I’ve only absorbed bits and pieces of the story, but allegedly there’s an age verification push happening on Linux? What’s the full story here?
If I was cynical - which I absolutely am - I’d say maybe it’s a total nothingburger that’s being overplayed as a distraction from something else?
well, poettering’s new company amutable is pretty suspicious in its intentions
This was a good write-up of what’s going on: https://www.sambent.com/the-engineer-who-tried-to-put-age-verification-into-linux-5/
This is a hitpiece, imo completely the wrong tone to have this discussion in.
A bunch of US states (and other western countries) are flirting with, passing or have already passed laws saying operating systems must implement “age verification” or the companies that make the Linux distros will be liable for infringement. This, naturally, makes many of the companies involved (many of which are backed and funded by large, powerful tech companies) that make Linux distros really eager to implement age verification. Meanwhile, the users and maintainers of Linux itself, the systems that make up Linux, and even the maintainers and contributors to many Linux distros, who are real human people and not faceless corporations that think following unjustified laws is justified, think this is fucking garbage, and are telling the corpo scum to go fuck themselves with rusty knives. This is entirely appropriate and reasonable in this case.
Hope that helps explain what’s going on.
Looks like Microsoft funds and maintains systemd so they can exert control over all the Linux bistros and force this shit in
Do you believe Microslop funds and maintains systemd because Lennart Poettering works there, or is there more to it than that?
If it’s just that Poettering works there, you may be interested to know that he left in January this year.
Lennart Poettering left Microsoft, not systemd
And they left for PR reasons, to literally appear not evil and to “build trust”
I’ve never followed the people or the politics - I just started using systemd when it appeared in whatever disto I was using at the time and liked it. I’m trying to catch up now because I have reservations about using projects that incorporate AI (and I’m learning this may be impossible to avoid) and I most certainly won’t use anything that implements age verification. (The irony of typing this on a device that has age verification via my credit card hurts)
I accept that Microsoft had significant influence over systemd when Poettering worked there, but I don’t understand how they do now.
I also understand that Poettering likes Windows, and wants to make Linux more like Windows. That’s not the same as Microsoft controlling systemd.
Are you saying that Amutable is just a front for Microsoft?
Redditor going full reddit over a law that they haven’t read and a pull request they barely understand.
They added a field and everyone is losing their minds because systemd has already a bad reputation for doing too much and being too powerful and also because everyone hate age verification so they don’t want it in their free OS so it crystalize the hate. There was something about AI too if I recall. I don’t want US law to impact international FOSS and I don’t want any kind of identity or age verification inside my OS so I understand and share the rage. But this change was very much not a big or impactful thing. Please correct me if I’m wrong, I’m 70% confident on the issue.
The AI was the slopfork written by one of the hyperventilating redditors.
You pretty right except the California law that the systemd change was in response to doesn’t do verification it just returns whatever age bracket is stored.
The issue is that some idiot suddenly appeared on the systemd repo to immediately push a change that adds the posibility of logging the user’s age into systemd. The community complained and explained that nobody wanted that change, and yet this idiot pushed through, ignored the feedback, and ended up getting the pull request merged. Not only that, but the discussion thread was locked to prevent criticism, and the merge was done by Microsoft employees. After the merge, someone tried to undo the change, and the effort was blocked by a Microsoft employee.
Despite the excuses, Systemd is not an OS, and it doesn’t even need to comply with any age verification laws. The fact that someone went and implemented a deeply unpopular change into a system that shouldn’t even deal with that info and that is used by most Linux distros, just to aid a surveillance government in implementing better surveillance on the entire world’s users is what lead to the pushback.
Additionally, Lennart Poettering used Claude to review the pull request, and has been using it for developing SystemD. I’m not gonna go too deep into that, but trust me, it’s really bad.
Double additionally, Lennart Poettering also defended not properly securing this sensitive data, because that would be too bothersome for him.
I guess I stop using systemd or what now
Doesnt Lennart Poettering work for microsoft now?
https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/29/lennart_poettering_quits_microsoft/
Oh he quit. Thats cool.
