cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/62271746

Add a required birth date prompt (YYYY-MM-DD) to the user creation flow, stored as a systemd userdb JSON drop-in at /etc/userdb/<user>.user on the target system.

Motivation

Recent age verification laws in California (AB-1043), Colorado (SB26-051), Brazil (Lei 15.211/2025), etc. require platforms to verify user age. Collecting birth date at install time ensures Arch Linux is compliant with these regulations.

This is just a pull request, no changes yet.

The pull-request discussion thread has been locked, just like it happened for the similar thread in Systemd, owing to the amount of negative comments…

  • Oinks@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    15 hours ago

    I appreciate the work ahead of time, and the law is the law. @svartkanin raised this PR internally within staff channels, and the feedback is that we’ll wait until there’s an overall stance from Arch Linux on this before merging this, and preferably involve legal representatives on this matter on what the best way forward is for us.

    But from a personal reflection it’s clear that there’s a disconnect between law makers intent and how things like this will be implemented in reality, and once a law is in place - we might have to implement inconvenient things…

    So I’ll leave this open for now, but I’ll also lock the conversation because experience from the mailing lists on this topic has told us this thread will get out of hand quickly.

    @dylanmtaylor: this stance does not mean that we won’t merge this. And despite locking this thread, I think you, me and other contributors and maintainers can still comment (which is fine, and good).

    Sounds reasonable to me

  • xyro@morbier.foo
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    1 day ago

    On the systemd discussion : “Don’t worry bro, it’s not a mandatory field” 😂

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    The only solution is a pivot: the component needs to be dead to us now; and forever, too, as they’ll erode privacy and leak p-i-i at the drop of a hat.