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.

  • quick_snail@feddit.nl
    01·
    2 months ago

    Woah, fuck this guy. He admitted the change was for the purpose of complying with these laws

    • Dremor@lemmy.world
      0·
      2 months ago

      It’s a fucking field. Why is everyone loosing his mind over it? It’s not like it is required, nor will it prevent you to do anything if you put data in (except not being able to change it later).

      If you have to complain, complain about the law, not poor guy that has to add it, by law.

      • Maki@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        0·
        2 months ago

        A single law pushed through in a single state in a single country should not lead to systemic changes in FOSS projects used worldwide.