userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records by dylanmtaylor · Pull Request #40954 · systemd/systemd
github.com
Stores the user's birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc. The xdg-desktop-portal project is addi...

Fork time? Maybe all the anti-systemd zealots were right all along…

Edit: To address whether it is likely that this change will affect users: Gnome is planning a stronger dependence on userdb, the part of systemd where this change is being implemented. https://blogs.gnome.org/adrianvovk/2025/06/10/gnome-systemd-dependencies/

Final Edit: The PR has been merged into main.

  • amadaluzia@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    131·
    23 hours ago

    I’ll start off my comment with something everyone can agree on: the age verification laws absolutely sucks. It’s a surveillance law masquerading as a means of “protecting” children. It also completely undermines free and open source projects, and therefore, protected speech. The fact systemd had to add a BirthDate field is unfortunate, however, I would blame the lawmakers for creating the law that the developers of systemd now have to comply with.

    I’m okay with the implementation. It is an optional (meaning you have to add it yourself) field which only specifies the date of birth. It doesn’t seem to be at all invasive, nor does it attempt to “verify” it at the moment. Granted, anything is possible, but I don’t think there’s a good enough reason why systemd would EVER feel the need to add age verification. Before you say anything regarding corporations, please answer this: why would a corporation add age verification to a system manager their servers depend on? How will that profit them?

    I get why people are angry, but I think this anger should be funneled towards the lawmakers pulling off nonsense like this. Fight those who are actively trying to take your rights away. Bullying software developers for complying to international laws will lead to nothing but hate.

    • Soot [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
      12·
      7 hours ago

      The PR is explicitly for the purpose of complying with age verification laws. Damn fuckin’ right I’m angry about it.

      Is it cool if we start implementing tools to track users’ race and sexual orientation for the explicit purpose of complying with some country’s laws about those too? Or is it maybe the job of free software to defy oppressive systems?

      • amadaluzia@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        2·
        7 hours ago

        Is it cool if we start implementing tools to track users’ race and sexual orientation for the explicit purpose of complying with some country’s laws about those too?

        I cannot think of a law which could impact a significant portion of users like Brazil, Colorado or California, which tells operating system providers to store the race or sexual orientation of a person. Unless that time comes, why should they bother implementing that? That, in contrast to a birth date which you may provide, is complying in advance to future laws against such people, and is therefore wrong.

        Or is it maybe the job of free software to defy oppressive systems?

        Here’s a better question: why should we encourage free software developers, who only make money from people donating to the project they are working on, to purposely defy the law and potentially net them a million dollar fine? Are we sending a message, or are we just dooming ourselves?

        • Soot [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
          21·
          4 hours ago

          Homosexual activity is illegal in Uganda. If they pass a law saying your OS should track that, is it moral for developers to enable compliance with it? Or do developers have a moral duty to at least not go out of their way to enable that bullshit, even if they risk a gajillion dollar fine?

          • amadaluzia@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            1·
            26 minutes ago

            Homosexual activity is illegal in Uganda. If they pass a law saying your OS should track that, is it moral for developers to enable compliance with it? Or do developers have a moral duty to at least not go out of their way to enable that bullshit, even if they risk a gajillion dollar fine?

            I have so many qualms with this comment alone. Concurrently, I am not sure how to articulate them. This text might be a bit messy as a result.

            To begin, of course it wouldn’t be moral. Purposely complying with discriminatory laws is not at all a good thing. I don’t think systemd will even bother adding such a thing, even if it was against the law in Uganda. The difference between a country like Brazil asking for the date of birth for a user and Uganda asking for the user’s sexuality is:

            1. The latter has not happened, and probably will not happen; Uganda has much better ways of finding out if someone is gay without the OS needing to say that.
            2. Uganda’s law is much less important than laws in 2 (potentially 3) different states in the US, Germany1 and Brazil.
            3. While it could be said that age-gating material is discriminatory, Uganda’s hypothetical law is much more likely to risk lives. systemd would not want blood on their hands.

            I imagine you put thought into your hypothetical to see where it stands, but I would advise putting more thought into it. Stuff like this will drain both our energy.

    • Internet@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      82·
      22 hours ago

      Nah this is more systemd bloat and certainly invites criticism. Other inits aren’t even commenting, let alone complying.

      • amadaluzia@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
        6·
        20 hours ago

        Other inits aren’t even commenting, let alone complying.

        This would be a fair point, if systemd wasn’t more than an init system. While a service manager (init system) is included, systemd is a system manager. OpenRC, runit, and other init systems do not need to comment because their only task is to mount the necessary file systems, setup the device manager, and start daemons1. systemd as a system manager not only needs to manage services, but it also needs to manage devices, logs, the hostname, etc.

        Does this mean systemd is not bloat? Not at all, but it is not as fat as you think it is. Your system could honestly be fatter without systemd if you try to replicate everything it does with external applications. Does this mean systemd should also be justified to add an optional field for your date of birth? I guess I would say it’s weird on it’s own. However, given the context, I believe they are doing what they can.

          • amadaluzia@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
            1·
            17 minutes ago

            Unfortunate. However, it seems that is snapd’s fault. Here’s the important part from the article:

            Ubuntu automatically deletes old files from the /tmp directory after a certain number of days. During this cleanup, an important directory used by snap-confine may get removed.

            Ubuntu configured systemd-tmpfiles to clean out /tmp after some days. That’s why the issue is only present in Ubuntu systems. Therefore, systemd was doing it’s job, and it just so happened to create the perfect conditions for a vulnerability in Ubuntu.