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.

  • andioop@programming.devEnglish
    13·
    4 months ago

    One interesting thought I’ve had is actually that if we strip this signal to websites/apps and do not report an age range at all, but the vast majority of users DO, that actually gives us a more unique and trackable browser fingerprint.

    As someone who is not a fan of adding the age field I’m curious what people think of this.

    • quick_snail@feddit.nl
      11·
      4 months ago

      This is stupid. We block fingerprinting.

      Just because some people are fingerprint able doesn’t mean all of us should suffer and bend at the knee to unjust laws