{"id":16396,"date":"2026-03-23T10:00:02","date_gmt":"2026-03-23T17:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/?p=16396"},"modified":"2026-03-24T07:32:43","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T14:32:43","slug":"someone-forked-systemd-to-strip-out-its-age-verification-support","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/2026\/03\/23\/someone-forked-systemd-to-strip-out-its-age-verification-support\/","title":{"rendered":"Someone Forked Systemd to Strip Out Its Age Verification Support"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>(Headline article below, updated to add Lunduke&#8217;s video) You have to love opensource, especially under the GPL licenses. I&#8217;m already running XLibre which is actually well developed and a replacement for X.Org which IBM\/Red Hat has been trying to kill for their Wayland display server (for agentic AI integration). Interestingly, as the big tech megacorps try to tighten their grip on opensource to match what they&#8217;re doing with the big tech operating systems, opensource just squeezes out between their fingers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"SystemD Forked to Remove Age Verification\" width=\"1290\" height=\"726\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/SpX1wurVvhg?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/news\/systemd-fork-strips-out-age-verification\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/news\/systemd-fork-strips-out-age-verification\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-ub-divider ub_divider ub-divider-orientation-horizontal\" id=\"ub_divider_900a478f-47c7-4408-9f75-4c7dda0f63f1\"><div class=\"ub_divider_wrapper\" style=\"position: relative; margin-bottom: 2px; width: 100%; height: 2px; \" data-divider-alignment=\"center\"><div class=\"ub_divider_line\" style=\"border-top: 2px solid #ccc; margin-top: 2px; \"><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The project removes the birthDate field systemd added last week in response to age verification laws.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>By Sourav Rudra<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/systemd.io\/?ref=itsfoss.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">systemd<\/a> is the init system and service manager that most major Linux distributions ship with by default. It boots the system, manages services, and has taken on more responsibilities over the years than a lot of people think it should. For some, <a href=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/systemd-free-distros\/\">running a distro that avoids it entirely is a feature<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The project&#8217;s latest move has not helped its reputation among the skeptics. Last week, developers merged a pull request adding a <code>birthDate<\/code> field to its user records, tied to <a href=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/news\/age-verification-pandemic\/\">age verification laws<\/a> in California, Colorado, and Brazil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Earlier, we covered <a href=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/news\/systemd-age-verification\/\">what that actually means<\/a>, but to recap, the field is optional, can only be set by an administrator, and <strong>systemd itself does nothing with the data<\/strong>. It is simply a standardized field in the user record file that other projects like <code>xdg-desktop-portal<\/code> can build age verification compliance on top of\u2014distros that do not need it can ignore it entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But &#8220;<em>optional<\/em>&#8221; has not been enough to stop people from treating it as a line being crossed, and now a solo developer has responded the way the open source community usually reacts: <em>by forking<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"liberated-as-in\">Liberated as in?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/content\/images\/2026\/03\/liberated-systemd-git-hub-repo.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/itsfoss.com\/content\/images\/2026\/03\/liberated-systemd-git-hub-repo.png\" alt=\"screenshot of the github repo for liberated systemd. there is a lot of text and interface elements in this\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/Jeffrey-Sardina\/systemd?ref=itsfoss.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Liberated systemd<\/a> is a fork of mainline <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/systemd\/systemd?ref=itsfoss.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">systemd<\/a> started by <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/Jeffrey-Sardina?ref=itsfoss.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Jeffrey Seathr\u00fan Sardina<\/a>, a machine learning\/AI researcher who apparently had enough of where things were heading. The project is straightforward about its purpose; <strong>strip out what it considers surveillance-enabling code<\/strong>, keep everything else intact, and stay in sync with upstream as it develops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The repository puts it bluntly:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>Mass surveillance is bad, actually. So here&#8217;s a fork of&nbsp;<code>systemd<\/code>&nbsp;with surveillance enablement removed, which will be kept up-to-date with other changes in&nbsp;<code>systemd\/main<\/code>. However you use this, or do not, is your choice and yours alone.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>Compared to mainline systemd, the fork changes <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/systemd\/systemd\/compare\/main...Jeffrey-Sardina:systemd:main?ref=itsfoss.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">12 files across 5 commits<\/a>, all focused on scrubbing out everything related to the <code>birthDate<\/code> addition. That means not just the field itself but also the option to set a birth date via <code>homectl<\/code>, the relevant man page entries, display code, and tests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Though, as of writing this, it was <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/Jeffrey-Sardina\/systemd\/compare\/main...systemd%3Asystemd%3Amain?ref=itsfoss.com\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">37 commits behind<\/a> from systemd, so that is something to keep in mind if you are hoping to implement this on a general-use or production system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jeffrey also maintains a companion repository, <a href=\"https:\/\/github.com\/Jeffrey-Sardina\/systemd-suite?ref=itsfoss.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">systemd-suite<\/a>, which is meant for testing the fork. So, while this is very much a one-person project, there seems to be at least some technical groundwork behind it beyond the <code>birthDate<\/code> revert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"some-thoughts%E2%80%A6\">Some thoughts\u2026<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Whether <em>Liberated systemd<\/em> becomes anything more than a protest fork is a fair question. It is a one-person project with no releases, and keeping a revert rebased against an actively developed codebase is not a trivial long-term commitment. If you are thinking about building a distro around it right now, you probably should not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But that might not be the point. <strong>Forks like this are meant to ignite conversation<\/strong> rather than ending up as a significant open source project. If age verification requirements tighten, and given the direction things are headed, that is not a wild assumption, then the community forking its way out of an uncomfortable situation makes sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And one of these forks might actually make it into some Linux distribution in the near future; who knows?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Headline article below, updated to add Lunduke&#8217;s video) You have to love opensource, especially under the GPL licenses. I&#8217;m already running XLibre which is actually well developed and a replacement for X.Org which IBM\/Red Hat has been trying to kill for their Wayland display server (for agentic AI integration). Interestingly, as the big tech megacorps [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"blocksy_meta":[],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Jason","author_link":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/author\/jturning\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16396"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16400,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16396\/revisions\/16400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jasonsblog.ddns.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}