No, they don't! Entitled people doing opinion psyops normalizing overreach is the problem. We are private citizens. Public officers need to be transparent! Not the other way around.
Are systemd developers public officers in your mind?
Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard
31–40 of 51 posts
Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard
#32> > I understood that the change was not going to be popular, but I was expecting civil discourse and a level-headed response.
Not to give credit to the antisocial mob, but it would be a lot easier to take the maintainers' side here if the discourse was started before the change was merged into production.
It's incredibly ironic that the LWN article praises Jeremy Soller for having reasonable objections against the change but fails to mention that systemd maintainers locked the issue* when he tried to raise his objections (and implicitly called them spam). I really fail to see how anyone could expect civil discourse given these circumstances.
* In an incredibly pathetic way too - the systemd maintainer responded to his comment, then immediately locked the issue without even waiting to see what Soller would write in return.
Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard
#33There’s nothing “overboard” about pushing back on unnecessary political meddling. The operating system does not need to know your date of birth (or identity! Looking at you Micro$oft) in order to manage your hardware and software. The need to know is zero, and given the 1st Amendment I question that any political entity has the legitimate authority to compel one to alter software, open source or otherwise.
The operating system does not need to know your full name, email and location in order to manage your hardware and software, yet systemd has had optional fields for those for years and nobody complained. They added an extra optional field for the date of birth. > Some of this has been fueled by a misinformation campaign that has targeted the systemd project and Taylor specifically, resulting in Taylor being doxxed an…
> systemd has had optional fields for those for years and nobody complained.
GECOS in 1962, and UNIX in '70s had them as well, and nobody threatened to kill their creators.
Having a field in a database is not equal to mandatory data collection. Let me remind of data that /etc/passwd allows to store on even an OS without systemd:
- User's full name (or application name, if the account is for a program)
- Building and room number or contact person
- Office telephone number
- Home telephone number
- Any other contact information (pager number, fax, external e-mail address, etc.)
Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard
#34There’s nothing “overboard” about pushing back on unnecessary political meddling. The operating system does not need to know your date of birth (or identity! Looking at you Micro$oft) in order to manage your hardware and software. The need to know is zero, and given the 1st Amendment I question that any political entity has the legitimate authority to compel one to alter software, open source or otherwise.
I think the "overboard" part is that the developer was doxxed and received death threats.
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Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard
#35Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard
#36Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard
#37> > I understood that the change was not going to be popular, but I was expecting civil discourse and a level-headed response. Not to give credit to the antisocial mob, but it would be a lot easier to take the maintainers' side here if the discourse was started before the change was merged into production. It's incredibly ironic that the LWN article praises Jeremy Soller for having reasonable objections against the c…
This is classic bad online-forum-moderator behavior, that you see in all sorts of online chat and message board spaces where there's a moderator who has the power to lock threads at all. Obviously, the systemd maintainers have no obligation to adhere to any particular moderation policy on their org's github issues, but they definitely deserve mockery for this.
Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard
#38> > I understood that the change was not going to be popular, but I was expecting civil discourse and a level-headed response. Not to give credit to the antisocial mob, but it would be a lot easier to take the maintainers' side here if the discourse was started before the change was merged into production. It's incredibly ironic that the LWN article praises Jeremy Soller for having reasonable objections against the c…
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Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
unfortunately the article does not mention who is responsible for the alleged misinformation campaign
I doubt it has been top-down coordinated. So what do you expect the article to say?
Then “campaign” was not the correct word to describe it. It's like calling any group of people an “organization”.
Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard
#40> > I understood that the change was not going to be popular, but I was expecting civil discourse and a level-headed response. Not to give credit to the antisocial mob, but it would be a lot easier to take the maintainers' side here if the discourse was started before the change was merged into production. It's incredibly ironic that the LWN article praises Jeremy Soller for having reasonable objections against the c…
This is classic bad online-forum-moderator behavior, that you see in all sorts of online chat and message board spaces where there's a moderator who has the power to lock threads at all. Obviously, the systemd maintainers have no obligation to adhere to any particular moderation policy on their org's github issues, but they definitely deserve mockery for this.
Have you ever been on the moderator side of this? There's ultimately no perfectly polite and collegial way to say "we've heard your concerns, but this is our decision and it's not subject to your review". Being more direct about it would only have inflamed the situation further.