Software changes for compliance with age-verification laws are being pushed a bit everywhere in Linux-development; for example:
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In Systemd, already merged.
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In xdg.desktop.portal (a portal frontend service for Flatpak and other desktop containment frameworks), still open.
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In Arch Linux, still open.
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In Freedesktop.org, still open.
It’s interesting that it’s the same small group of people behind these pull requests, and that discussion threads in them have been locked owing to a great amount of negative criticisms.
They say “we have to comply with the law”. Which also means that if “the law” in the future will require proper verification, handling to 3rd-parties, or whatnot, then they will comply.
Well, it’s their right to. They don’t owe anything to anyone, and are under no obligation to report to users or to the community, nor to pay heed to anybody’s wishes.
If things proceed in this direction, we users may at some point have to choose between privacy-friendly Linux distributions or legal Linux distributions. People who, like me, are worried, need to start thinking about concrete actions to take before it’s too late: where to develop such distros? which channels to download and distribute them from? And so on. (And of course, more generally we need to write and protest to politicians, organize protest marches, go on strike, refuse to comply…)
It’s good to remind to those who keep on repeating the words “legal” and “illegal” that for example Nelson Mandela was, technically speaking, a criminal who did and promoted illegal activity. This happens when laws become immoral.
Don’t comply in advance, that’s what I say. Unfortunately, that’s what systemd is doing, and what archinstall, xdg-desktop-portal, and Freedesktop.org are on the verge of doing.
For the vast majority of people who don’t live in California, including myself, California law can go fly a kite.
Doesn’t the law expect “Operating Systems” to do this? I feel like everyone should point fingers and lean on bureaucracy. Systemd should say “well don’t look at us, we’re not an operating system, we’re just an init and services system”, and Linux says “well we’re just a kernel, usermode does whatever it wants”, and Debian says “well we’re just a distro, we didn’t write any of the packages we just stick them together.”
If the tech illiterate idiots who wrote the poorly thought out law can’t figure out who to ask, maybe they’ll do their due diligence next time.
This would be the funniest reality.
Holy fuck, that’s a great solution!
It’s all one fucking guy! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS BOOTLICKER DOING?!
Dylan M. Taylor
dylanmtaylorthis fucker
Here he is talking about it:
Inside the Systemd Age Verification Debate: Developer Responds to Criticism https://itsfoss.com/dylan-taylor-systemd-controversy/
He sorta sums up by saying, “A common misconception about this change is that it introduces “age verification” to Linux. It doesn’t. None of the PRs I submitted involve ID checks, facial recognition, or third-party verification services. You can enter any value, including January 1st, 1900.”
Still fucking annoying though.
Hes saying :
I love this slope, if only it was more slippery. Here, let me dump a bucket of lube on there.
If we’re going to blame one person, Zuckerberg comes to mind.
Zuckerberg didn’t fucking write the actual piece of shit making it real, this fucker, Dylan M Taylor did, and fuck him.
Zuckerberg paid for the law that Dylan is reacting to.
Zuckerberg is ultra rich with sociopathic tendencies and poor impulse control.
This other guy is probably just trying to get by.
There are two sides: the Epstein class, and the rest of us.
The Epstein class rely on distracting us from that truth, to keep their influence.
Come to think of it, Zuck, is that you?
This other guy is probably just trying to get by.
explain how jamming this shit in ASAP is “trying to get by”.
Well, I’m not happy with that, either.
But I’ll save my rage for Zuckerberg, not at some FOSS developer.
There’s billionaires actively increasing my work hours, lowering my pay, stripping my government services, and some of them part of a kidnapping and rape operation targeting my kids.
Ill be happy to remind Dylan whose side they should be on, but my rage is for Zuck the fuck.
Edit: I’m done here. My option on jackbooted authoritarians carrying guns doesn’t belong in a public web profile, today, no matter how anonymous.
Maybe I’ll share my thoughts at their trials, someday. Or through some other method of helping them reveal their faces.
I can synpathize with the devs as they are simply taking the minimal steps they can. To avoid being targeted by these failing states. But yeah, what’s this guys story. Someone suddenly contributing so narrowly to such a broad slate of projects isn’t common.
No, I disagree.
It is not one person’s doing. That is the deflection.
I will not downplay the effect of this by saying they are the only one involved. Every maintainer so far that has locked or approved any changes that they did are equally at fault here. In fact, one of those linked articles even stated that the primary reason they locked it is because they didn’t like the amount of coverage it got. This is a failure on the community as a whole, not the individual.
edit for clarification: By failure, I’m talking more on projects that are humoring it and actually going through with it without considering the potential side effects of just blanket applying that.
Currently considering that a handful of these are locked or posted as we don’t know if we’re going to be doing this yet, I haven’t quite put them in that same sector yet, but it’s rapidly approaching it.
I don’t get why gnu/linux devs are even involved in this. They aren’t serving the content, how are they liable?
Already a thing. We can choose between Ubuntu, who restrict your freedom and privacy in the Snap store, and have experimented with weird things like forward your desktop search to the internet or integrate Amazon into your desktop. Or you can pick a different distro. Some have telemetry, some ask you for your permission and even patch user software so it doesn’t send telemetry per default. Some were kinda illegal and distributed libcss2.
