Harald Welte (co-creator netfilter/iptable and free software foundation awarded developer) published his open letter as public take about recently events in the Linux Kernel Developer Community around quietly maintainers ban.

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VrednayaReddiska@reddit

It hasn't been Open for a long time and it hasn't been Source for a long time. CoreBoot has proprietary code, the kernel has DRM, because of which Hyperbola OS is even thinking of moving away not only from linux-mainline, but from Linux in general, towards BSD. There are also a lot of proprietary blobs from AMD, Nvidia and others. A move away from Unix philosophy. The imposition of systemD, Wayland which has been done for more than 10 years, even though X11 could have been rewritten 2-3 times on Rust, KDE and Gnome just two companies for a waste of budgets, Firefox which is against evil, but for a little evil of its own. And even Valve, which is kind of pro-good, but goes further and further into DXVK layers while ignoring DXVK-native. And also killing gallium-nine, which eats half as much as D9VK, the new bloated to browser Steam client.

I'm looking forward to Hurd, seL4, RedoxOS, Cosmic DE, budgeting XFCE4, Servo based browser, as well as distributions without systemD and with Musl. Because right now the budget is spinning in promoted distros, and the availability of choice is debatable because of the quality. The same Void Linux with Musl is unusable.

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snappytalker@reddit (OP)

Actually technical perfect comment! 👍

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nshire@reddit

I think the biggest problem was Linus's poor ability to communicate topics like this. Instead of explaining that his hand was forced due to sanctions, he just said some nonsense about how everyone who disagrees is a Russian troll.

I guess the US wouldn't complain about a blockade like that, right? Would Israel mind if Egypt blockaded them as long as it's only for weaponry?

Also, no it's really not. Israel has basically a complete blockade over sea ways on Gaza. Doesn't matter what you try to send there.

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cloggedsink941@reddit

Surely you've heard of "Israel"?

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Moto-Boto@reddit

Should I remind you what happened on October 7, 2023?

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cloggedsink941@reddit

Ah, so you're one of the "very smart people" who think palestinians were just having the best life on earth, so they just suddenly decided to join a terrorist organization and kill some people for no reason.

Nothing bad had been happening to palestinians for decades right?

The real nazis were at least proud of themselves. You just use bullshit to try and pretend there's some morality to this.

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Moto-Boto@reddit

Israel withdrew from Gaza back in 2005. Palestinians were receiving significant allowances from the Gulf countries. Tell me more about their hard life in Gaza before October 7, 2023.

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cloggedsink941@reddit

Israel withdrew from Gaza back in 2005.

And nothing happened since 2005 right? -_-'

Palestinians were receiving significant allowances from the Gulf countries.

And Israel got 5000x more from USA and used it to buy weapons :)

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hegginses@reddit

You realise Americans and Israelis could easily be held to the same standard over Palestine right?

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LostInPlantation@reddit

The difference being that Israel actually has a casus belli and didn't just make shit up.

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hegginses@reddit

There is no casus belli for genocide

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innahema@reddit

Man, that palestinian fuckers made masacre, and cosequences came to them.

You don’t want the KGB knocking on your door telling you to insert a back door or insert yourself out the window.

You realise Americans and Israelis could easily be held to the same standard over Palestine right?

MardiFoufs@reddit

That's just the definition of foreign policy. War is foreign policy. By the very definition of the word lol.

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woodrobin@reddit

That's not the definition. That's a euphemism. Look up the actual definition sometime.

Also, the quote you're mangling and misunderstanding is "War is the ultimate extension of foreign policy". It's not a good quote.

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MardiFoufs@reddit

What's foreign policy then?

Foreign policy is often directed for the purpose of ensuring national security.[4] Governments forming military alliances with foreign states in order to deter and show stronger resistance to attack.[5] Foreign policy also focuses on combating adversarial states through soft power, international isolation, or war.

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woodrobin@reddit

Foreign policy is not the definition of war, nor is war the definition of foreign policy. The threat of war, proxy war's, and direct wars can be used as tools to shape the behaviors of other governments (or subsume/eliminate/replace them), yes. But why would anyone with any common sense claim that war is exactly equal to foreign policy?

But congratulations on finding a definition of a sub-aspect of foreign policy that has the word war somewhere in it, I guess?

The point I was making was that it was hiding the depth of the cause of Finnish displeasure with Russia to describe an invasion of Finnish territory as a foreign policy dispute. You could twist reason and common sense to claim that war is one tool of foreign policy and an invasion and the defense against it is a sort of dispute -- you could also bend over so far backwards that your head ends up going up your own ass, but I don't think either one is reasonable or healthy.

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Superbrawlfan@reddit

I mean, plenty of Americans supported foreign policy like murdering what may be up to a million Iraqi civilians, so I can see how some might be justified in feeling like that.

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He's just being Russo-realistic. Russians call their neighbours Russophobic all the way until their tanks are rolling across the border.

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cloggedsink941@reddit

People like you will make cohexistance after the war impossible. Thanks for helping cause the wars of the future.

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CptPicard@reddit

Thanks for the implicit threat. I'll call the Russians out while I can, even when it would be made to be "my fault" in the future.

There are countless examples of this in recent history. Don't lie about it. The Estonians' warnings fell on deaf ears because of "Russophobia"-accusations.

How the coexistence will work after the war depends on the outcome of the war and the Russians' actions. It's up to the Russians to change their ways and mindset. Unfortunately way too many of them like the idea of an Empire and an autocratic Tsar. We already gave them a chance around the turn of the millennium, hoping that this time it would be different. It wasn't.

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cloggedsink941@reddit

It's not a "threat"… since it doesn't depend on me at all.

Yes you personally have fault for being a racist.

In my lifetime USA soldiers have been in my country (a NATO country) and pointed guns at our soldiers; a few km away from my home.

