This developer worked for Baikal Electronics (from the Google snippet of his GitHub page, and earlier emails from him to the Linux kernel lists — showing his work was for that company).
That company received very significant subsidy from the Russian state. They produced CPUs for the Russian military.
If that led to legal issues because of legal sanctions in place in the US and Europe then the communication should have focused on that (legal sanctions) while remaining kind and apologetic to the individual and abstaining from commenting on the geopolitical situation.
Instead it has been partisan, abusive, and insulting throughout. Really an appallingly bad example of communication.
"The developer worked for Amazon, which receives large amounts of support from the US Department of Defense under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract."
This is a nice (and sad) goodbye email from Serge(y). It's moving to see all this time and work, what it meant to the person, and also to imagine what the contributions made mean to so many people who use the software. :`(
The situation is sad for individual contributors indeed. The overall backdrop does seem in line with sanctions requirements for ITAR, OFAC etc.
I mean, for me (as well as him, obviously) it is a matter of "how" rather than "what". It is understandable, that what for some government officials is political reasons, for Linux end up being legal reasons, so no matter how ugly it is, it is not surprising at all that it came down to banning somebody who works for a sanctioned organization. It also doesn't matter that it makes no sense whatsoever (after all, you don't have to show your documents applying to the Linux mailing list), since most adult people get the fact that there's no justice in life.
But it is one thing when it's "sorry man, nothing I can do" (as in his private conversations with senior maintenaners), and other thing entirely, when for all your good work you are being dealt with like that, no heads-up, no good-bye, instead you get these things Linus has said today. Like, seriously, it doesn't even matter if Linus hates Russians and truly personally thinks this is desirable to get rid of these maintainers, it is just a matter of human decency to not make it any more than it has to be against individual person that basically worked for you (for free). And even if you don't have any human decency, it still just would be smarter to play it more neutral. So, yeah, it was really even surprisingly ugly.
This is indeed a sad story that made me weep for him, an unsuspecting Sergey putting all his heart in his work for a company supplying Russian war machine.
Should definitely fork the project calling it RUinux, to remind everyone what he and his country does to ruin its neighbours including Ukraine.
What is the point of open source if it doesn’t protect individuals from the control of corps and non-democratic countries? What’s the damn point of open source if law enforcers can just hijack the project?
I don’t care about the Russians shenanigans but I’m dumbfounded by the lack of transparency, the obvious racism, from Linus.
"The Justice Department attempted to prepare a list of all German aliens, counting approximately 480,000 of them. The Committee of Internment of Alien Enemies recommended sending them to internment camps, though the idea was opposed by the War Department and the Attorney General. More than 4,000 German aliens were imprisoned in 1917–1918. The allegations included spying for Germany and endorsing the German war effort.
When the United States entered the war in 1917, some German Americans were looked upon with suspicion and attacked regarding their loyalty. Propaganda posters and newspaper commentary fed the growing fear. In Wisconsin, a Lutheran minister faced suspicion for hosting Germans in his home, while a language professor was tarred and feathered for having a German name and teaching the language. The Red Cross barred individuals with German last names from joining in fear of sabotage. One person was killed by a mob; in Collinsville, Illinois, German-born Robert Prager was dragged from jail as a suspected spy and lynched. Some aliens were convicted and imprisoned on charges of sedition for refusing to swear allegiance to the United States war effort. Thousands were forced to buy war bonds to show their loyalty."
I'm not sure why you think this is comparable at all. These aren't Russian immigrants or descendants living in the west, they're Russians living in Russia, and working for Russian companies on the sanctions list. As a result, they've been stripped of their maintainership status, so they can still contribute, but they have to go through the regular send-a-patch process that any other random contributor would have to. It surely doesn't feel good to them after their history of contributions, but international law and politics cause things like this to happen.
>No matter the reason of the situation but haven't we deserved more than that? Adding to the GREDITS file at least, no?
The author of the linked article suggests that they should get some form of memorialization. When Linus is finished berating Sam for working at Halliburton during the Iraq war, something that by analogy I guess he has every right to do, this advice should probably be taken.
