The Engineer Who Tried to Put Age Verification Into Linux

[_r@donotsta.re]

@Khrys@mamot.fr needlessly dramatic for what was an entirely unsurprising development. wake me up if they do anything beyond a glorified text field, something almost all other OSs have had for decades.

I mean I agree that the sentiment is bad. but do we need the entire linux community to explode over this? hardly

[andymoose@fedi.aiga.rocks]

@mcv @Khrys The problem is that they’ve acquiesced to a poorly thought out and bad faith trial balloon of a law. So now the lawmakers know that it’s game on. The next version of the law will be even more insidious and require actual verification and do who knows what else.

[jonathankoren@sfba.social]

@Khrys let’s be completely honest here. The choices are:

- Non compliance resulting in everyone complaining that your device is “broken”
- Non compliance (this option)
- Full compliance with outside verification (a horrible option)

If a mandated API is made called, then easiest option is just to return “adult” and move on, rather than the millions of people complaining that “it doesn’t work”

I really don’t get what the point of this hit piece is.

[salty@mastodon.nz]

@jonathankoren @Khrys The point is that you don’t just give away your freedom because it’s easier. You *at least* say ‘fuck you, make me’ first.

There are way more people for who this is NOT law than for who it IS. So much for the land of the free and the home of the brave.

[jonathankoren@sfba.social]

@Salty @Khrys yeah, he complied too early no doubt, but let’s not pretend that this was actually going to do a damn thing, or even be called anywhere

[patpro@social.patpro.net]

@aaribaud
«in countries where the GDPR applies» <- you got this wrong, GDPR applies everywhere as soon as you are an European Union citizen.

Edit: correction «European citizen» -> «European Union citizen»

@Khrys

[aaribaud@mastodon.art]

@patpro @Khrys Europe does not include all countries on whole Earth, does it?

[multisn8@mastodon.catgirl.cloud]

@eobet @Khrys Based on the rest of the articles on the platform, the ones I've peeked over are written in a similar style: They are technically true, I'm not sure if the framing is known or even intentional. As if somebody fed research into an LLM, seriously proofread the outgoing article and also generated "top facts" as well as the graphics out of it

[multisn8@mastodon.catgirl.cloud]

@eobet@oldbytes.space @Khrys@mamot.fr I'm split on how to tackle the overall situation. This is, effectively, a rage bait and a hit piece violating the ages-old rule of "attempt collaboration and dialog before engaging in conflict" as the stage of trying to educate or letting the PR author explain their perspective is straight up skipped. Possibly this is unknown to the author who just wanted something that attracts attention

[osma@mas.to]

GDPR applies to protect the personal data of every EU citizen and every person domiciled in EU, never mind where and by whom that data is processed.
@aaribaud @patpro @Khrys

[aaribaud@mastodon.art]

@osma @patpro @Khrys How exactly is this a valid rebuttal of my statement about the (lack of) validity of the birth date field *in countries where the GDPR applies* ?

[osma@mas.to]

Say there's a law requiring collection of people's ethnicity. Or of their gender, allowing only two options. Or of their religion. Or legal, government issued names and id numbers. Oh, they're all optional in most jurisdictions and in fact defined in ways that are noncompliant with other laws. But what's the big deal? We'll just add an optional field name to standardize the schema. There's no mandatory mechanism or verification. Just making the data cleaner.
@mcv @Khrys

[osma@mas.to]

GDPR applies everywhere.
@aaribaud @patpro @Khrys

[aaribaud@mastodon.art]

@osma @patpro @Khrys No, GDPR does not apply everywhere.

[mcv@friendica.opensocial.space]

@liquor_american @Khrys

Di you understand that we're talking about an optional field on your own, local computer that you control, and which already has similar fields for your real name, your email and your location?

I understand people are wary to paranoid about privacy, and you should be, but it's misplaced here. This is the wrong battle to be fighting. There are many worthy battles out there that could use this energy.

[mcv@friendica.opensocial.space]

@joschi @nblr @doingfedtime @Khrys

That's my real worry. People are piling on long-standing open source contributors and pretending they're nazi collaborators. These are people who donate their time writing software that everybody can use for free.

[mcv@friendica.opensocial.space]

@Salty @jonathankoren @Khrys

This is not giving away your freedom.

[0x0@hachyderm.io]

@julesbl
Tbh that's how large FOSS projects work, yes.
Or do you expect a comitte for every code change?
@mcv @Khrys

[0x0@hachyderm.io]

@mcv
Weeeell... it's optional... for now. Heck, systemd is just another init, right?
@Khrys @julesbl

[0x0@hachyderm.io]

@fishidwardrobe
I'm glad most tend to be BDFLs.
@Khrys