But I don't go being a racist to all americans I interact with.

Why? Because unlike you I'm not a racist :)

(and there's plenty of them who believe that they are entitled to invade whatever country they feel like invading)

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CptPicard@reddit

It is not racist to point out that some country has long-running patterns of behaviour that are rooted in the mindset of the people. Russians like kicking their smaller neighbours around and having an autocrat in charge. There certainly are exceptions but apparently they are not numerous enough to make a difference.

This hero finally falls. There is no place in 2024 for being an ethnophobe.

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IAmTheMageKing@reddit

It’s not a matter of ethnicity; it’s a matter of nationality. Linus is from Finland, which has been opposed to Russia for a very long time. Harald works for a Russian military contractor; his company was sanctioned, which is why this is happening.

coveted_retribution@reddit

Based linus

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mooky1977@reddit

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lazycakes360@reddit

It's yet another fantastic bullshit labeling akin to "everyone I don't like/disagree with is hitler." There's quite literally no need to be so vague about the reason when everyone knows it. Instead he had to be a dick about it and call everyone who disagrees with the decision a "russian troll."

I get this is Linus Torvalds we're talking about but come on.

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solid_reign@reddit

Not only that, but people lack so much empathy. Imagine an Iraqi programmer being banned in 2004 from developing the kernel. There's no need to be mean or act like they're at fault at all. Yet people kept telling Russians that if they don't like it they should tell their government to star respecting human rights.

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hegginses@reddit

All I can is that any Americans crowing about this should count themselves lucky that they aren’t held to the same moral standards

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CptPicard@reddit

Quit with the whataboutism.

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Nobody is in danger of being genocided by Russia

except, you know, 40 million Ukrainians

that’s not what they aim to do

it really is, anyone who doesn't have their head up their ass and isn't drugged out on propaganda recognizes this

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iavael@reddit

except, you know, 40 million Ukrainians

As far as I understand it, yes this could be handled better (certainly Linus his email response). But to be complete, I also read: 'They can come back in the future if sufficient documentation is provided.'.

At least it is known these people are probably Russian, contrary to Jia Tan, the ex maintainer of the XZ Utils, who tried to introduce a backdoor. So the ones not trusting them, could double check their code.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

yes, it was due to various compliance compliance requirements for employees for worked for sanctioned companies.

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solid_reign@reddit

Can you help me find where that explanation is in writing? I can't find it anywhere and I'm skeptical of it.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

it's been in most of the on posts on this subreddit. I'm not gonna do the work a simple search can do.

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notenglishwobbly@reddit

That’s such a terrible argument. You can be linked to “government work” in so many indirect ways just to excuse away targeting you.

You’re a baker and ever sold goods to a government employee? Well done, you’ve aided a government we’ve deemed criminal. You’re now on a drone kill list as “linked with a terrorist government” or some idiotic shit.

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CptPicard@reddit

Completely different things. Russians both are rather sympathetic to Putin's ideals on a national level, and if you engage in the "not all Russians" argumentation, you're going to have a lot of Russian operatives slip through the cracks. There's a reason why the border is closed in Finland.

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moreVCAs@reddit

Ironically, part of his justification gestured towards the fact that Finland allied with Nazi Germany against the USSR in WWII, or seemed to. Such a shitty timeline 😔

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Toad_Toast@reddit

The first Finnish war against the USSR, the Winter War, was agression from the part of the Soviets (they gave an ultimatum for a redefined border). Finland fought well without much international support but couldn't hold out against the overwhelming soviet army, they had to sign an unfavorable peace treaty, losing their second biggest city in the process.

Then, once Germany invaded the USSR, Finland took the oportunity to retake their lost lands and a little bit more in the Continuation War. And while they did cooperate with the Germans and let them move troops inside their country, they never actually joined the Axis. And once the Germans started to really get pushed back, the Finns signed a separate peace treaty with the Soviets. There was even a small war later to expel German soldiers which were still in Finland, though they were pretty much forced to do it by the Soviet.

So you're not completely wrong in some ways, I just wanted to give some proper context.

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suckit2023@reddit

And while they did cooperate with the Germans and let them move troops inside their country, they never actually joined the Axis.

They never were part of Axis, but they waited until 2020(!) to drop a literal swastika from the flag of the airforce:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53249645

Give me a break.

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Timoteux@reddit

Yeah, because we adapted swastika 1918, when Hitler was still fighting 1st WW.

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suckit2023@reddit

lol that's like wearing a Jimmy Savile fan shirt in 2049 and saying "I got it in 1970 before it was known he's a serial paedophile" 🤣

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TheMcDucky@reddit

It's like wearing red shirt in 2024 and saying "I got it in 2022 before that guy wearing a red shirt burned down an orphanage"

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In the Congress of Yalta the western allies were against the idea of the Soviets occupying Finland. Stalin gave terms because he was busy heading to Berlin.

The USSR spent the interim peace causing all kinds of issues and provocations. It was obvious they would just attack again given the chance. What's your source for this all of a sudden newfound will to "compromise" when they had just chopped off 10% of our country? And you're seriously suggesting that if there had been these negotiations we would have demanded more? Sorry what?

This idea that there's a difference between the alliances is preposterous. That you divide up the middle of Europe for just outright invasions that happen relatively quickly is not "better" than having to fight a longer term war because you know wars take the time they do and.. yes the idea was to come out on top. It's not our problem if the Soviets were becoming "stretched". Most of those three years were spent sitting in trenches, and specifically not making maneuvers much further. IMO Mannerheim blundered not cutting the Murmansk railway line exactly because he was cautious.

The British declared war simply because they kind of had to as a formality, not because they were somehow particularly offended. They did nothing because they understood the situation. Churchill hated Stalin and the communists.

Where are you getting this stuff of yours from? Super curious.