And then the next paragraph of the wikipeida: "In Chicago, Frederick Stock was forced to step down as conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra until he finalized his naturalization papers. Orchestras replaced music by German composer Wagner with French composer Berlioz. After xenophobic Providence Journal editor John R. Rathom falsely accused Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Karl Muck of refusing to play The Star-Spangled Banner and triggered a trial by media in October 1917, Muck and 29 of the orchestra's musicians were arrested and interned in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, until well after the Armistice. "
Israel attacked by Hamas, which, in turn, was bribed by Russia to start the war. Hamas captured and killed citizens of few nations, completely unrelated to occupation of Palestina by Israel.
It's not like one side is completely innocent, while other side is pure evil.
Pointing out hypocrisy is not the same as pointing out a flaw in a decision. This can be both the correct, legally required decision, and also be hypocritical.
This isn't about patches at all. They can submit patches. Anyone can.
This is about being listed as a contact. You can EITHER work for a company that produces CPUs for the Russian army OR answer mail on behalf of the linux kernel maintainers, but not both.
So, what, the espionage concern is that a person who is listed as a contact might read emails on LKML.org?
The only possible justification for this is the one being offered, that some presumably Finnish lawyers do not believe it is safe for Linus to head a project with ties that could be made real to a jury between its leaders and sanctioned entities.
Considering the fact that individual people need to stay out of court as badly as they need to avoid being convicted this is not such a difficult decision to empathize with, but it is being conducted in a typical Kernel fashion, with personal views being injected at all the worst moments and contributors leaving who would not have had any quarrels if they had not been fabricated.
> Could this have been an NSA attack? Maybe. But there were many others who had the skill and motivation to carry out this attack. Unless somebody confesses, or a smoking-gun document turns up, we’ll never know.
I wouldn't wonder if, at some point, developers from Russia, China and other BRICS countries will fork the Linux kernel. That way they can still can do the changes they need.
If BSD were forked, I can't see a practical reason why Linux can't be forked.
This is pretty sad to see, but this post was full of a lot of acronyms that might only make sense to people active in this space, so it was a bit difficult to read. Among others, what are NTB and DW here?
I wonder if we'll see persistent Russian and Chinese forks of the Linux kernel to address this problem? Large parts of the kernel are written by Russian and Chinese people, and the US's sanctions regime against the PRC is nearly as aggressive as that against Russia. The GPL guarantees they can still merge in code from Linus, as long as he doesn't intentionally make it incompatible, and probably a lot of contributors will want to get their code into Linus's tree and also the Russian and/or Chinese tree, which could lead to pushback on deliberate compatibility breakage.
No one in the West wants to do volunteer work any more because it pays a lot more to work at Evil Corp and wave some flags around during the appropriate month.
This patch is making sure that no one from the developing world will be replacing those gray haired people because why join a project who will dehumanize you when it is politically convenient?
Here's hoping they reverse course, because right now none of the major landmarks of open source look like they will survive the coming 20 years.
> No one in the West wants to do volunteer work any more because it pays a lot more to work at Evil Corp and wave some flags around during the appropriate month.
I thought most of the kernel "volunteers" were actually working for some "Evil Corp" or another that was paying them to "volunteer" in some way related to the company's business.
I'm confused why you insinuate that "flag waving" in June has anything to do with this topic. You frame it as though that is something developers tolerate because they are paid to, in contrast to how developers behave in volunteer work (demonstrably untrue).
> No one in the West wants to do volunteer work any more because it pays a lot more to work at Evil Corp
This post is about an engineer in the East, who apparently works for a company called Baikal Electronics.
"BAIKAL ELECTRONICS JSC is a Russian electronics company that manufactures semiconductors and computer processors. Baikal Electronics JSC produces computer processors for the Russian military."
So we’ve got into politics in software. Good lord (spaghetti one, of course)!
I thought we already have problem with quality diving in IT, because of all those newcomers wanting money and laziness only.
Sad to see we learned nothing from hundreds of years of wars and occupations. Glad someone mentioned Poland and India. Millions killed by USA joining every war to just sell weapons to both sides of conflict - will be funny too when many people stop dreaming and see this is the truth.
Edit: of course I’m waiting for all this flagging and downvotes, because I’ve spoken badly about The Greatest Nation Ever.
