Despite all of us collectively agreeing that the law is dumb/flawed, the 40 M residents of Cali should have the liberty to be able to use distros that depend on systemd, legally. And, the developers of these distros using systmed (whether you interpret the law to see them as OS providers or not) want to be able to provide these distros legally.

Disagree, they should deal with the consequences of electing mentally deficient legislators. But even so. They could make a fork that meets californias requirements and leaves the rest of us out of it. No reason the whole god damn world should be dragged down with one shitty state.

Just because systemd merged this code does not inherently result in every single user application querying this, nor does it force you to install apps that do query the API. One may freely choose to not use apps that require it. If one needs an app that requires it, one may set a garbage DOB to their user. I don’t see this as an issue. Do you?

Not every app that does this will have a viable alternative that doesn't. And yes there is an issue, putting in a fake DOB isn't a sure bet because what if some of the apps that you must use that start utilizing this API are comparing their info against yours for some kind of verification purpose, while you also must use another app that uses it that you do not want to provide your DOB to? You can't have it both ways with this system.