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They are.

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.

IMO, the benefits aren't from getting mass adoption of this fork, but actually the opposite, at least ostensibly, because if it were to become "the" systemd, it would then face scrutiny and potential legal threat. This way, the maintainers can be in compliance, the legislators (who if there are any paying attention) can be superficially satisfied, while people can still avoid the antipattern. It's the "brown paper bag" speech from the Wire, basically

There is a stupid new California law, which requires that all operating systems must demand the age of any user, and then the OS must implement an API through which any application can ask which is the age of the current user.

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.

It goes nowhere of course, but people seem to think that the age verification laws that are currently being drafted everywhere somehow make this the obvious next step.

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

Wow. Literally right next to the birthday field, which is apparently a gateway to mass surveillance, is physical location, which is apparently not?

Context/related submission:

Store birth date in systemd for age verification

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47436240

Because it's the first step.

“Information, once collected, will be misused.”

― Richard Stallman, How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?, 2013

It doesn't, and it's optional.

The existence of the user birthday field is mass surveillance, but the GECOS field, which contains your full name and street address, and the username, which often contains parts of your name and is mandatory, somehow are not. Full access to your home directory, which includes all of your passwords and usernames and confidential data, also somehow is not an invasion of privacy.

But shitting out useless software is what we do here!

This particular project is making a small political point, that this attempt at regulation of FOSS is useless and easily circumvented. The impact is proportional to the effort (small) but it’s not useless any more than running an ad would be.

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.

As I get older I get more and more annoyed reading useless comments like yours.

Because the law requires the operating system to take proactive measures to ensure the age is correct.

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.

Because this is a reactionary political statement and not a well thought out privacy project

I'm not sure I'm parsing what you're writing correctly. What?

They added an optional date of birth field to a user directory. Are you mad at LDAP for contributing to the surveillance state?

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.