The alternative is having every individual program try to store data about the user in their own, non-interoperatble formats
The alternative is NOT to store that data system wide, NOT have it made easily available to anything in the first place, and NOT normalizing having all your personal data available at will to everything.
Are you really arguing about the convenience of having personal data available system wide when it’s is absolutely irrelevant to 99.9% of running applications?
You can choose to not install applications that use birthDate. It’s your system.
But, you cannot choose what other people want to install. It’s their system.
There are applications which exist, that other people can choose to install, that require this field and systemd is the logical place to store that information.
If you don’t like the applications that would use this field, and you don’t want your system to store information in birthDate then there is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing that. You don’t get to make that choice for other people, however.
The alternative is NOT to store that data system wide, NOT have it made easily available to anything in the first place, and NOT normalizing having all your personal data available at will to everything.
Are you really arguing about the convenience of having personal data available system wide when it’s is absolutely irrelevant to 99.9% of running applications?
You can choose to not install applications that use birthDate. It’s your system.
But, you cannot choose what other people want to install. It’s their system.
There are applications which exist, that other people can choose to install, that require this field and systemd is the logical place to store that information.
If you don’t like the applications that would use this field, and you don’t want your system to store information in birthDate then there is absolutely nothing stopping you from doing that. You don’t get to make that choice for other people, however.