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MardiFoufs@reddit

That's the thing, the Soviets didn't really care about Yalta when it mattered. If your argument is that they couldn't have taken Finland because of Yalta, let's just say I completely disagree. It didn't stop them for Poland, and the Finns were completely at the mercy of the Soviets militarily speaking. In fact it is still a sort of mystery as to why Stalin was more lenient towards the Finn, like it's something that historians still don't understand exactly.

Also, if you don't see the difference between the Soviets allying themselves to gain time (Stalin knew that the Germans would attack eventually, knew that the USSR was far from prepared, and tried to gain time until 1942-43, and had the- dubious, I completely agree- argument that taking their half of poland was better than letting Germany have it) and allying yourself with Nazi germany to go on a revanchist spree of conquest when Finland itself was never under any threats of German invasion...

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hegginses@reddit

This is the issue with a lot of countries that live near Russia these days, their population is indoctrinated to see Russians as subhuman filth to such an extent they’re actually surprised/disgusted when anyone shows any empathy towards a Russian person

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TheJadeChimpanzee@reddit

They haven't been indoctrinated, they simply remember their history. And it's relatively recent history for most, let's not forget.

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hegginses@reddit

In the UK we remember our history with the Germans but we don’t go around calling them “orcs” and dehumanising them. South Koreans remember their history with Japan but again, they don’t go for dehumanisation. It’s propaganda and indoctrination, simple as that

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f_r_z@reddit

To expand on your historical perspective:

Stalin's speech to the Eighteenth Party Congress also marked a new series of bilateral talks, including, of course, one with Finland. Yrjo-Koskinen, the Finnish envoy in Moscow, received a memorandum from Litvinov early in March requesting the lease of the Islands of Suursaari, Lavansaari, and Seisaari to the Soviet Union for thirty years. Finland flatly refused the request, even when the Russians promised to keep them demilitarized. It was not a matter of demilitarization, the Finns believed, but a matter of the continually stressed policy of territorial integrity. An annoyed Litivinov played his last trump: in exchange for the islands, he offered 150 square miles of territory in east Russian Karelia. This too was refused.

Even though these few ideas put forth by the Soviet Union in March of 1939 were not taken seriously by the majority of the Finnish cabinet and decisions to refuse the offers were nearly unanimous, one dissenting voice broke the solidity of the government. Marshall Carl Gustaf Mannerheim, Chairman of the Council of Defense and long time hero of the Finnish Republic, did not share the views of the liberal majority of the cabinet. Whereas President Kallio, Foreign Minister Erkko, and Prime Minister Cajander argued that there were no guarantees that the first Russian request might lead to further demands for leases on the mainland, the aging **Marshall advised immediate acceptance in order to allay Soviet suspicions. He stated:

...the islands were of no real use to the country and with their neutralized condition, we had not the chance of defending them ... For the Russians, on the other hand, they were of practical significance because they guarded the entrance to their marine base in Luga Bay. We should therefore use the few trumps we hold.

Not only did he support the cession of the islands in question, but he also suggested a readj ustment of the Karelian frontier a few kilometers westward (but not far enough to compromise Finnish fortifications) as a gesture of goodwill to the Soviets. But the majority was not swayed, and Finnish silence once again frustrated hopes for a settlement.

(c) Webster '95, Steven D., "Bright Hopes and Bloody Realities: The Diplomatic Preclude to the Winter War" (1995).

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moreVCAs@reddit

Yeah well put. As others have said (and as the original patch implied), the justification could just be US law and an abundance of caution. Some supposed Finnish blood feud with “the Russians” shouldn’t enter into the conversation.

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isenegar@reddit

No. The first (1918—1920) and second (1921—1922) Finnish war against USSR was s aggression from Finland.

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CptPicard@reddit

Ståhlberg specifically said no to getting involved in the "tribe wars".

Finland never had the choice of being neutral or going against Nazi Germany until the war was in its final days.

The USSR funded and took part in their civil war in the early 1900s, invaded them in 1939 (after the USSR signed a pact with Nazi Germany in which the Nazis gave the Soviets the green light to invade them along with Poland and the Baltics), and has then threatened their country since the conclusion of WWII. That is why Finns don't like Russia very much lol, they have always seen Finland as a vassal that's only temporarily out of their reach. There's a reason Finland immediately shifted to the West once the USSR was no longer able to threaten them.

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Pavel_Petrov@reddit

there was NEVER independence state of Finland before Russian revolution of 1917. Russia has bought modern Finnish and modern Estonia, Latvia and Lituania lands from Sweden. So Lituania state was realy big and strong in past, but Finland never ever have been over there, NEVER. Only commies (Lenin and party) made they independence true

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CptPicard@reddit

Oh, the Russian "we owe you our independence" take. You did not buy anything, it was conquest.

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jus13@reddit

I know it makes you upset, but those countries don't belong to Russia, they are all independent and want to be independent, and they will remain that way.

Just because Russia desperately wants to relive its glory days of being a violent empire doesn't mean Finns or others want to be a part of Russia, they all despise Russia.

Only commies (Lenin and party) made they independence true

He declared the right for countries to have independence in an attempt to garner support from them, and then subsequently tried invading them all lmfao, the communists never wanted these countries to be independent.

Honestly this comment shows a deep ignorance of both the history of Russian imperialism in Finland and Finland’s response.

Embarrassing.

NASA still cooperates with Russia, for instance.

Yes, because sanctions legislation doesn't actually forbid that. Agencies doing things that aren't against the law isn't evidence of the law being ignored.

The vast majority of American IT goods and services are perfectly available in Russia, as much as it can be seen using a VPN with an exit in Russia.

That's because the sanctions in place are not broadly "you can't have anything to do with Russia, period," they're against engaging with specific named persons and entities.

The individuals in question were employees of companies named on the US sanctions list, therefore working with them on things they do in the course of their employment is legally fraught at best, and very probably outright criminal.

