Systemd adds age indication ahead of schedule

⚠️ Article status notice: This article has been marked as incomplete

This article needs additional work for its sourcing and verifiability to meet the wiki's Content Guidelines and be in line with our Mission Statement for comprehensive coverage of consumer protection issues.

This notice will be removed once sufficient documentation has been added to establish the systemic nature of these issues. Once you believe the article is ready to have its notice removed, please visit the Moderator's noticeboard, or the discord and post to the #appeals channel.

Learn more ▼

This Article Requires Additional Verification

---

This article has been flagged due to verification concerns. While the topic might have merit, the claims presented lack citations that live up to our standards, or rely on sources that are questionable or unverifiable by our standards. Articles must meet the Moderator Guidelines and Mission statement; factual accuracy and systemic relevance are required for inclusion here!

Why This Article Is In Question

---

Articles in this wiki are required to:

• Provide verifiable & credible evidence to substantiate claims.
• Avoid relying on anecdotal, unsourced, or suspicious citations that lack legitimacy.
• Make sure that all claims are backed by reliable documentation or reporting from reputable sources.

Examples of issues that trigger this notice:

• A topic that heavily relies on forum posts, personal blogs, or other unverifiable sources.
• Unsupported claims with no evidence or citations to back them up.
• Citations to disreputable sources, like non-expert blogs or sites known for spreading misinformation.

How You Can Improve This Article

---

To address verification concerns:

• Replace or supplement weak citations with credible, verifiable sources.
• Make sure that claims are backed by reputable reporting or independent documentation.
• Provide additional evidence to demonstrate systemic relevance and factual accuracy. For example:
  • Avoid: Claims based entirely on personal anecdotes or hearsay without supporting documentation.
  • Include: Corporate policies, internal communications, receipts, repair logs, verifiable video evidence, or credible investigative reports.

If you believe this notice has been placed in error, or once the article has been updated to address these concerns, please visit the Moderator's noticeboard, or the #appeals channel on our Discord server: Join here.

systemd is criticized of being monolithic (non-modular) and deviating from Unix philosophy.

Background

systemd is an initialization system, a suite of basic building blocks for a Linux system. It provides a system and service manager that runs as PID 1 and starts the rest of the system.

[Incident]

In Mar 5 2026, Dylan M. Taylor, a developer and tech enthusiast, sent two commits to systemd (as a pull request) "userdb: add birthDate field to JSON user records", commenting

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.

In Mar 19 2026, Luca Boccassi, a member of Systemd and a Microsoft employee, merged the commits. Lennart Poettering, the creator of systemd, known for having controversial technical and architectural positions regarding the Linux ecosystem, has clarified that this change is:

An optional field in the userdb JSON object. It's not a policy engine, not an API for apps. We just define the field, so that it's standardized if people want to store the date there, but it's entirely optional.

[Company]'s response

If applicable, add the proposed solution to the issues by the company.

---

Add your text below this box. Once this section is complete, delete this box by clicking on it and pressing backspace.

Consumer response

Consumer response is mixed. Some says the age is manually entered so it doesn't affect privacy, others warn about the slippery slope and the potential to add national ID on system boot or installation. Users also point out Microsoft's influence over systemd.

There was an attempt to revert the changes, and the user who opened the PR did provide many reasons why it should be reverted, but it was rejected by Poettering saying:

[...]

please move your discussion elsewhere, you are misunderstanding what systemd does here. It enforces zero policy, it leaves that up for other parts of the system.

And sorry, I am really not interested in these discussions here. it's not the right place for this, and please don't bring it here. Thank you.

Users have been migrating to Artix Linux, Void Linux, Devuan and other systemd-free Linux distributions.

External links

• "I Spoke To The Dev Behind The Systemd Birth Date Change": an interview with Dylan, posted by Brodie Robertson

References

Add a category with the same name as the product, service, website, software, product line or company that this article is about.

The "Incidents" category is not needed.

---

Add your text below this box. Once this section is complete, delete this box by clicking on it and pressing backspace.