Jeffrey Seathrún Sardina, a machine learning researcher, has created a fork of systemd called Liberated systemd to excise its recently added birthDate field. The field was introduced last week in response to age verification laws in California, Colorado, and Brazil. The fork aims to eliminate what its creator views as surveillance-enabling code while staying in sync with the mainline project.
Systemd serves as the default init system and service manager for most major Linux distributions, handling boot processes and service management. Last week, its developers merged a pull request adding an optional birthDate field to user records. This field, settable only by administrators, supports compliance with age verification requirements in California, Colorado, and Brazil. Systemd itself does not process the data; it provides a standardized field for tools like xdg-desktop-portal, which distributions can ignore if unneeded. In response, Jeffrey Seathrún Sardina launched Liberated systemd, a fork stripping out the birthDate-related code. The repository states its goal plainly: remove surveillance-enabling elements while preserving the rest of systemd and tracking upstream changes. The fork modifies 12 files across five commits, excising the field, homectl options for setting birth dates, relevant man page entries, display code, and tests. As of March 23, 2026, it trails mainline systemd by 37 commits. Sardina also maintains a companion systemd-suite repository for testing the fork. This one-person effort has no releases yet and may not suit production use due to its lag. Such forks often spark discussion in open source communities, particularly amid debates over age verification mandates.