At the very best, Mr Torvalds surrendered to an insubstantial threat.

Multiple years in prison, which has been the result of recent criminal prosecutions of sanctions violations, is not an "insubstantial threat."

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githman@reddit

I mean, this is the problem with non-experts doing their own "research"

And you are, of course, a lawyer specializing in sanctions and understand everything perfectly. /s just in case

Explain us mere mortals just one thing among many, then: why does Intel block the access to its website from Russia but at the same time keeps selling its most recent CPUs there?

I'll tell you why. Because Intel is legally obliged to sorta-kinda demonstrate compliance but in practice no one gives a flying anything, the US government included.

And that's Intel. The other American IT corporations I checked do not bother with even that.

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mobiplayer@reddit

I may be mistaken, but didn't he say it was not just sanctions? weren't some devs not even living in Russia anymore?

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Buo-renLin@reddit

They probably can't mention "US law" in this case, so it would be rather better to address it with:

These personnel has to be removed due to various compliance requirements, we cannot comment on the specifics of these requirements at the moment.

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DevestatingAttack@reddit

That's responding to a different issue.

Kernel development happens in the open, even if someone were to add malicious code other maintainers and security researchers would catch it.

Wasn't a university banned from making updates to the Linux kernel only after a paper was published about how easy it was to put backdoors in the kernel?

I'm responding to the "they would catch it" question. Not the "is it okay to ban bad actors" question. The issue of "could they catch it" has already been answered. It's no.

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HiPhish@reddit

None of those malicious patches actually made it into the kernel though. After the paper was published the university was banned and all their patches that did make it into the kernel (whether malicious or not) were then reverted to be on the safe side.

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DevestatingAttack@reddit

They didn't make it into the kernel because the people conducting the research made a point of preventing them from actually being merged into the mainline branch. The kernel maintainers accepted three patches and would've been willing to merge them in.

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VelvetElvis@reddit

and security researchers would catch it. Besides, you should not trust any other government any more than the Russia

Remember libxz?

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

It's not in the same vein. XZ had one actual maintainer who couldn't have time to maintain the project, so they gave it over to somebody who could. It's pretty hard to beat the kernel as the kind of things nerds are more interested in than boring non-novel compression algorithms

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of course they were still in the AUTHORS file.. just not the MAINTAINERS file. Thee initial email when this started says that!

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ShinyPiplup@reddit

James Bottomley wrote this two days ago, though:

I would also like to thank you for all your past contributions and if you (or anyone else) would like an entry in the credit file, I'm happy to shepherd it for you if you send me what you'd like.

So I'm assuming it'll happen at some point?

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VelvetElvis@reddit

The way all this went down makes me think that there might be stuff they aren't at liberty to publicly discuss. It's entirely possible that the NSA or some other intelligence agency did find that a developer was compromised.

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mmmboppe@reddit

and showoff to the public before US elections. scare the plebs with external threat to gently force their voting hand

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Historical-Peak4729@reddit

You do realize literally anyone, even under a fake name, can contribute to linux right?

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everyone who disagrees is a Russian troll.

Sadly this is the universal rule of the modern Internet.

Linus moral high horse is so pathetic since he forgot the role of Finland in starving of millions on par with Nazi Germany during the siege of Leningrad.

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mmmboppe@reddit

everyone who disagrees is a Russian troll

Hi everybody,

My name is Alexander Pevzner, and I live in Russia, Moscow.

I'm probably one of these "Russian trolls", mentioned by Linus in his message a couple of days ago.

Regardless of that, I use Linux as my primary OS since 1.2.13 kernel (so about 30 years for now) and I've contributed few lines of code (or, most likely, few thousand of lines of code) to make driverless printing and scanning work on Linux, so if you use one of those modern multifuction printers, this is very likely that among other stuff you use one of couple of my projects already on our personal computer.

As for me, the free software movement is the important thing. Really important. It makes people to cooperate. Not only individuals, but people from competing corporations. The free software movement sometimes "glues" people stronger, that money interest, which often works to separate people.

The whole history of the humanity can be seen as a history of ugly wars (the war is always ugly regardless of its reasons, because it always kills the human in a person).

From another side, the whole history of the humanity can be seem as a history of cooperation. It was cooperation that allowed us to get out of the caves into outer space, to create computers and to write operating systems and other software for them.

Any war will some day end and any government will some day become part of the history, but the story of human cooperation has a chance to outlive the history.

In that sense, free software works in direction just opposite to the war. It lets people to cooperate, to see humans in another person's eyes (and code). Even when we are separated by the war.

And it puts a lot of responsibility to the free software leaders, because they not only manage lines of code, but somehow define edges of the future of the entire humanity. At least, in some aspects.

As a professional, I'm trying to cleanly separate software development from any kind of politics (probably, the same we all expect from the medical doctors). When I receive PR for review or a bug report, I look only to proposed code changes or bug description, regardless on who send me it.

The Linux Foundation is the community of software professionals. I understand that this is US organization and it is sometimes obliged by the US laws and regulation.

What would I expect from the professional organization in a case like this. The following:

The clear public note, that according to some US regulation the people from the sanctioned organizations cannot longer act as kernel maintainers
The personal communication with each of them, with explanation what is going on and verification that these persons are under sanctions
The clear public note, now with the list of affected persons, explaining that they will be removed from the maintainers list and with the great thanks for the work that they have done before.
Inclusion of these peoples into the kernel's hall of fame (the CREDITS list)

Nothing of this has be done, unfortunately. This is very, very pity :(

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In the super unlikely case that indeed those individual developers removed from the MAINTAINERS file would be personally listed in the embargo list: Then yes, of course, I agree, they'd have to be removed.

Even that isn't the case.

The way sanctions are enforced is by monitoring transactions, and it's those transactions that are prohibited. Sanctions don't prohibit any interactions with entities in the SDN List, only deals.

