The Engineer Who Tried to Put Age Verification Into Linux

[julesbl@mastodon.me.uk]

@mcv @Khrys
I do, it was done unilaterally without discussion.
Even if it was technically correct and maybe we need to look at this, a single person making the decision and forcing it into the code is not the way this should be done.

[aaribaud@mastodon.art]

@CypherSephiroth

Je ne crois pas avoir suggéré un rapport (encore moins spécifiquement avec une question "du qui et du pourquoi" dont j'ignorais qu'elle était posée), mais pour éviter toute confusion, j'edite mon post.

@Khrys

[mcv@friendica.opensocial.space]

@julesbl @Khrys

But no single person can force this into the code, right? Someone submitted a PR, and two committers approved it, one of them the creator of the project, as far as I understand. If that's not good enough, then what is?

Of course discussion about this important, but can we do that without panic and fear mongering?

[lienrag@mastodon.tedomum.net]

@sebsauvage

Que le libre fonctionne comme il est censé le faire ?
Un contributeur voit un problème (réel : les lois sur la vérification de l'âge, poussée par Meta), propose une solution (bonne ou mauvaise, à débattre) qui est acceptée par certains projets, ce qui déclenche une shitstorm (bon cet aspect là est moins "comme le libre est censé fonctionner" que "comme il fonctionne en vrai") et le BDL ferme le ticket en disant "c'est optionnel donc chacun reste libre".

@Khrys

[fazalmajid@social.vivaldi.net]

@Khrys what do you mean, tried? He succeeded, with the complicity of even bigger idiot Poettering.

[cyphersephiroth@piaille.fr]

@aaribaud À mon avis, cet article a comme sujet "Ce type décide d'ajouter une pseudo-fonctionnalité de vérification d'âge par collaboration. Dans quel but ?", pas "La législation de vérification d'âge ne respecte pas la limitation de collecte généralisée de données sur les citoyens, européens ou non."

[aaribaud@mastodon.art]

@CypherSephiroth Ton avis semble fondé. Mais en quoi le supposé angle de l'article sur les faits décrits interdit-il de faire des commentaires sur ces faits sous un autre angle ?

[julesbl@mastodon.me.uk]

@mcv @Khrys
If you think that is a way that things are discussed and implemented then I guess that is all fine and dandy, yes three people implementing a change which affects millions, perfectly fine

[guilg@piaille.fr]

@Khrys https://agelesslinux.org/ je préfère cette approche

[bayo@me.dm]

@Khrys Open source's entire threat model assumed contributors act toward user freedom. The surveillance state runs on volunteers: people who do the implementation work for free, out of genuine conviction, with no paper trail connecting them to the money that wrote the laws.

[kbm0@mastodon.social]

@onepict @Khrys Although I agree this is very bad, I don't approve of the doxxing.

[jeffmcneill@hachyderm.io]

@Khrys @pluralistic best argument for removing systemd (and I actually like systemd).

[cyphersephiroth@piaille.fr]

@aaribaud J'interdis rien du tout. Je dis que je vois pas le rapport entre les deux prémisses.

[irom@social.tchncs.de]

@julesbl @mcv
Another problem is that it starts implementing surveillance infrastructure without any pushback. Looking at many governments now I don't think that's advisable.

The law was lobbied into existence by Facebook/Meta and friends.

https://old.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/1rmhxk1/i_pulled_the_actual_bill_text_from_5_state_age/

https://tboteproject.com/

@Khrys

[mcv@friendica.opensocial.space]

@julesbl @Khrys

We've long depended on software maintained by fewer people than that.

The point is: anyone can contribute, committers review and approve. If that has always been a reasonable process, why not now? There are lots of open source projects where the creator of the project has more power than that, and we've always accepted it because we trust the maintainers, and when they break that trust, the community forks, which has also happened plenty of times.

But at the end of the day, it seems to me most people here are irrationally panicking about this. Isn't the field optional? Isn't what goes in the field entirely under the user's control?

By all means discuss this honestly, but I don't see anything here that justifies the hype and panic.

[julesbl@mastodon.me.uk]

@mcv @Khrys
If you think this is just like a bug, you are mistaken

[wrybane@wizzards.club]

@Khrys I don't get it, there are alread fields for location and real name and I never put any real info their either, this is no different, an arbitrary field people don't need to use... And systemd isn't going to verify it either, is it?

[bloognoo@retro.pizza]

@Khrys
'He read the law, took it at face value, and started writing code. The word for what that is sits somewhere past malice, something more insidious: an engineer who treats compliance as engineering, who sees a legal requirement the way he sees a technical specification, and will implement whatever the spec says regardless of who wrote the spec or why.'

Zealot. The word is Zealot. His god spoke and he responded.

[peterkratz@chaos.social]

@Khrys Your linux bootloader in 2026: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3gFn5s6-iI ... and then you have to press ALT+X to continue.

[kerplunk@mastodon.scot]

@Khrys

The lasting damage was knowing it could happen at all: that a single contributor with no stated organizational backing could submit compliance infrastructure for surveillance law directly into the software that boots your computer, get it merged by two Microsoft employees, and have the creator of systemd personally block the removal.

NO, THE LASTING DAMAGE IS ACCEPTING INTRODUCTION AND USAGE OF OF SYSTEMD.

Paid for by IBM and later Microsoft to dominate (destroy) Linux