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.
The donations for Debian, Arch and a dozen others are collected and distributed by a non-profit that sits in the US, which also represents them legally. If they’re sued into oblivion, the distros have no more money for hosting their repos.
Nope, just change fiscal hosts. It’s really easy.
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.
May you gain the knowledge to see what you’re saying here. And the emotional maturity to be horrified over it.
Yes. Easy.
Also wtf we’re talking about Foss software projects that have no employees.