If the Linux Foundation did anything wrong, then they would recevie a Cautionary Letter from the OAFC requesting them to stop.

They didn't receive any letter because they didn't do anything wrong. People are speculating about what the USA government could consider a violation of the sanctions.

Let the USA government worry about that.

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JoJoModding@reddit

Are you sure they didn't receive a letter? Or perhaps instead a nice warning from a bureaucrat that they're looking into their activities and they better do this and that now before they'd send an official letter. Followed by the Linux Foundation asking its attorneys and them telling it to exactly what they did?

Because that seems quite likely.

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felipec@reddit

I'm reasonably certain.

The Linux Foundation has received a lot of criticism for their actions, and they could simply state that they received a letter from the government. That would squash a lot of the criticism.

They didn't do that because they didn't receive such a letter. Instead what they chose to do is let some of their employees share the opinion of the lawyers. They themselves are saying "we did it because the lawyers advised it". That implies there wasn't a bigger reason.

As to advice from a bureaucrat, that carries no weight. That's still the opinion of a person. The OFAC might disagree with this bureaucrat and so nothing.

But why are we bending over backwards for them? They should make an official statement, and they haven't said anything, because they don't think it's a big issue.

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maydarnothing@reddit

I love how people, especially in tech, just casually forget that it’s not Russia who actually made it into the Snowden papers, but actually the US, UK and other foreign western nations, who are supposed to the good guys, Russia isn’t a good actor either, but i just find it quite funny that the propaganda always worked, and we are now talking about “the possibility of them” pushing for malicious code, when we all know we had it happen already.

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I wholeheartedly agree that individual contributors should not be excluded based purely on their nationality.

Well good news, they aren't!

Quote from the clarification email:

If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list, our ability to collaborate with you will be subject to restrictions, and you cannot be in the MAINTAINERS file.

(snip)

In your specific case, the problem is your employer is on that list. If there's been a mistake and your employer isn't on the list, that's the documentation Greg is looking for.

In other words: it wasn't random Russian nationals that were banned. It was employees of companies that supply the Russian military. And if those people can prove that they don't work for those companies anymore they'll be let back in.

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nixtracer@reddit

And trying to work around it, as Harald suggests they do... gets you imprisoned for a long time. And it binds US citizens, not just companies. They really had no choice. (Though why this is only happening now and not two years ago I have no idea.)

All that was done wrong here was the lawyers being too paranoid to allow Greg KH to say why he'd done it, what the criteria were, and how to prove your non-employment by a sanctioned entity (how an unemployed person is meant to afford a lawyer to ask is still beyond me).

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EpiscopalPerch@reddit

Though why this is only happening now and not two years ago I have no idea.

sanctions regulations themselves regularly change, and the list of entities subject to them is constantly being updated, with both additions and removals as appropriate

in particular, there have been some major updates to the list in the last couple of months adding a large number of technology firms, I don't know enough about the specific individuals to be able to say but it's possible that their employers were not on the list until these most recent changes

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cloggedsink941@reddit

That's not the point… the letter is about how the thing was handled. He never suggested to violate the law.

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gizmondo@reddit

That's bullshit as far as I can tell. Where is NetUP in this list, whose employees (oncluding a former one who's actually working for Amazon) were removed?

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28874559260134F@reddit

They've set up that mail after one of the "removed" persons complained and after Linus T. went on his tour d'horizon in regards to, what he called, history.

It's good that they, eventually, came around writing that up but, before that, they simply removed folks and added a small note about this being already in effect. So the initial impression of Russians being removed for being Russian was correct at the time. It's not the current state of things though, I hope/think.

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6e1a08c8047143c6869@reddit

They've set up that mail after one of the "removed" persons complained and after Linus T. went on his tour d'horizon in regards to, what he called, history.

Literally from the same email you are talking about:

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.

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Drwankingstein@reddit

they were technically. as you hinted towards, they elected to remove every potential and now maintainers have to provide documentation that they aren't working for a sanctioned buisness, but it's important to note that none of this was initially made clear.

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I never knew there where so many Russian supporters till this happened.

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JohanAke@reddit

Majority of Russians have everything to do with the war. Just like you are already siding with invasion of Taiwan and even using the exact same excuses Russia uses.

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cloggedsink941@reddit

How many projects kicked you out because USA illegally invaded iraq?

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Aiden-Isik@reddit

I dont believe they said that?

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setwindowtext@reddit

Well just don’t invade Taiwan then, and you won’t be on the receiving end of that treatment.

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Lawnmover_Man@reddit

Linus's stance of "I am Finnish, therefore I do not sympathize with the Russians"

arkiel@reddit

Ah, yes, you're right. The Linux Foundation, a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization registered and headquartered in San Francisco, California, United States of America, should just be willing to ignore and/or circumvent US law.

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itsthecatwhodidit@reddit

If your software needs to be registered in one particular country for you to be able to run it, then it's not free.

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joe_blogg@reddit

then it's not free

just not your definition of free.

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So you agree that govt can dictate your software and still call it free got it.

You see the world how you want / how it should be, not how it works: it's called naive and impractical.

You read my comment and frame me as a person that only exists in your mind.

You are, in short: delusional.

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mina86ng@reddit

Yes, Linux Foundation prefers to follow the law than try to circumvent it. There’s nothing controversial about that.

And no, making everyone anonymous wouldn’t magically solve this issue (since ‘I wilfully didn’t check whether the person works for a sanctioned corporations’ is a poor defense) plus it would introduce other problems (such as impossibility to track copyright or higher risk of malicious contributions).

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

There’s nothing controversial about that.

