Forking is easy. Maintaining the fork is the hard part.

Yah, there was some bullshit like this that had people start "Ageless Linux" that was basically a script for people to change their sources on a Debian install to their version, and they haven't done any sort of updates in over 2 months, to the surprise of nobody.

What a tempest in a teapot.

This is a lot of fuss about realistically nothing but I completely understand why and frankly I am pleased to see it. People should be pissed off about age verification laws and the way they're being implemented.

systemd doesn't enforce anything about birth dates, this is totally optional and completely falsifiable, and if anyone ever tried to enforce anything based on it that would be a totally separate system and purely hypothetical at this point. This is never going to actually be a realistic part of any implementation that actually works (not that there is ever likely to be any implementation that ever works) because that's the beauty of open source. As soon as anyone ever develops an implementation that actually works, it will be forked and removed just like this. Nobody is going to voluntarily use that, and if the law requires us to, nobody's going to comply with the law either.

This is more like a shot across the bow to say "we will never put up with this and we'll show you exactly what we're going to do if you try" than it is a realistic need at this point. Still, good for making sure they understand we are armed and we are not going down without a fight (that they won't win).

FFS, just make a patch.

the issue is not the presence or absence of any one json field. the issue is this random bootlicker with a history of foss-antithetical "contributions" being let anywhere near the decision tree in the first place., poettering the benevolent dictator adopting this idiocy and then, faced with a fucking tsunami of push-back and negative sentiment along every step of the process, doubling down on the decision to include it anyway because fuck you that's why. unnecessarily, as it turned out but that is beside the point.

point is, none of the things above indicate there's a healthy system in place for something that's becoming an integral part of what we consider linux and can't so easily be ripped out no more.

Fucking sweet. Honestly, we could just have one with and one without, build the OS making the selection, and have both available if it solves the issue. Put the burden on parents to make sure kids are using the OS with verification and leave everyone else alone.

But kudos to these folks!

There are other system inits too

Like there are many issues with systemD and it is by design

Protest forks never last in my experience

This is the lower effort version of xLibre. GL to both projects but I can't see them getting anywhere.

Yeah maintaining a fork that seems like it's going to be illegal to work on in many countries definitely will solve the problem.