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Comment by withinboredom | Hacker News Reader

The mailing list doesn't seem to make it out into such a controversial issue. It's an optional field that doesn't require a real birthday.

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The issue isn’t the field but how the governance system for critical software is non-existant.

It also has to be considered in light of the fact that Lennart builds a company for "cryptographically verifiable integrity on Linux".

Because someone added a new user field? Does that need governance?

When your software is the core piece of tech in almost all mainline Linux distros, yes it does require governance. However you may like someone being an authoritarian regardless of the “it’s only a user field no big deal” view and the next thing they change without governance for everyone you will be fine with also, even if you disagree. Again it’s not about the field.

If this is the “straw that broke the camel’s back” as they say… it seems it is more about the field than anything else. It’s a strange hill to die on… there are much larger changes happening on a daily basis… or is this like a bike shedding effect, where it’s such a small trivial and pointless change that it is worth fighting over? Something everyone can understand.

I dunno. The only reason I’m even on the mailing list was to report a bug several years ago…

I think it’s about raising visibility of an issue. What type of code change the issue is tied to is irrelevant. However it helps that the code change has some already existing political momentum.

What other arguments are we going to try and whittle the governance issue down to “its just the code change who cares!”?

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