It is controversial when the very essence of what the Linux project is, is jeopardized. Today it's Russians. Tomorrow it might be half the world. That is something that needs addressing ASAP. Moreover, the moment they had to move devs across state lines to develop code would have been the right time to say "OK, this is stupid, we need to move this thing to somewhere where we won't be bothered with these sorts of shenanigans". But no... how braindead can you be if you see nothing wrong with that scenario and what it might lead to some day 🤨... it's not a hurdle to be overcome, it's Pandora's box, and you've just realized it's been open. That should have been the moment you said "fuck this, we are not doing this".

since ‘I wilfully didn’t check whether the person works for a sanctioned corporations’ is a poor defense)

"That person wanted to stay anonymous, and we, as an organization, allow that, as well as the whole of the open source world. As long as the contributions are valid, nobody cares who you are and where you come from."

There, better?

such as impossibility to track copyright or higher risk of malicious contributions

Because knowing who that person is IRL somehow makes them immune to stealing code 🤨... or can't make malicious contributions... and the person that OKed those contributions has no responsibility at all in this 🤨.

I could make a bomb and send the package to a target of my choice, if that person/institution doesn't accept that package, guess what, my plan is flawed.

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EpiscopalPerch@reddit

It is controversial when the very essence of what the Linux project is, is jeopardized. Today it's Russians. Tomorrow it might be half the world.

You are aware that the US is not the only place on earth with laws, right? Where do you propose all these kernel developers move to so they can work unencumbered by legal obligations?

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

You are aware that the US is not the only place on earth with laws, right? Where do you propose all these kernel developers move to so they can work unencumbered by legal obligations?

That should have been their first sign that this is not working. If I have to move people to work on code, I need to move the foundation, not the people.

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EpiscopalPerch@reddit

I don't even know how to respond to that, you do understand that everywhere on earth is subject to laws, no matter where you move the foundation to, right?

Like, what is your thought process here? What are you expecting to accomplish by moving the Linux Foundation, exactly? It's the same question--where are you going to move it to that's not subject to laws?

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

There are places that have very liberal laws regarding software.

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mina86ng@reddit

Tomorrow it might be half the world.

That’s a slippery slope fallacy. I’m not concerned with that scenario because I know it won’t happen. And if we ever reach circumstances in which this will become probable, Linux will be the least of my worries.

There, better?

No. A policy which is designed to wilfully whether something you do is legal or not does not protect you from the liability.

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cloggedsink941@reddit

I’m not concerned with that scenario

Because you're american and you only care about yourself.

But try to imagine being a person which possesses empathy. How would you then think?

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Indolent_Bard@reddit

Unfortunately, international law trumps empathy, whether we like it or not. We can't just break the law unless we want to go to prison.

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cloggedsink941@reddit

Did the law say to be a dick about it? Can you link the text please?

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And if we ever reach circumstances in which this will become probable, Linux will be the least of my worries.

Agreed.

But it might start with these things and progress to things that touch our lives in more important areas.

No. A policy which is designed to wilfully whether something you do is legal or not does not protect you from the liability.

Protect who from liability? Cuz they're not doing anything wrong in the kernel. That's like having a trial for a person murdering someone, but also accusing them of eating a chocolate bar while they were commiting that murder... how does that matter.

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mina86ng@reddit

But it might start with these things and progress to things that touch our lives in more important areas.

And if it starts progressing to such things, we should act on it. At the moment we’re very far from it.

Protect who from liability?

Company which worked with sanctioned entity. It’s like suing a licensed gun dealer for selling a gun the murder was commited with and the dealer saying ‘that person wanted to stay anonymous, and we, as an organization, allow that.’

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

And if it starts progressing to such things, we should act on it. At the moment we’re very far from it.

People do "small" (at least in their mind) concessions all the time and that leads to more being "piggybacked" on the first one on a regular basis. And before you know it, you gave away way more than you ever wanted.

This is just human nature, and it's what politicians use to make people do their bidding. And this is exactly what will happen, mark my words. This is just the beginning.

Company which worked with sanctioned entity. It’s like suing a licensed gun dealer for selling a gun the murder was commited with and the dealer saying ‘that person wanted to stay anonymous, and we, as an organization, allow that.’

If it's completely legal, then that should change, but at the moment, there really is no way you can hold the gun dealer liable.

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mina86ng@reddit

And before you know it, you gave away way more than you ever wanted.

Again, this is slippery slope falacy.

As far as I know, being anonymous online is completely legal.

Whether it’s online or not doesn’t change anything. Being anonymous in general is legal. But if I remain anonymous while licensed gun dealer sells me a gun, that deal commited a crime in US. Just like if I’m anonymous employee of a sanctioned company, others may face legal consquences if they cooperate with me.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Again, this is slippery slope falacy.

Slippery slope falacy, whataboutism... why is everyone taking this approach... is everyone braindead?

It's a problem! Plain and simple, it has revealed itself, it needs to be dealt with!

When bugs are revealed, people jump right in to fix them, but when "bugs in society" are revealed, everyone is "let's see what happens" 🤨. We have seen what happens, it's not good, we need to fix it!

But if I remain anonymous while licensed gun dealer sells me a gun, that deal commited a crime in US.

I was contemplating a scenario in which it was legal to sell guns anonymously.

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mina86ng@reddit

It's a problem! Plain and simple, it has revealed itself, it needs to be dealt with!

But it’s not a problem. It’s a hypothetical scenario which has practically zero chance of occuring. If it was a software bug, it wouldn’t be addressed either.

I was contemplating a scenario in which it was legal to sell guns anonymously.

Meanwhile in the real world which we live in, it’s not.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

But it’s not a problem. It’s a hypothetical scenario which has practically zero chance of occuring. If it was a software bug, it wouldn’t be addressed either.

It just did! What part of "removing people based on who they work for" does not reveal the problem 🤨... or moving devs around to work on crypto code, how is that not a problem 🤨?

Meanwhile in the real world which we live in, it’s not.

For Christ sake 🤦... I was making a point.