He quit because of optics (understandably, Linux people didn’t like a Microsoft employee making software that was in almost every distro), but he still works with Microsoft and other Microsoft employees
thats cool until you find out the reason for that is he founded a company that’s goal is to turn desktop into locked down android.
Yeah… Didnt know…
An optional field was added to the userdb to allow storing birthdate. That’s it.
The systemd project merged a pull request adding a new birthDate field to the JSON user records managed by userdb in response to the age verification laws of California, Colorado, and Brazil.
This is the same record that already holds basic user metadata like realName, emailAddress, and location. The field stores a full date in YYYY-MM-DD format and can only be set by administrators, not by users themselves.
An optional field in the userdb JSON object. It’s not a policy engine, not an API for apps. We just define the field, so that it’s standardized iff [sic] people want to store the date there, but it’s entirely optional.
–Lennart Poettering
Exactly, making it possible for admins (parents) to set up systems with rules based on age for their many children
They can install some parental controls from the package manager. This doesnot need to be in fucking systemd.
entirely optional
Until its not. Rome wasnt destroyed in a day
Yes, but the slippery slope is also a fallacy.
Caution is better than panic.
There’s ample evidence there is an organised international push for these mass surveillance efforts in many countries all at once, do you deny this?
I would argue, for now, this is malicious compliance from the open source community.
Adding an optional field in the UserBD to store an age covers the requirements of the law, without trying to help with the spirit of the law
But I do understand the boiling the frog side
Assuming some jurisdictions implement some kind of device based age restrictions, should linux just not exist in those places?
Lets be cautious and remove the mechanism.
That’s it so far.
Yeah who knows next PR could implement age verification via rectal print verified by aliens from the 7th dimension.
Also, it wasn’t a core maintainer who created the PR, which you want for something this sensitive.
It’s just an extra field that was added to the UserDB. The methods used to access that information have not chaged AFAIK.
All that matters was PR got merged.
Why would it matter who it was that contributed the code?
iff [sic]
In case you are unaware, “iff” is short for “if and only if”, i.e. bidirectional implication. It’s not a typo.
It is a word, but I don’t think it’s really applicable here. The standard exists even if no one wants to use it or ever does.
iff [sic]
Brought to you by the same people as HTTP_REFERER, I assume ;-)
iff = “if and only if”
Basically saying the field’s there if you need to comply with the law, but otherwise you don’t need to use it, just like the other fields.
Fix: a useless field was added by a random non-core contributor, and merged by a Microsoft employee.
As long as I dont need to install a GUI on all my headless servers I couldn’t give 2 hoots, also while I’m at it. As long as I dont need to workout how I get a GUI on an Aws instance that is headless
Presenting information deliberately out of context, stripped down to its bare essentials, amounts to spreading misinformation.
Some rando foolishly submitted a systemd patch and it got rejected after some back and forth. I think there’s not much more to it so far.
I read in another thread that it was merged
Yeah there was some back and forth. It got approved by someone from Microsoft then unapproved by Lennart Poettering. Basically temporary kerfluffle. There’s a writeup from yesterday, I think this: https://itsfoss.com/news/systemd-age-verification/
There’s now an unpopulated field to hold a birthdate but it’s not being used by anything. I guess that is sub-optimal though. This kind of thing if it’s to exist at all should be on individual user accounts, not anything system-wide.
then unapproved by Lennart Poettering
No, you’ve misunderstood, here is a quote from your own source:
A merge request asking for this change to be repealed was struck down by Lennart
It was a reversion that Poettering rejected, the PR stands.
UserDB does hold data connected to individual user accounts
Was definitely merged because it’s been reverted
A pull request to revert it was posted, but wasn’t merged
Edit: The revert patch being denied is when the drama started
Nothing. Linux is not going to force you to identify or provide your real age. Next question.
They have changed course, thankfully:
Can you point to the part where the revert got merged?
Read the dam things you post >_<
They haven’t, whatever your opinion on it…
Pottering responded no and closed it, stating it’s just an optional field others can use how they please
