this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2026
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This one is a very old debate, and you are taking my opinion to an extreme. Not that I think it's particularly offensive or anything.
This question is rhetorical: would you uphold racial segregation laws because they are the law?
There are many takes one what one should do.
I don't think the changes in question are "upholding" any law, but rather giving system admins and software devs a convenient/predefined way to attempt to comply with the law if they choose. "Upholding" the law would be requiring the field to be filled or checked.
That said, to your point, if someone proposed a race field "so that devs can implement segregation if they choose," I'd find that reprehensible even though it doesn't do anything on its own. Similarly, I object to the systemd change.
I would fight the law itself, not single persons.
I'm not US and my country doesn't have such a law, can't fight foreign laws.
I'm not fighting the dev either and I don't approve harassment, I'm just switching to non-systemd distro, that's the best message anyone can send against this.
I agree in principle. Thankfully, the law is not "in place" in the US yet, there's still time to amend, repeal, etc., so we are not in trouble for now.
Ofc, John Brown would disagree with you, but he is extreme by today's standards.
A better example would be the many people who try to block policemen from evicting people from rented apartments (mostly old/sick people who cannot pay). Ofc, one could pay for one being evicted, but that would just strengthen the landlord.
The landlord has valid rights too, fighting policeman is definitively the wrong solution to this problem. The proper way would be in implementing a wellfare system that helps this (mostly old/sick) people when they can't pay their bills. Fighting policemen for evicted people would be like only putting a bandaid over a punctured arthery. It may help for a, very short, time but in the end leads to nowhere.
But this is a tangent and topic that is very interessting to discuss but i fear is way to offtopic for this place