this post was submitted on 26 Mar 2026
130 points (91.7% liked)

Linux

13059 readers
709 users here now

A community for everything relating to the GNU/Linux operating system (except the memes!)

Also, check out:

Original icon base courtesy of lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Dylan M. Taylor is not a household name in the Linux world. At least, he wasn’t until recently.

The software engineer and longtime open source contributor has quietly built a respectable track record over the years: writing Python code for the Arch Linux installer, maintaining packages for NixOS, and contributing CI/CD pipelines to various FOSS projects.

But a recent change he made to systemd has pushed him into the spotlight, along with a wave of intense debate.

At the center of the controversy is a seemingly simple addition Dylan made: an optional birthDate field in systemd’s user database.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] mech@feddit.org 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

Yeah, really easy, just all employees suddenly work for a foreign organisation which pays salary in foreign currency, while they're still living and expected to pay income tax in the US. Transfers of money and tech are now cross-border and subject to Trump's Truthed tariffs. All servers have to be transferred to different hosts, all SPF records need to be changed, all contact info updated.
Nothing difficult at all, it's all really easy.

But hey, they avoided putting an empty data field in their OS, and with their 1% market share they sure sent a strong signal that'll get lawmakers who have never even heard of Linux to reconsider.

[–] randamumaki@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 5 days ago

May you gain the knowledge to see what you're saying here. And the emotional maturity to be horrified over it.

[–] quick_snail@feddit.nl -2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Yes. Easy.

Also wtf we're talking about Foss software projects that have no employees.