Politics in open source is not new. I think one person in this thread has quoted a CoC. They did not always exist... :-)
What is new is hackers speaking in favor of nationalist boundaries, after having spent the 90s in opposition to things like cryptographic export controls.
I wonder if the same standard is going to be applied to Israeli (body count reaching 80k, almost all civilian) and American (body count of about 1M in just this century alone, almost all civilian) developers. If not, why not?
Sanctioning individuals who aid a criminal government serves two purposes:
1) it applies pressure on that government and
2) ensures that we don’t indirectly support its crimes.
However, sanctioning an entire population — citizens who are already suffering under a leader who disregards their wellbeing — achieves little and seems more like an act of revenge than a strategic measure.
“It’s ok when we do it”? I thought at least the FOSS community was above hypocrisy. Apparently not. And I get why there might be legal reasons (as tenuous as they may be) to not allow folks to be paid, but this particular dude was working for free.
If it was just legal reasons it would be totally understanable. Can't go against the law - but you can voice your reservations against it. Instead Linus is celebrating this.
This is good. "West" and " Global South" need separate so there can be more competition and innovation in the world. I had no Idea linux got so political since it is not my OS, though recent wokenization of Debian should have made it clear OSS is screwed, but something good will come out of something bad.
I don't think many Western developers understand how much damage Linus just single-handedly dealt to the accumulated respect and trust towards the Linux Foundation leadership. If you think that the Russian IT community will think "damn, this evil Putin, we need to overthrow him", think again after taking a look at these discussions (in Russian) [1][2]. And many developers from other countries (especially from China) certainly have started to think "hm, we may be next" and act accordingly because of that, e.g. by not actively participating in the Linux development in the first place.
They could've handled it MUCH better, most people understand that the removal by itself is understandable (properly navigating the current regime of sanctions is extremely hard and it's better for an US-based organization to be conservative, doubly so with people from the directly sanctioned companies like Baikal Electronics), but lack of transparency, sneakiness, and the extremely aggressive, unnecessary and dehumanizing remarks from Linus just the situation from unfortunate bad to extreme worse.
> the extremely aggressive, unnecessary and dehumanizing remarks from Linus
Linus being Linus. I thought he had gotten some comms training but it’s hard to change when you’ve spent most of your career communicating very directly.
Linus and the Linux foundation breaking their own COC:
>In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as contributors and maintainers pledge to making participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, _ethnicity_, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, _nationality_, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
I don't see "employer" on that list. Apparently, these people are being removed from their maintainership status due to their employer, not their nationality.
I assume your interlocutor was referring to how he dismissed those who complained about the move as "Russian trolls" more than the original delisting itself.
My point is that do not act surprised when you will see a noticeable reduction of contributions from Russian, Chinese, etc. developers. Most of people leaving (or not joining in the first place) will not be as visible as the Sergey's goodbye. By itself it may not be a huge deal, especially in the near term, but it compounds with other factors like dwindling (relative) popularity of C and the recent Rust debacle.
>And where exactly is Linus this evil strawman you created?
> As to sending me a revert patch - please use whatever mush you call brains. I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be supporting Russian aggression? Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of history knowledge too.
The concerning part to me is that kernel development will not only be based on technical discussion anymore (or maybe it never was): why would a revert patch or not has anything to do with nationalities or personal's political and hisotrical view. Bias towards either side to accept/reject technical contributions for such large project is only going to be harmful for the project regardless of open-source or not.
By technical, it means decision is to be made objectively through logical reasoning following certain rules. It is a patch at the end and should follow kernel development process. However, the reason for that patch removing Russian maintainers until now is still not made fully transparent by either GKH or Linus. Instead, calling it "I am Finish" and "Russian aggression" has nothing to do with the patch itself and is not constructive discussion. Even we trace down to the road, none of the maintainers today has done that aggression to Finland. If the reasoning of rejecting the revert patch is "Compliance issues based on our lawyers suggestsion" etc. then just say it.
If the Russian invasion was the cause for this removal, it's rather late. The invasion started back in 2014 and strengthened two years ago. There probably also wouldn't be any lawyers involved.
My guess is that some secretive agency got in contact with the Linux team. Whether this is about infiltration of kernel development or an attempt to stop Russia from powering its war machines by Linux I'm not so sure, but I don't know about any laws that would require this specific process.
