57 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
57 lines
3.5 KiB
Markdown
# Complete Timeline
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## Background Events
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| Date | Event |
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| May 2024 | Heritage Foundation fellow Dustin Carmack (Project 2025 Intelligence Community chapter author) hired by Meta |
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| Sep 2024 | Meta publicly voices support for AB-1043 alongside Google |
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| Oct 13, 2025 | Governor Newsom signs AB-1043 (Digital Age Assurance Act) into law; effective Jan 1, 2027 |
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| Dec 18, 2024 | Digital Childhood Alliance (DCA) domain registered; publicly launches shortly after |
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| Dec 23, 2025 | CCIA obtains preliminary injunction blocking Texas age verification statute |
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| Jan 28, 2026 | Lennart Poettering, Chris Kuhl, and Christian Brauner announce Amutable (all recently left Microsoft) |
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| Feb 5, 2026 | CCIA files First Amendment lawsuit against Utah SB142 |
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| Feb 25, 2026 | Federal court blocks Utah from enforcing SB142 during litigation |
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## The birthDate PR Campaign (March 2026)
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| Date | Event | Actor |
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| ~March 4 | Age verification API discussion begins on freedesktop xdg mailing list | Aaron Rainbolt |
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| ~March 10 | freedesktop closes controversial age verification API spec proposal | freedesktop.org |
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| ~Mid-March | Dylan Taylor submits PR #40954 to systemd (birthDate field in userdb) | Dylan Taylor |
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| ~Same week | Taylor submits PR #1338/#1339 to ubuntu-desktop-provision (Draft) | Dylan Taylor |
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| ~Same week | Taylor submits PR #4290 to archinstall (required birthDate at install) | Dylan Taylor |
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| March 17 | Arch Linux 32 blocks access from Brazil and California IPs | Arch Linux 32 |
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| March 18 | Luca Boccassi merges PR #40954 into systemd (37 thumbs-down vs 1 thumbs-up) | Boccassi (Microsoft) |
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| March 18 | PR generates 945 comments; maintainers lock it | systemd maintainers |
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| March 19 | Community submits revert PR #41179 | paramazo |
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| March 19 | Lennart Poettering closes revert PR without merging | Poettering (Amutable) |
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| March 19 | Poettering locks conversation, restricts to collaborators | Poettering |
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| ~March 19 | Arch Linux maintainer Torxed locks archinstall PR #4290 | Torxed |
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| ~March 20 | Canonical VP Jon Seager distances company from implementation | Jon Seager |
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| ~March 21 | Ageless Linux project launches as protest distribution | Community |
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| ~March 21 | Slashdot, Hacker News, Lemmy discussions explode | Community |
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## Key Observation
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The entire sequence - from PR submission to permanent merge with locked revert - took approximately 48 hours. A first-time contributor submitted identity infrastructure changes to the most critical Linux subsystem, a Microsoft employee merged it against overwhelming community opposition, and the founder of a commercial Linux startup blocked the revert and locked discussion. All of this happened within two days.
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## Post-Merge
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| Date | Event |
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| ~Late March | David Edmundson (KDE) opens xdg-desktop-portal PR #1922 for age range portal |
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| Ongoing | EFF building constitutional challenge to AB-1043 |
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| May 6, 2026 | Utah SB142 compliance deadline (enforcement blocked by court) |
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| Jan 1, 2027 | California AB-1043 takes effect |
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## Sources
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- https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40954
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- https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/41179
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- https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/pull/4290
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- https://github.com/canonical/ubuntu-desktop-provision/pull/1338
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- https://www.sambent.com/the-engineer-who-tried-to-put-age-verification-into-linux-5/
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- https://linuxiac.com/xdg-age-verification-interface-proposal-closed/
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- https://ccianet.org/news/2026/02/ccia-challenges-unconstitutional-app-store-law-in-utah/
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