Notice: ECA Digital – Law No. 15,211/2025 might affect users of Brazil by 17.03.2026

[Aragorn]

@chuck007

I don’t understand you guys (Manjaro devs). There is no law that could force you to implement age varifiction/Parental controls.

That is correct. Or at least, so far — cross your fingers.

@chuck007

Systemd has been forked already to eliminate the birthdate field.

Which was only a symbolical announcement, because the age field in systemdis entirely optional.

There is absolutely no reason to fork systemd over something that’s only optional, and if that fork truly comes into existence, then I don’t see it gaining any real adoption.

@chuck007

Shouldn’t it be easy to maintain the fork? removing just the birthdate field looks like a managable maintainance task.

There’s no point, given that it’s an optional field. It is not technically required to hold any data.

It would be just as silly as forking KDE Plasma because you don’t like the default wallpaper.

@chuck007

Aragorn said that Manjaro will simply follow Arch but Arch still has made no statement (as of today). What do you do if Arch decides to base itself on the forked systemd version withpout the birthdate field?

In theory, then we would be using the same systemd as Arch. But Arch isn’t going to adopt that silly fork, because there is no need to.

@chuck007

We do not even know if these type of laws affect community driven open software projects.

At the moment, it would appear that they do not, but I’m not a lawyer and I don’t live in any of those places that have implemented this law.

@chuck007

Over in non-technical questions you told me that Manjaro GmbH is somehting different from Manjaro Linux, which is community driven. So why are you so eager to implement this without need?

Because Mr. Müller gets The Heebiejeebies™ at the thought of any sort of litigation — I’ve already alluded elsewhere to the time when he decided to cripple our mesa package by removing the codecs that were patented in the USA, even though the EU does not recognize the legitimacy of software patents — and because at least for now, Mr. Müller is still in a position where he can make decisions without communicating them to the rest of the team, let alone that he’d be asking for our opinion first.

And that sort of thing is exactly why we decided to publish the Manjaro 2.0 Manifesto.

This was already in the works when you started the other thread, but at that point in time the document wasn’t fully ready to be pushed out into the public awareness yet. And it wouldn’t even have been made public had Mr. Müller not ignored us, because he had already received a copy of the document two weeks before we went public, with the statement that we would do exactly that if we were being ignored.

[tracyanne]

@chuck007

What do you do if Arch decides to base itself on the forked systemd version withpout the birthdate field?

Then Manjaro would likely continue to use the ‘Solution’ that @philm has already implemented. Which does not use the Birthdate Field, and, seems to me, more like, a fully realised Parental Control System. Which is something, I have read, Linux based Operating System lack. I would assume.

How that ‘Solution’ will play out, in terms of the various Laws from all those Jurisdictions, is a bit of a conundrum, for me.

But given I believe the ultimate power to control a child’s use of any technology, should lie in the hands of a parent, I can’t, at this time, argue with the way big-parental-controls functions.

[carpet]

@Aragorn

There’s no point, given that it’s an optional field. It is not technically required to hold any data.

It would be just as silly as forking KDE Plasma because you don’t like the default wallpaper.

So there is no point in using the fork, because the birthdate field is optional. But one could argue that there is no point in the existence of the birthdate field either, also because it is optional. Why aren’t these two solutions being treated as equally silly, then? Perhaps the users of Manjaro should be able to choose between the two solutions.

[tracyanne]

@carpet

But one could argue that there is no point in the existence of the birthdate field either, also because it is optional.

One could also argue there is no point to the Location field, which is also optional, or any of the other optional fields.

So why not Fork SystemD and remove all those other Optional fields, as well.

The Point of optional is that someone may wish to use them for some reason other than the current Age Verification.

Indeed, if, like the Location field, the Birthdate field had been included at some point, before the age verification issue, no one would have said a damned word about it, and no one would have gone to the trouble of removing it in a fork.

[Aragorn]

@tracyanne

One could also argue there is no point to the Location field

I think that one is used for calculating the offset if the system clock is in UTC (as it should be).

[chuck007]

@tracyanne

Indeed, if, like the Location field, the Birthdate field had been included at some point, before the age verification issue, no one would have said a damned word about it, and no one would have gone to the trouble of removing it in a fork.

I agree if this had been done back in 2015 or whatever nobody would have cared. But it was done explicitly in reaction to the California and Colorado laws. Context does matter. Again, I don’t understand why systemd did that without any explicit legal pressure or even need.

[tracyanne]

@chuck007

Again, I don’t understand why systemd did that without any explicit legal pressure or even need.

I don’t much care, I think we have bigger fish to fry.

If you are concerned about this, as you claim, then you are posting on the wrong Forum. Take your concerns to the SystemD Developers.

Nothing you say here will make the slightest bit of Difference.

… and no Manjaro will not be using the forked version of SystemD, no matter how many times you demand it, or in what way you frame the argument.

[chuck007]

I did not demand anything. I wanted to express my surprise about how fast some parts of the open source community react to these laws (before any legal consequences are clear).

[tracyanne]

@chuck007

I wanted to express my surprise about how fast some parts of the open source community react to these laws

Surprise noted.

[Hanzel]

@chuck007

I wanted to express my surprise about how fast some parts of the open source community react

Please forgive the out of context quote, it is indeed surprising to see how fast and transparent development in the open can take place, this is a showcase what the development model is capable of and we should all be feeling warm and fuzzy inside because of it.

[tracyanne]

@philm

There will be discussions about the law within the Brazil FOSS community, as this law might be difficult to apply to Linux distributions, as it is a much freer environment with a huge diversity of distributions, and trying to go much beyond a message warning that the system must be administered by someone of legal age would violate the LGPD, which is very similar to the European GDPR.

The more I look at big-parental-controls, the more I am convinced, this is the missing parental controls system that has been missing from Linux based operating Systems.

The fact that the Brazillian Government now mandates that Operating Systems must provide Parental controls, does not detract from my view, that, this sort of application, is what parents have needed, in order to control their children’s access to Digital Services, and associated technology.

While I am certain that Google, Microsoft and Apple will implement this sort of thing in a way that is most advantages to them… ie; data collection, on an even more massive scale, as it is implemented here, the data stays with the Operating System owner (but that could also be said of Google, Microsoft and Apple, as they own the Operating System, not the person who paid for it).

Typically, the FOSS solution, respects privacy. Even not supplying a Birthdate, which might appear to be an omission, or bug, is more a feature of that privacy.

While I can’t say how the egregious laws, being voted on in US States will affect this, I believe it is a good solution, that puts the power back into the hands of the parent or Guardian… where it belongs.

[tinyflag79]

@tracyanne

Indeed, if, like the Location field, the Birthdate field had been included at some point, before the age verification issue, no one would have said a damned word about it, and no one would have gone to the trouble of removing it in a fork.

i thing the different is, when change are made like location field it happen and only small group of people know the change, this will not trigger so much, this make thing so fast to get ignored , no body bring up publically and large comunity of linux will not aware, and its different situation when placing DOB on systemd .