As for "none of the maintainers today has done that aggression": they haven't _yet_, but they can be made to by their government if that's what Putin wants. Countries bordering Russia are on edge, and, as has been proven in Georgia and Ukraine, rightfully so. The current anti Russian sentiment isn't a consequence of any historic events as much as it is an anticipation of a Russian invasion in future.
I would much prefer knowing why exactly removing Russian contributors would be legally required, but given the secrecy surrounding it, I don't think there's much public information around it.
> If you haven't heard of Russian sanctions yet, you should try to read the news some day. And by "news", I don't mean Russian state-sponsored spam.
And the sentence right before that
> And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren't troll farm accounts - the "various compliance requirements" are not just a US thing.
Meaning there is also valid legal reasons to do this with both the country he is living in (US) and the country he is from (Finland) having sanctions on the companies whose employees are being excluded. I think the is also a US citizen.
tl;dr; read the whole post instead of taking a single quote out of context.
If I have to guess that is likely the case, but if that is the case then reasoning and formal process should me made clear and transparent, while the weird part is that Huawei is also under sanctions and has a lot people contributed to Linux, but they are not removed. So what is our standard process here?
AFAIK the US Huawei sanctions are not a blanket "have nothing to do with them at all" but instead apply to telecoms equipment and phones and their components. Don't think software is a component.
There was some talk about banning Huawei access to AOSP but I don't think that ever went through.
And yes sanctions are weird. Finland is sanctioning a lot of Russian business including travel over the border for most part but still there is a train load of copper and nickel ore coming over every day or two.
This does seem a bit like throwing the baby out with the bath water but it’s understandable that the kernel project doesn’t have the resources for a more granular approach when even large organizations struggle with this problem.
I’m always in for making more clear and transparent processes though.
That's missing the point, India has nothing to do with it. When Linus speaks about being Finnish it's about being invaded by Russia and I don't believe India ever was.
Other related posts
[flagged] Getting Called "Paid Actor" by Linus Torvalds - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41929585 - Oct 23 2024 (24 comments)
[PATCH] MAINTAINERS: Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41923749 - Oct 23 2024 (1 comment)
Re: [PATCH] Revert "MAINTAINERS: Remove some entries due to compliance" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41928532 - Oct 23 2024 (3 comments)
Linus Torvalds comments on the Russian Linux maintainers being delisted - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41927838 - Oct 23 2024 (35 comments)
This developer worked for Baikal Electronics (from the Google snippet of his GitHub page, and earlier emails from him to the Linux kernel lists — showing his work was for that company).
That company received very significant subsidy from the Russian state. They produced CPUs for the Russian military.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikal_CPU
https://ge.usembassy.gov/targeting-russias-senior-officials-...
If that led to legal issues because of legal sanctions in place in the US and Europe then the communication should have focused on that (legal sanctions) while remaining kind and apologetic to the individual and abstaining from commenting on the geopolitical situation.
Instead it has been partisan, abusive, and insulting throughout. Really an appallingly bad example of communication.
"The developer worked for Amazon, which receives large amounts of support from the US Department of Defense under the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability (JWCC) contract."
So what? Is Linux kernel owned by US government?
A lot of other maintainers are, in the sense of needing to comply with sanctions so fully that they cannot even be charged with violating them.
This is a nice (and sad) goodbye email from Serge(y). It's moving to see all this time and work, what it meant to the person, and also to imagine what the contributions made mean to so many people who use the software. :`(
The situation is sad for individual contributors indeed. The overall backdrop does seem in line with sanctions requirements for ITAR, OFAC etc.
I mean, for me (as well as him, obviously) it is a matter of "how" rather than "what". It is understandable, that what for some government officials is political reasons, for Linux end up being legal reasons, so no matter how ugly it is, it is not surprising at all that it came down to banning somebody who works for a sanctioned organization. It also doesn't matter that it makes no sense whatsoever (after all, you don't have to show your documents applying to the Linux mailing list), since most adult people get the fact that there's no justice in life.
