this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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I honestly don't under understand why Systemd's addition of an optional age verification module was such a big deal. This is a smart move that helps manage risk while having no real impact on anything. I feel that this article aligns wioth my perspective on the issue (particularly the 2nd/3rd to last paragraphs).
However, I would like to emphasize a somewhat tangential point raised by this opinion piece:
This is not a sustainable approach. You can't have much of open source be legally tied to the United States; a country that is almost certainly going to be dominated by oligarchs, chauvinists and regressives at least for the next ~30 years.
No disrespect to sane Americans, but if you live outside of the US you do need to take a more sober perspective on such matters. Especially considering the general human tendency to avoid rocking the boat.
That being said, a dependence on the US is a liability for any society that values freedom, democracy and having a happy society.
And open source is arguably an Achilles Heel against the American model, one that they can't beat that easily.
You say "smart move that helps manage risk while having no real impact on anything", I say "foolishly craven gesture that demonstrates incompetent leadership while having no real impact on anything."
Given that the incompetent leadership is here to stay it’s best to adjust to the situation and not make it worse. Moral victories mean very little compared to getting things done.
Yes. Open source software is never really (in theory, yes (jurisdiction of the project/developers), but not in practice) dependent on particular jurisdictions anywhere, because it's like open knowledge that can be instantly translated/compiled/packaged into a usable product. And this open knowledge can spread anywhere and also be modified by anyone anywhere at any time.
And this is important, as we're seeing with the US now drifting into a fascist dictatorship that stopped being reasonable or sane and just does what it wants. Open source is an important defense against the appearance of criminal regimes, because it guarantees independence and always possible continuation of the software.
So for example even if the devs/maintainers of open source projects would be legally forced to add age verification code, it's still open source and can be patched out rather easily (e.g. be replaced by code that just does "isAdult = true; return isAdult;" without any online ~~spyware~~ verification systems behind it, and the modifications can then be distributed by anyone, anywhere, anyhow and be applied by all users of that software.
This age verification stuff is only really broadly applicable within the context of proprietary software where users have zero control over what the software does and have to use it exactly like packaged (although there are probably workarounds even in that case). Worst case scenario is that they'll realize this and as a result not scrap the whole idea or make an exception for open source, but instead try to make open source software illegal simply because it can't be enforced there. But that would of course prompt such a major backlash world-wide that they won't achieve anything with that except make themselves look silly. But you never know what those politicians and lawyers are smoking next...
Drama queens love to freak out about optional nothingburgers. It's their entire personality.
The only one that wouldn't would be SUSE. Headquarters in Luxembourg, privately owned by a Swedish investment firm.
Because the hive mind has determined that age verification is bad, so anything linked to it is also bad. We don't need to critically assess whether optional age fields are harmful themselves; we have all the information necessary in its relation to another thing that's bad so we can save ourselves some thinking and just yell.