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.

  • Senal@programming.devEnglish
    31·
    4 hours ago

    That’s a sound argument, mostly (in the quote, i mean)

    If the technical implementation of how they would try and force age verification was the problem people were concerned about, this take would be very useful.

    Physical locks on glass doors are easy to bypass, doesn’t mean you won’t get shafted if someone just so happens to catch you in the act.

    If third party age verification is legally mandated the implementation being technically difficult (or easy to bypass) doesn’t stop it from being illegal.

    Being a condescending prick works better if the position you take is unassailable, you do you though.