This is kinda weak IMO. Here’s the “conflict of interest” they point out for Lennart Poettering:

Co-founded Amutable seven months earlier. Amutable’s stated mission is “cryptographically verifiable integrity for Linux workloads.” Every new identity field in systemd strengthens the market case for commercial integrity tooling. Poettering made no disclosure of his commercial interest.

So apparently his eyes turned to Looney Tunes dollar signs when he saw one new identity field? That’s ridicuolous, especially since he can add whatever he wants to systemd, whenever he wants.

Another conflict they point out is that systemd has no community steering committee or voting structure. Everyone knows this, it’s not new, and it’s part of the reason why people dislike systemd. It’s also why the previous conflict doesn’t make sense.

The rest of the article is a dump of random facts and timelines, likely designed to build credibility in the minds of people who are already pissed about the age verification thing, and are looking (uncritically) for anything to make them more pissed. Aka, this is ragebait more than anything substantial.

The only part that I think is actually worth pointing out is that the person who merged the PR is a Microsoft employee, and Microsoft is one of the companies that has lobbied for age verification. Idk if that’s legally actionable, but it sure is useful context I didn’t have before (although I’m sure many people did know that)

Edit: LMAO and I forgot, Devuan is an anti-systemd distro. That’s a conflict of interest they didn’t disclose in this article either