But it is one thing when it's "sorry man, nothing I can do" (as in his private conversations with senior maintenaners), and other thing entirely, when for all your good work you are being dealt with like that, no heads-up, no good-bye, instead you get these things Linus has said today. Like, seriously, it doesn't even matter if Linus hates Russians and truly personally thinks this is desirable to get rid of these maintainers, it is just a matter of human decency to not make it any more than it has to be against individual person that basically worked for you (for free). And even if you don't have any human decency, it still just would be smarter to play it more neutral. So, yeah, it was really even surprisingly ugly.
[delayed]
This is indeed a sad story that made me weep for him, an unsuspecting Sergey putting all his heart in his work for a company supplying Russian war machine.
Should definitely fork the project calling it RUinux, to remind everyone what he and his country does to ruin its neighbours including Ukraine.
What is the point of open source if it doesn’t protect individuals from the control of corps and non-democratic countries? What’s the damn point of open source if law enforcers can just hijack the project?
I don’t care about the Russians shenanigans but I’m dumbfounded by the lack of transparency, the obvious racism, from Linus.
This reminds of the Anti-German sentiment during WWI.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-German_sentiment
"The Justice Department attempted to prepare a list of all German aliens, counting approximately 480,000 of them. The Committee of Internment of Alien Enemies recommended sending them to internment camps, though the idea was opposed by the War Department and the Attorney General. More than 4,000 German aliens were imprisoned in 1917–1918. The allegations included spying for Germany and endorsing the German war effort.
When the United States entered the war in 1917, some German Americans were looked upon with suspicion and attacked regarding their loyalty. Propaganda posters and newspaper commentary fed the growing fear. In Wisconsin, a Lutheran minister faced suspicion for hosting Germans in his home, while a language professor was tarred and feathered for having a German name and teaching the language. The Red Cross barred individuals with German last names from joining in fear of sabotage. One person was killed by a mob; in Collinsville, Illinois, German-born Robert Prager was dragged from jail as a suspected spy and lynched. Some aliens were convicted and imprisoned on charges of sedition for refusing to swear allegiance to the United States war effort. Thousands were forced to buy war bonds to show their loyalty."
I'm not sure why you think this is comparable at all. These aren't Russian immigrants or descendants living in the west, they're Russians living in Russia, and working for Russian companies on the sanctions list. As a result, they've been stripped of their maintainership status, so they can still contribute, but they have to go through the regular send-a-patch process that any other random contributor would have to. It surely doesn't feel good to them after their history of contributions, but international law and politics cause things like this to happen.
>No matter the reason of the situation but haven't we deserved more than that? Adding to the GREDITS file at least, no?
The author of the linked article suggests that they should get some form of memorialization. When Linus is finished berating Sam for working at Halliburton during the Iraq war, something that by analogy I guess he has every right to do, this advice should probably be taken.
And then the next paragraph of the wikipeida: "In Chicago, Frederick Stock was forced to step down as conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra until he finalized his naturalization papers. Orchestras replaced music by German composer Wagner with French composer Berlioz. After xenophobic Providence Journal editor John R. Rathom falsely accused Boston Symphony Orchestra conductor Karl Muck of refusing to play The Star-Spangled Banner and triggered a trial by media in October 1917, Muck and 29 of the orchestra's musicians were arrested and interned in Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, until well after the Armistice. "
And of course notorious renaming hamburgers to "liberty steaks" in some restaurants in the timeframe between WWI and WWII.
"German Americans were looked upon with suspicion"
This isn't about Russian Americans, though. This is about Russian developers working for Russian companies that are involved in the actual war.
Have we seen the same about Israeli contributors?
Israel attacked by Hamas, which, in turn, was bribed by Russia to start the war. Hamas captured and killed citizens of few nations, completely unrelated to occupation of Palestina by Israel.
It's not like one side is completely innocent, while other side is pure evil.
Pointing out hypocrisy is not the same as pointing out a flaw in a decision. This can be both the correct, legally required decision, and also be hypocritical.
It looks like typical wartime politics. It's better to say sorry rather than to risk millons of lives due to espionage. There is no liberals at war.
>It's better to say sorry rather than to risk millons of lives due to espionage.
We can't open a discussion about obfuscated FSB patches if we aren't going to ask what we're doing about obsfucated NSA patches.
