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.

  • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
    51·
    2 hours ago

    As a thought experiment: please recommend them a better way than bullying

    We could:

    • reject the PR: no, because it’s already accepted by the lead.
    • try to argue with the project maintainers: already failed. This is systemd we’re talking about. They are used to just plowing on regardless of what the wider community thinks.
    • reject the software: systemd is fundamental to a lot of systems, so this is very painful.

    It’s not hard to see why people have resorted to bullying. It’s not right, but there’s no way to make your voice heard. OSS development is not a democracy. It’s a do-ocracy. Those that d"do" dictate. Fine when the developer is aligned with the users. Chaos otherwise.

    • ken@discuss.tchncs.de
      1·
      52 minutes ago

      You missed this option:

      • Ignore the feature and don’t use it.

      systemd is quite modular. For example, if you abhor systemd-resolved (not at unreasonable stance) it’s NBD to disable it.

      Recently (<1 year?) I frequently see the notion that software is “tainted” by having been touched by Bad. I find this a bit silly. Especially if it’s from a user who’s not even spending time in the codebase.

      • micvil@beehaw.org
        2·
        12 minutes ago

        If the law creates this new API, nobody will be able to get away without leaking PII to the web (I think it will have a javascript API). 1970 jan 1 identifies *nix users, 1900 jan 1, even an “unset” will leak info on people, etc. entropy and shit. Websites will also try to use the API. One could set the function to crash JS, or disable all JS, but that already breaks 90% of the web. One could also: either not install userdb (like I do), or install a non-systemd linux, but those still will leak “unset” or “API disabled”.

        There’s no getting away from this, it really is the law that we should push back against. Unfortunately it’s a fight currently only Americans and Brazilians can participate in properly. Donations won’t work well, govts these days often clamp down on NGOs because they often get money internationally, and therefore, they are “foreign interference” etc.