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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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.
“user is likely accessing service from a *nix device” isn’t PII. of course anything can be used for fingerprinting, but this type of “leak” is about as insignificant as it gets. It’s not what most people would consider a violation of their privacy.
I agree with most of what you said, however, I’m not worried about most people. I’m more worried about people who are trying to act against tracking. Maybe I shouldn’t, and we cannot “personal responsibility” our way out of this, but I still haven’t processed that loss.
I’m also not worried about “user is likely accessing service from a *nix device” in itself. It’s hard to say how insignificant this particular bit is. I’ll prolly need to spoof this info, too.
The systemd change is fairly insignificant, yes. That the xdg-desktop-portal people will implement this is more worrying. I’m also worried that the systemd addition will be used as “proof” that the linux landscape is perfectly capable of adding age attestation and verification, and therefore they will dismiss any possibly amendment to the US bills and the EU wouldn’t even consider adding an exception.