This isn't about patches at all. They can submit patches. Anyone can.
This is about being listed as a contact. You can EITHER work for a company that produces CPUs for the Russian army OR answer mail on behalf of the linux kernel maintainers, but not both.
So, what, the espionage concern is that a person who is listed as a contact might read emails on LKML.org?
The only possible justification for this is the one being offered, that some presumably Finnish lawyers do not believe it is safe for Linus to head a project with ties that could be made real to a jury between its leaders and sanctioned entities.
Considering the fact that individual people need to stay out of court as badly as they need to avoid being convicted this is not such a difficult decision to empathize with, but it is being conducted in a typical Kernel fashion, with personal views being injected at all the worst moments and contributors leaving who would not have had any quarrels if they had not been fabricated.
What espionage concern? Has anyone involved said there is one?
Yes, and I quoted the comment I had replied to. It sounds like we agree except for misunderstanding.
> Could this have been an NSA attack? Maybe. But there were many others who had the skill and motivation to carry out this attack. Unless somebody confesses, or a smoking-gun document turns up, we’ll never know.
USA? Russia? China? Israel? North Korea? Iran?
You managed to read about the results of that idiocy, and believe it's a promotion of that same idiocy.
Some context: Linus Torvalds Comments On The Russian Linux Maintainers Being Delisted - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41927838
I wouldn't wonder if, at some point, developers from Russia, China and other BRICS countries will fork the Linux kernel. That way they can still can do the changes they need.
If BSD were forked, I can't see a practical reason why Linux can't be forked.
This is pretty sad to see, but this post was full of a lot of acronyms that might only make sense to people active in this space, so it was a bit difficult to read. Among others, what are NTB and DW here?
NTB = Non-Transparent Bridge
DW = DesignWare
I wonder if we'll see persistent Russian and Chinese forks of the Linux kernel to address this problem? Large parts of the kernel are written by Russian and Chinese people, and the US's sanctions regime against the PRC is nearly as aggressive as that against Russia. The GPL guarantees they can still merge in code from Linus, as long as he doesn't intentionally make it incompatible, and probably a lot of contributors will want to get their code into Linus's tree and also the Russian and/or Chinese tree, which could lead to pushback on deliberate compatibility breakage.
Is it plausible that some three letter agencies are involved in this decision?
Sanctions fall under the State Department and OFAC which is under the Treasury.
The kernel has a gray hair problem.
No one in the West wants to do volunteer work any more because it pays a lot more to work at Evil Corp and wave some flags around during the appropriate month.
This patch is making sure that no one from the developing world will be replacing those gray haired people because why join a project who will dehumanize you when it is politically convenient?
Here's hoping they reverse course, because right now none of the major landmarks of open source look like they will survive the coming 20 years.
> The kernel has a gray hair problem.
> No one in the West wants to do volunteer work any more because it pays a lot more to work at Evil Corp and wave some flags around during the appropriate month.
I thought most of the kernel "volunteers" were actually working for some "Evil Corp" or another that was paying them to "volunteer" in some way related to the company's business.
I'm confused why you insinuate that "flag waving" in June has anything to do with this topic. You frame it as though that is something developers tolerate because they are paid to, in contrast to how developers behave in volunteer work (demonstrably untrue).
I wasn't talking about you personally.
I was talking about the type of human who is shown in this commercial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X55JPbAMc9g
We need to be very clear that they are human, and not a reptile wearing human skin and using human words to get to eat human babies.
> No one in the West wants to do volunteer work any more because it pays a lot more to work at Evil Corp
This post is about an engineer in the East, who apparently works for a company called Baikal Electronics.
"BAIKAL ELECTRONICS JSC is a Russian electronics company that manufactures semiconductors and computer processors. Baikal Electronics JSC produces computer processors for the Russian military."
https://ge.usembassy.gov/targeting-russias-senior-officials-...
Do you really think these companies in the East are somehow less Evil than Silicon Valley companies?
It's not only about work for Evil Corp being better. It's also about "how the fuck do I even start?"
It look like the Biden's Executive Order 14071 may be behind the ban. See this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5Ec5jrpLVk (discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41933079). If true, then potential consequences may be much farther than just the Linux kernel and can affect the wider open source development.
