Hacker News Reader

Comment by GrayShade | Hacker News Reader

The operating system does not need to know your full name, email and location in order to manage your hardware and software, yet systemd has had optional fields for those for years and nobody complained. They added an extra optional field for the date of birth.

> Some of this has been fueled by a misinformation campaign that has targeted the systemd project and Taylor specifically, resulting in Taylor being doxxed and receiving death threats.

I see.

View on HN

> systemd has had optional fields for those for years and nobody complained.

GECOS in 1962, and UNIX in '70s had them as well, and nobody threatened to kill their creators.

Having a field in a database is not equal to mandatory data collection. Let me remind of data that /etc/passwd allows to store on even an OS without systemd:

- User's full name (or application name, if the account is for a program)

- Building and room number or contact person

- Office telephone number

- Home telephone number

- Any other contact information (pager number, fax, external e-mail address, etc.)

> full name, email and location in order to manage your hardware and software, yet systemd has had optional fields for those for years and nobody complained.

maybe we should complain

Why, it's fine to have these values in a corporate environment: name, work email, office location. I'd be fine with an ability to store the birth date, the blood type, the zodiac sign, actually an arbitrary list of key-value pairs, as long as it's optional.

It's only a problem when the OS insists on recording your private information to let you access your private account.

It is an optional field, and so far there is no software that asks for this information, let alone insists on it.

which is the logical next legislative step

unfortunately the article does not mention who is responsible for the alleged misinformation campaign

I doubt it has been top-down coordinated. So what do you expect the article to say?

Then “campaign” was not the correct word to describe it. It's like calling any group of people an “organization”.

I mean your original comment is an example of the misinformation being spread around.

How is “they do not have this authority” misinformation?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com