Live data from Hacker News

Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard

lwn.net

1–10 of 51 posts

Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard

#2
There’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.

Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard

#3

There’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 and receiving death threats.

I see.

Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard

#4

There’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.

> It was to be expected that some members of the community would object; the actual response, however, has been shockingly hostile. Some of this has been fueled by a misinformation campaign that has targeted the systemd project and Taylor specifically, resulting in Taylor being doxxed and receiving death threats.

I think we can agree this is overboard

Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard

#5

There’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…

[dead]

Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard

#6
Setting aside the obvious fact that it's morally wrong to harrass people, something tells me these harrassers never do the same to developers working on closed source software for companies, having the net effect of harming the FOSS movement overall.

Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard

#7

There’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…

> 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.

maybe we should complain

Re: Objections to systemd age-attestation changes go overboard

#10
post #8

I think I'd feel the same way about race- or gender-attestation: none of your business. Let's not build the infrastructure into the operating system to selectively restrict civil rights by demographic.

Doesn't make sense to invoke civil rights and pretend there are no legislative limits. If a law is passed requiring age verification and the component can't attest, then its blocked. You must attest your age to vote for example.
Post reply on HN