So we’ve got into politics in software. Good lord (spaghetti one, of course)! I thought we already have problem with quality diving in IT, because of all those newcomers wanting money and laziness only.
Sad to see we learned nothing from hundreds of years of wars and occupations. Glad someone mentioned Poland and India. Millions killed by USA joining every war to just sell weapons to both sides of conflict - will be funny too when many people stop dreaming and see this is the truth.
Edit: of course I’m waiting for all this flagging and downvotes, because I’ve spoken badly about The Greatest Nation Ever.
Politics in open source is not new. I think one person in this thread has quoted a CoC. They did not always exist... :-)
What is new is hackers speaking in favor of nationalist boundaries, after having spent the 90s in opposition to things like cryptographic export controls.
Some decisions are difficult and no matter what you do, it's going to be bad.
What a sad day for open source. I expected better from Linus Torvalds. I know writing more will just get this post removed.
I wonder if the same standard is going to be applied to Israeli (body count reaching 80k, almost all civilian) and American (body count of about 1M in just this century alone, almost all civilian) developers. If not, why not?
Sanctioning individuals who aid a criminal government serves two purposes:
1) it applies pressure on that government and
2) ensures that we don’t indirectly support its crimes.
However, sanctioning an entire population — citizens who are already suffering under a leader who disregards their wellbeing — achieves little and seems more like an act of revenge than a strategic measure.
Those casualties are not the cause of the day from western governments (rather the opposite) so they don't matter /s
“It’s ok when we do it”? I thought at least the FOSS community was above hypocrisy. Apparently not. And I get why there might be legal reasons (as tenuous as they may be) to not allow folks to be paid, but this particular dude was working for free.
If it was just legal reasons it would be totally understanable. Can't go against the law - but you can voice your reservations against it. Instead Linus is celebrating this.
I see you get your numbers from hamas.
I get them from the UN and from watching the entire Gaza Strip get flattened with people inside, financed by my taxes. Where do you get your numbers?
sad
alas
This is good. "West" and " Global South" need separate so there can be more competition and innovation in the world. I had no Idea linux got so political since it is not my OS, though recent wokenization of Debian should have made it clear OSS is screwed, but something good will come out of something bad.
I don't think many Western developers understand how much damage Linus just single-handedly dealt to the accumulated respect and trust towards the Linux Foundation leadership. If you think that the Russian IT community will think "damn, this evil Putin, we need to overthrow him", think again after taking a look at these discussions (in Russian) [1][2]. And many developers from other countries (especially from China) certainly have started to think "hm, we may be next" and act accordingly because of that, e.g. by not actively participating in the Linux development in the first place.
They could've handled it MUCH better, most people understand that the removal by itself is understandable (properly navigating the current regime of sanctions is extremely hard and it's better for an US-based organization to be conservative, doubly so with people from the directly sanctioned companies like Baikal Electronics), but lack of transparency, sneakiness, and the extremely aggressive, unnecessary and dehumanizing remarks from Linus just the situation from unfortunate bad to extreme worse.
[1]: https://habr.com/ru/news/852962/comments/
[2]: https://www.linux.org.ru/news/linux-general/17766938/page3#c...
> the extremely aggressive, unnecessary and dehumanizing remarks from Linus
Linus being Linus. I thought he had gotten some comms training but it’s hard to change when you’ve spent most of your career communicating very directly.
Linus and the Linux foundation breaking their own COC:
>In the interest of fostering an open and welcoming environment, we as contributors and maintainers pledge to making participation in our project and our community a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of age, body size, disability, _ethnicity_, sex characteristics, gender identity and expression, level of experience, education, socio-economic status, _nationality_, personal appearance, race, religion, or sexual identity and orientation.
I don't see "employer" on that list. Apparently, these people are being removed from their maintainership status due to their employer, not their nationality.
I assume your interlocutor was referring to how he dismissed those who complained about the move as "Russian trolls" more than the original delisting itself.
What's you point here exactly?
Without russia/China we're doomed? Is it the same for these two countries too if the west moves away from them?
And where exactly is Linus this evil strawman you created?