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mina86ng@reddit

What part of "removing people based on who they work for" does not reveal the problem

The part where it’s a very limited list of companies which are sanctioned for a good reason.

For Christ sake 🤦... I was making a point.

You were making a point which is not applicable to real world. Wilfull ignorance isn’t a defense so making contributions anonymous wouldn’t solve anything.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

The part where it’s a very limited list of companies which are sanctioned for a good reason.

And we all know where these sorts of things lead to. First there is this, then there is something else, before you know it, the "exception" is the rule.

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Indolent_Bard@reddit

But you can absolutely hold American companies liable for working with Russian ones. Remember where most of the Linux patches/funding come from.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

My point was with the gun dealer hypothetical scenario... nevermind.

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No_Share6895@reddit

People will say there's all these problems but not fork the kernel or try to get people who will to do it in a place where these "problem's" wouldn't exist they'll just shit post about Linus not moving counties

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

"That person wanted to stay anonymous, and we, as an organization, allow that, as well as the whole of the open source world. As long as the contributions are valid, nobody cares who you are and where you come from."

This could easily be a vector for copyright infringement. Of course you'd probably never get in trouble if you stay low profile. However, if adoption ever grew, there'd be intense scrutiny. Most countries do comply with some general idea of copyright law, even if they aren't friends with the US.

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Budget-Supermarket70@reddit

I mean yah your not going to be on the maintainers list if your anonymous.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

I know. But that is also something that needs to change.

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TheAgentOfTheNine@reddit

There is controversy as this puts the foundation and the project by extension under influence of american law.

What if they pass a law that forbids making business with non-americans? What if they pass a law requiring 6 months secrecy of contributions so that the US authorities can verify the code is not trying to undermine America?

I don't worry because they banned a dude giving support to a shitty soviet CPU. I worry because after that success, they will try more stuff.

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EpiscopalPerch@reddit

There is controversy as this puts the foundation and the project by extension under influence of american law.

I mean, yes?

People who work in the US are subject to US law.

Move it to Switzerland? OK, same problem, because now people who work in Switzerland are subject to Swiss law.

There is no place on earth that anyone with options would really want to live, that does not have a lawmaking authority. I'm not sure what you're wanting to happen here.

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TheAgentOfTheNine@reddit

They can also liquidate the foundation. It's not like its existence is being net positive for the project as of late.

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EpiscopalPerch@reddit

Cool.

The people who do the work are themselves, personally, subject to the laws in effect where they live and work.

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TheAgentOfTheNine@reddit

As long as there are no laws against writing, it's all good.

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No_Share6895@reddit

They've Always been under it's influence it's why Iranians for example haven't been maintainers

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mina86ng@reddit

What if they pass a law that forbids making business with non-americans?

mmmboppe@reddit

the Linux Foundation is the grass rooting threat that Linus is so afraid of

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newbstarr@reddit

Linux runs the world / internet. Every single government is trying to potentate it

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

There are ways to fight corporations and governments meddling with Linux. The Linux foundation is just not willing to go that far and prefers to do their bidding instead.

Also, your claim about "millions of deaths worldwide" is dubious at best.

Really? You really wanna go this route? Because the US is/was/still is the one financing a looot of paramilitary organizations around the world.

Then the word "responsible" should have a totally different connotation.

Should it? Because it currently does have a different connotation, depending on where you live. A US dev working for a company that does business with the US military and is also a Linux kernel contributor is just fine, but if a Russian does it, that's no good.

I wonder if a Russian working for the US military is OK 🤔...

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mmmboppe@reddit

the US is/was/still is the one financing a looot of paramilitary organizations

like Linux Foundation? :D

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Last time I checked, LF is not a paramilitary organization.

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Moto-Boto@reddit

You can't compare the US campaign in Iraq and Nazi aggression. Because I don't remember the US government claiming that Arabs are "Untermenschen" and their land must belong to the US.

Most of the Germans accepted very long time ago that every civilian killed by Allies is a victim of Nazis and only Nazis. The same is applicable for Palestinians and Hamas.

A Russian working for the US military is absolutely fine if he got all the clearances. Because I don't recall US miitary deliberately targeting children's hospitals.

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mmmboppe@reddit

I don't remember the US government claiming that Arabs are "Untermenschen" and their land must belong to the US.

hello from the casino owners living in reservations

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

You can't compare the US campaign in Iraq and Nazi aggression.

Oh, yeah, because that was because of oil 🤦, silly me.

Because I don't remember the US government claiming that Arabs are "Untermenschen" and their land must belong to the US.

No, you did it far more elegantly, installing US apponited leaders and US companies to rebuild what you destroyed. If the Nazi were about money, the US surpassed them.

Most of the Germans accepted very long time ago that every civilian killed by Allies is a victim of Nazis and only Nazis. The same is applicable for Palestinians and Hamas.

Like the US did with the Chagossians through the UK and they accepted the fact that they were the reason why they got displaced from their homeland, not the US/UK?

A Russian working for the US military is absolutely fine if he got all the clearances.

Soooo... working for the US military complex is fine, but of the same is done for another country that doesn't have the same worldview as the US is not?

Because I don't recall US miitary deliberately targeting children's hospitals.

https://theintercept.com/2015/10/07/a-short-history-of-u-s-bombing-of-civilian-facilities/

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SnooCompliments7914@reddit

Good. All US citizens should be accounted to collective guilt on war crimes in Palestine.

[-]

mmmboppe@reddit

nukes

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henry_tennenbaum@reddit

Thank you. Conservative defenders of the Russian regime here in Germany have a very selective interest in using our past for their agenda.

