I Spoke To The Dev Behind The Systemd Birth Date Change
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Today I spoke with the developer who introduced the PR to Systemd which added in a birth date field to userdb which spawned a massive drama and much worse as...

Some of you need to watch this video, and hang your head in shame.

Dylan Taylor has been receiving constant harassment, including threats to his life and safety, for actions done collectively by SystemD. The article by Sam Bent was explictly mentioned as part of the harassment campaign, and rightfully so.

I don’t think enough people realize that this is catastrophically bad. It’ll discourage people from becoming open source developers, it’ll discourage people from using Linux, and it’ll discourage legislators from taking the Linux community seriously.

If you ever wished ill upon another human being for complying with a relatively inconsequential law, you are better off never touching a computer again. The Linux community has collectively gone so far beyond what is acceptable here.

  • stravanasu
    119·
    14 hours ago

    I don’t think enough developers realize that the majority of users does not want this. They’re acting exactly like the legislators: “we don’t give a shit about what the people think”.

    The legislators won’t take the Linux community seriously, because the developers aren’t taking the community seriously either.

    • FoundFootFootage78@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      1111·
      11 hours ago

      The majority of users do not care, and even if they did it’s still not the user’s place to demand the FOSS developers listen to them. That aside, this is an issue of personal attacks and harassment directed at an individual developer, the project is another matter.

      Harassment of an individual developer, or anyone really, is grossly immoral, counterproductive, and reflects poorly on the Linux and Lemmy community.

      • non_burglar@lemmy.world
        4·
        7 hours ago

        I was with you, particularly with your anti-violence stance, until this comment.

        The answer to disagreements in the Linux world has been to fork a project or make your own. This is different, neither devs nor users will have a say if these various laws are instituted.

        The majority of users do not care, and even if they did it’s still not the user’s place to demand the FOSS developers listen to them.

        Linux is not a megacorporation. It is an array of different interests that still manage to get lots of interesting stuff done, even with those differences.

        This was not a cool thing to say.

        • FoundFootFootage78@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
          14·
          7 hours ago

          FOSS developers have the right to ignore people who are making demands that are unreasonable or not in line with their vision.

          • non_burglar@lemmy.world
            5·
            6 hours ago

            Oh, come on. Pretending that foss devs have no connection to users or the community is not a take based in reality. The Linux world is full of changes made or reversed by community sentiment, even for bigger players like Canonical.

            The very core of Foss is allowing popular and useful projects to gain momentum by appealing to users. Sure, you can fork a project or start your own, but that independence of the devs is rooted in community support to go do what you want.

            And I’ll repeat myself: this is different, foss devs and users both will no have the option to just “go do their own thing” if these laws all become reality.