My point is that do not act surprised when you will see a noticeable reduction of contributions from Russian, Chinese, etc. developers. Most of people leaving (or not joining in the first place) will not be as visible as the Sergey's goodbye. By itself it may not be a huge deal, especially in the near term, but it compounds with other factors like dwindling (relative) popularity of C and the recent Rust debacle.
>And where exactly is Linus this evil strawman you created?
"Strawman"? Sure...
https://typeblog.net/55833/getting-called-paid-actor-by-linu...
Linus Torvalds said
> As to sending me a revert patch - please use whatever mush you call brains. I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be supporting Russian aggression? Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of history knowledge too.
The concerning part to me is that kernel development will not only be based on technical discussion anymore (or maybe it never was): why would a revert patch or not has anything to do with nationalities or personal's political and hisotrical view. Bias towards either side to accept/reject technical contributions for such large project is only going to be harmful for the project regardless of open-source or not.
you get that the revert patch was for non code?
By technical, it means decision is to be made objectively through logical reasoning following certain rules. It is a patch at the end and should follow kernel development process. However, the reason for that patch removing Russian maintainers until now is still not made fully transparent by either GKH or Linus. Instead, calling it "I am Finish" and "Russian aggression" has nothing to do with the patch itself and is not constructive discussion. Even we trace down to the road, none of the maintainers today has done that aggression to Finland. If the reasoning of rejecting the revert patch is "Compliance issues based on our lawyers suggestsion" etc. then just say it.
If the Russian invasion was the cause for this removal, it's rather late. The invasion started back in 2014 and strengthened two years ago. There probably also wouldn't be any lawyers involved.
My guess is that some secretive agency got in contact with the Linux team. Whether this is about infiltration of kernel development or an attempt to stop Russia from powering its war machines by Linux I'm not so sure, but I don't know about any laws that would require this specific process.
As for "none of the maintainers today has done that aggression": they haven't _yet_, but they can be made to by their government if that's what Putin wants. Countries bordering Russia are on edge, and, as has been proven in Georgia and Ukraine, rightfully so. The current anti Russian sentiment isn't a consequence of any historic events as much as it is an anticipation of a Russian invasion in future.
I would much prefer knowing why exactly removing Russian contributors would be legally required, but given the secrecy surrounding it, I don't think there's much public information around it.
>If the Russian invasion was the cause for this removal, it's rather late.
Sanctions don't move lockstep with military actions and neither do the courts that interpret and enforce the sanctions.
And the sentence before that said
> If you haven't heard of Russian sanctions yet, you should try to read the news some day. And by "news", I don't mean Russian state-sponsored spam.
And the sentence right before that
> And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren't troll farm accounts - the "various compliance requirements" are not just a US thing.
Meaning there is also valid legal reasons to do this with both the country he is living in (US) and the country he is from (Finland) having sanctions on the companies whose employees are being excluded. I think the is also a US citizen.
tl;dr; read the whole post instead of taking a single quote out of context.
If I have to guess that is likely the case, but if that is the case then reasoning and formal process should me made clear and transparent, while the weird part is that Huawei is also under sanctions and has a lot people contributed to Linux, but they are not removed. So what is our standard process here?
AFAIK the US Huawei sanctions are not a blanket "have nothing to do with them at all" but instead apply to telecoms equipment and phones and their components. Don't think software is a component.
There was some talk about banning Huawei access to AOSP but I don't think that ever went through.
And yes sanctions are weird. Finland is sanctioning a lot of Russian business including travel over the border for most part but still there is a train load of copper and nickel ore coming over every day or two.
This does seem a bit like throwing the baby out with the bath water but it’s understandable that the kernel project doesn’t have the resources for a more granular approach when even large organizations struggle with this problem.
I’m always in for making more clear and transparent processes though.
I think they have been transparent as they legally can be. We're going to have to read between the lines here.
Thank God Linus is not from India or Poland (tops on the lists of 'most invaded countries' found on a brief search)
That's missing the point, India has nothing to do with it. When Linus speaks about being Finnish it's about being invaded by Russia and I don't believe India ever was.
Linux is compromised. I half expected it when he allowed Rust in the kernel.
Thing will only get worse from now on. Like it always does.
i think one of the hardest parts of writing an o/s would be drivers for the h/w