A single pull request turned a quiet open source contributor into the unlikely target of one of the Linux community's most heated controversies. We interacted with Dylan Taylor to hear his side of the story.

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.

  • quick_snail@feddit.nl
    913·
    23 hours ago

    Woah, fuck this guy. He admitted the change was for the purpose of complying with these laws

    • fruitcantfly@programming.dev
      18·
      21 hours ago

      What do you mean, he “admitted” that?

      It’s quite literally the first thing he wrote in his pull request to systemd:

      Stores the user’s birth date for age verification, as required by recent laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc.

      And the second paragraph of his pull request to arch:

      Recent age verification laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc. require platforms to verify user age. Collecting birth date at install time ensures Arch Linux is compliant with these regulations.

    • Dremor@lemmy.world
      97·
      16 hours ago

      It’s a fucking field. Why is everyone loosing his mind over it? It’s not like it is required, nor will it prevent you to do anything if you put data in (except not being able to change it later).

      If you have to complain, complain about the law, not poor guy that has to add it, by law.

      • Maki@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        31·
        4 hours ago

        A single law pushed through in a single state in a single country should not lead to systemic changes in FOSS projects used worldwide.

      • quick_snail@feddit.nl
        33·
        13 hours ago

        No. Don’t follow unjust laws.

        Especially Foss projects which don’t have to follow laws, because they are outside their jurisdiction

          • quick_snail@feddit.nl
            24·
            10 hours ago

            Of course it does. Do you know how laws work?

            Who broke the law if the owner is everyone?

            • Dremor@lemmy.world
              3·
              10 hours ago

              An open source software is, by law, the maintainer’s (which can be an individual, or a group of persons) property. It is said maintainer who has the right to grant you any kind of license over what he owns.

              In the case of an open-source project, that license is very permissive, true, but if you take the time to read any of those, you will always see :

              • A provision indicating that the owners grants that licence within the limits of the applicable laws
              • Sometimes a provision indicating under which juridiction said license is granted. If not, the user local laws are the ones used.

              Source : the fucking law and the fucking licenses. And my friend, which happens to be a lawyer specialized in intellectual property laws.