactly with that: a small integer field in userdb.
Why would adding a field for a birthdate be "mass surveillance" anymore than having fields for email, full name, etc.?
“Information, once collected, will be misused.”
― Richard Stallman, How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?, 2013
I'm pretty sure most people already have their birthdate somewhere on their computer.
Then the only thing remaining is convincing a critical mass that development now happens over at `Jeffrey-Sardina/systemd` on GitHub.
This information is supposed to be passed by browsers to the sites you visit, so that they would implement age verification.
The systemd maintainers are among the first who have rushed to be compliant with the new law, even if compliance with abusive laws does not seem the right solution. In the so-called land-of-the-free, any law that commands people how to use their own property in circumstances when what they do cannot affect in any way other humans, should have been struck down as anti-constitutional. Laws might require Web sites to have some kind of age verification, but they may not decide what people can or cannot run on their own computers.
If the legislators were so concerned about age verification, there are easy and non-invasive solutions, like providing a way for each adult to obtain (without recording this transaction) a device that generates one-time codes for age verification (like they were used for online banking before the current fashion of using smartphone apps). Or if that is too expensive, some printed cards with a list of codes with temporary validity could be used, or other such methods that can verify age without providing user identity. Even such methods are worse than the right solution, which is to use parental controls instead of age verification at the sites.
The requirements of the law are incredibly stupid and for now they are trivial to circumvent, but the fear is that this is only the beginning. After the legislators see that they can force anyone to work to implement such ridiculous demands, they will demand more, eventually leading to privacy-restricting measures that will no longer be easy to circumvent.
[1] https://winbuzzer.com/2026/03/18/reddit-user-uncovers-meta-2...
They don't understand that it's still all on your computer and you can of course set the birthdate to whatever you want (or not set it at all).
tl;dr: it's a tinfoil hat fork
This piece of software is useless and cannot be employed anywhere and it’s essentially a futile exercise in virtue-signalling.
The problem is not technical, it’s political.
Go and make some actual political activism, don’t shit out useless software.
Ageless Linux is a similar project, but with a larger possible impact, as it has the potential to serve as a test case for overturning the law. By directly and flagrantly violating the law, it serves as a magnet for prosecution.
https://github.com/systemd/systemd/commit/71ad73569d9a5e2588...
Store birth date in systemd for age verification
You can put "Luke Skywalker" into the name fields, or even nothing at all, and there's no legal mandate that those fields be filled in or accurate.
The birthdate, however, has a legal mandate to be correct and checked for correctness by the software developers of the OS.
For example, if you visit facebook, tinder, or your bank and any of them store and communicate your actual age, the OS is mandated that it must update that field. Google's creepy analytics would also get involved here as if you put your age as a 99 year old, but google analytics show you are more likely to be 20->25 then the OS is supposed to update that age field with the better information from google.
And of course, facebook, google, and every other website can ask your browser for an age range and they are required to report it. Which makes this a symbiotic leaking of information.
All of this is about destroying anonymity on the internet. Today it's the age that needs to be perfect with communication efforts. Tomorrow it'll be the name. And of course, that will all be linked to every social media account.
Why is this bad? In many governments, it isn't. However, this presents a clear mechanism to track and monitor people who dissent with the government.
please tell me which law mandates that the birthdate that I put in a config file on my PC has to be correct?
The only commit is removing a user birthday field.
I am kind of hoping systemd succeeds in adding age validation. That will probably enable distros like Slackware to fly under the radar. My only worry is Firefox, Chrome will be changed to expect this systemd validation.
Folks have absolutely lost the plot on this one. These laws are stupid, this implementation is fine. Be mad at your legislators, being mad at some swedish guy won't help you any.
