Software changes for compliance with age-verification laws are being pushed a bit everywhere in Linux-development; for example:
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In Systemd, already merged.
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In xdg.desktop.portal (a portal frontend service for Flatpak and other desktop containment frameworks), still open.
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In Arch Linux, still open.
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In Freedesktop.org, still open.
It’s interesting that it’s the same small group of people behind these pull requests, and that discussion threads in them have been locked owing to a great amount of negative criticisms.
They say “we have to comply with the law”. Which also means that if “the law” in the future will require proper verification, handling to 3rd-parties, or whatnot, then they will comply.
Well, it’s their right to. They don’t owe anything to anyone, and are under no obligation to report to users or to the community, nor to pay heed to anybody’s wishes.
If things proceed in this direction, we users may at some point have to choose between privacy-friendly Linux distributions or legal Linux distributions. People who, like me, are worried, need to start thinking about concrete actions to take before it’s too late: where to develop such distros? which channels to download and distribute them from? And so on. (And of course, more generally we need to write and protest to politicians, organize protest marches, go on strike, refuse to comply…)
It’s good to remind to those who keep on repeating the words “legal” and “illegal” that for example Nelson Mandela was, technically speaking, a criminal who did and promoted illegal activity. This happens when laws become immoral.
It’s all one fucking guy! WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS BOOTLICKER DOING?!
Dylan M. Taylor
dylanmtaylorthis fucker
No, I disagree.
It is not one person’s doing. That is the deflection.
I will not downplay the effect of this by saying they are the only one involved. Every maintainer so far that has locked or approved any changes that they did are equally at fault here. In fact, one of those linked articles even stated that the primary reason they locked it is because they didn’t like the amount of coverage it got. This is a failure on the community as a whole, not the individual.
edit for clarification: By failure, I’m talking more on projects that are humoring it and actually going through with it without considering the potential side effects of just blanket applying that.
Currently considering that a handful of these are locked or posted as we don’t know if we’re going to be doing this yet, I haven’t quite put them in that same sector yet, but it’s rapidly approaching it.
If we’re going to blame one person, Zuckerberg comes to mind.
Zuckerberg didn’t fucking write the actual piece of shit making it real, this fucker, Dylan M Taylor did, and fuck him.
Zuckerberg paid for the law that Dylan is reacting to.
Zuckerberg is ultra rich with sociopathic tendencies and poor impulse control.
This other guy is probably just trying to get by.
There are two sides: the Epstein class, and the rest of us.
The Epstein class rely on distracting us from that truth, to keep their influence.
Come to think of it, Zuck, is that you?
This other guy is probably just trying to get by.
explain how jamming this shit in ASAP is “trying to get by”.
Well, I’m not happy with that, either.
But I’ll save my rage for Zuckerberg, not at some FOSS developer.
There’s billionaires actively increasing my work hours, lowering my pay, stripping my government services, and some of them part of a kidnapping and rape operation targeting my kids.
Ill be happy to remind Dylan whose side they should be on, but my rage is for Zuck the fuck.
Edit: I’m done here. My option on jackbooted authoritarians carrying guns doesn’t belong in a public web profile, today, no matter how anonymous.
Maybe I’ll share my thoughts at their trials, someday. Or through some other method of helping them reveal their faces.
and what do you think about individual members of ICE? You think they should be left alone just for following orders to deport innocent people?
I already have the distros downloaded that are against this.
If it comes for my favorite distro that I use everyday I will immediately uninstall it and instance one of the ones that isn’t bending over to let Uncle Sam and others take them from behind.
All they had to do was say they wouldn’t support people from the places that those laws were or would be enacted in. That’s it. That’s all they fucking had to do.
I will also add that it disappoints me so so much that so many of my fellow Linux enthusiasts aren’t more upset or even just plain old cautious about this.
It actually hurts my head to think about. I don’t get it. Don’t we all usually have about the same goals in mind with this? Open, meaning not invasive. Not windows (spyware) and no telemetry meaning privacy respecting?
What the fuck is happening?
I was very confused about this too. But now I realize that’s not what “FOSS” means to everyone. There are developers that work with FOSS in the same way they could (or do) work for a corporation – note the many comments like “users don’t have any rights to make demands of developers”, “developers don’t owe anything to the users or to the ‘community’”, and similar comments. Luckily there are also developers for which “FOSS” does mean what it means to you and me.
Maybe there are other FOSS users that are under the same misunderstanding as I was. It should be made clear that “FOSS”, per se, really means nothing else than “not requiring payments” and “with source open to the public”. Any extra meanings depend on whom you’re speaking to.
Which distros are against it?
So far I have Ageless and regular Debian but the Debian devs haven’t taken a hard stance either way yet, that’s still better than taking a stance for it. At least there is some resistance. Adenix as well.
And while not Linux I’m about to install freeBSD on a spare laptop as well and if they take a stance for it I’ll use MidnightBSD or GhostBSD.
When privacy is outlawed, what do you think?