Thanks for that. I've put a few responses inline.

One extra thing which occurred to me, and which might conceivably
change the flavour when added to the cauldron, is that if the age
verification thing actually goes anywhere (and it seems to be
penetrating even the thickest political skulls that it's totally
impractical) - then in the context of linux, it would almost certainly
be implemented in systemd. That might possibly induce a lot more people
to start looking at systemd-free distros. The other side of that coin
is that it might make running a non-systemd distro illegal in
countries/states in which age verification is mandatory.

On Sat, 2026-06-27 at 18:02 -0300, sawbona@??? wrote:
> Hello:
>
> On 27 Jun 2026 at 13:56, Peter Duffy wrote:
>
> > ... agree with what you say.
> Then that makes *2* of us.  8^°
>
> > ... whether that was the intention from the start ...
> I, for one, never believed in fairies. 8^D
>
> And as I grew older, came to realise that coincidences are not really
> a thing.
>
> > ... everything that I've read by LP seems to suggest ...
> This is a public forum so I will keep my opinions about LP to myself.
>

Whatever else he is, he's undoubtedly very intelligent - and I just
find it baffling that he apparently can't see the consequences of what
he's doing. I genuinely have the view that at the start, his
intentions were simply to solve what he saw as a technical problem.
Maybe I'm just too naive.

> > ... to understand the enemy is one step towards defeating it.
> Maybe it is better to try to understand what he does and where he is
> heading to get a grasp of what he will do next.
>
> And I think that we have seen that already.
> The main problem the Linux ecosystem has is that not enough people
> give a fuck.
>
They ought to. There's a lot at stake. The internet runs on linux, and
the world's economy is now based on the internet. More and more,
systemd represents a single point of failure: one particularly nasty
bug, or one persistent hacker could result in unimaginable disaster.

> > ... remembering my first encounter with systemd.
> I find it interesting that in spite of your being an experienced
> person from one camp (Linux / Unix) and my having *just a bit* of a
> clue as tier1/2 support personnel in another (MS OSs) we have been
> both been brought more or less to the same conclusion with respect to
> systemd.  
>

I suppose that is reassuring, in the face of all the gaslighting that
goes on about systemd,

> > ... would have been a win-win: those who liked systemd
> > could use it, and those who didn't wouldn't have to.
> Sure ...
> But a win-win was never in the plans of those behind systemd.
> Not by a country mile.
>
> Poettering is just a very well paid employee who was hired to do all
> this. There is an amazing lot of moolah behind systemd (basically
> EEE), make no mistake about it.
>

I agree that the amount of corporate propulsion behind systemd is now
enormous. I'm just not sure which was there first - systemd (or the
concept of it), or the corporate sponsorship. You're probably right,
unfortunately :(

> > Sorry for the length ...
> Not needed.
>
> Length is most/many times needed for clarity.
> And the exchange of opinons is welcomed.
>
> Thanks for your input.
> Have a good week-end
>

Thanks - same to you.