I would happily have provided a source if you had asked, but you didn't. Here it is:

https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/e7d548a7fc835f9f3c9cb2e5ed97dfdfa164813f.camel@HansenPartnership.com/

Now your turn. You said, and I quote:

No individual Russian can contribute to the Kernel anymore because of this sanction

That is not how the real world works. There are statements that are true, and there are statements that are false. I said, and I quote

This isn't a ban on Russians in general, only those working for the Russian government or defense industry

You said in reply, and I quote

No individual Russian can contribute to the Kernel anymore because of this sanction.

Not "I get the impression that no individual Russian can contribute", not "Linus gave the misleading impression no individual Russian can contribute", you made a unequivical statement that is factually incorrect. You are simply wrong. You levied a false accusation against the Linux foundation.

You could have checked. There are several other places in this thread where that was posted. You could have asked if I had a link. You didn't. Yet somehow you are trying to make me out to be the bad guy merely for caring about the truth. No. I am not going to apologize for telling the truth.

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TheBlackCat13@reddit

You came here thinking that I was wrong and I needed correction.

I wasn't "thinking" you were wrong. You were wrong. You made a factually incorrect accusation. You could have checked. You didn't care. You could have asked for a source. You didn't care until I asked for one from you. Again, I really can't understand why it is so incomprhensible to you that I care about what is actually true.

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dexternepo@reddit

So as usual you have ignored my question. I wonder why

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dexternepo@reddit

I stand by what I said. Linux is no longer open source.

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LvS@reddit

Yes, I know this.

I also know that everybody is still able to use, modify and share the software.
Nothing about that has changed.
Nobody's rights to the software were taken away.

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UN headquarters is in US. just like Linux Foundation

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atomic1fire@reddit

All UN diplomats have diplomatic immunity.

While the offices themselves are subject to local law, the diplomats have some legal protections against a host country abusing it's authority.

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Acebulf@reddit

It's a global project. If the US is going to interfere, move the infra to Switzerland

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henry_tennenbaum@reddit

Famously outside of the globe.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Agreed.

And I think an open letter should be filed asking Linus to apologize for the name calling and mixing politics in an open source project, as well as reinstate the removed maintainers, no matter what the legal cost may be.

And things like moving devs over state lines to work in encryption in Linux is stupid and should stop immediately! Move the foundation to Switzerland or another neutral country, problem solved.

This is something that should have been done the second they had to ship devs to work on an open source project... I really have no idea how that scenario was OK in their heads for an open source project.

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thunderbird32@reddit

And I think an open letter should be filed asking Linus to apologize for the name calling and mixing politics in an open source project, as well as reinstate the removed maintainers, no matter what the legal cost may be.

Was Linus's letter inflammatory? Yes. But I don't think he (or GKH) should be expected to possibly endure that legal cost, just so a few Russian maintainers can continue to contribute. Especially because those maintainers work for companies that supply the Russian military and are therefore the targets of those sanctions. If they want to contribute they can change industries. I wouldn't expect anyone to have sympathy for me if I worked for Lockheed Martin or Raytheon and the US got sanctioned.

[-]

MeanLittleMachine@reddit

But I don't think he (or GKH) should be expected to possibly endure that legal cost, just so a few Russian maintainers can continue to contribute.

I seriously doubt you would have this same response if Israeli maintainers are in question.

Especially because those maintainers work for companies that supply the Russian military and are therefore the targets of those sanctions.

In that case, all contributors that work for a company that in way or another enables the military of any country should be removed... which would leave the kernel with about 200 contributors.

If they want to contribute they can change employers.

Switch jobs because the kernel people don't like where I work 🤔... yeah, I think I'll pass. Where I work is my choice, and it may not be a choice I can currently just switch out of nowhere, just so that I can be a part of something I'm not even getting paid to do.

It's discrimination, plain and simple... on an open source project nonetheless! The biggest one in human history! And they set this example!? Just because it's easier to comply than to actually try and fight this and see if there is a legal way to actually keep those maintainers? Sorry, but that's a copout and they know it!

And on top of that, Linus's comment, good god 🤦... and then they try to micromanage other contributors and maintainers trying to leave... I mean... sorry, but the whole thing is a mess from the start. No transparency, no consensus, no try to even see if there is a legal way to keep those contributors. Sorry, but what they did is how corps solve problems. At this point, Linux is no longer an open source project.

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thunderbird32@reddit

I seriously doubt you would have this same response if Israeli maintainers are in question.

Are you assuming that I would be against Israeli maintainers being banned from contributing if Israel were levied with sanctions? Because that wouldn't be the case. I wouldn't want them to suffer possible jailtime (up to 20 years by US law I believe) just so a few devs can contribute to a software project. That's assinine, get a sense of perspective. Contributing to the kernel is not a human right.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Contributing to the kernel is not a human right.

Freedom to do whatever you wish, as long you (personally) are nit harming anyone else, is. What my employer or my family are doing is their own personal choice, has nothing to do with what I choose to do. I can't control what they do, I can only control my own personal actions and choices... and my personal choice is to work for that emplyer. Myabe I don't have a choice right now, maybe they're working on something that peaks my interest and I like doing that, maybe they pay better than everyone else... doesn't even matter, I (me, personally) haven't broken any international or moral laws!

Yes, and people can judge you for it. Like any choice.

Judge and discriminate are not the same thing! Discrimination is action based on judgement. If people just judge, I am completely fine with that, and that is their right, the right to say what they want.

He should really have someone else do communications for things that are non-technical.

I don't think it's that... he was nowhere to be found with the Rust fiasco, yet he felt the urge to respond to this 🤨... seems like it hit close to home... which I can understand, but a response like that 🤨... no, I can't. Get your shit together, take a breather, take a day if you have to, settle down, clear your head, then respond.

The only way this could have avoided realistically is if the Linux Foundation were able to move entirely overnight to international waters, or the moon, even "Neutral" countries such as Switzerland is sanctioning Russia.

This is all for a good reason, Russia has committed war crimes for far too long, let's not ignore overnight what they have been doing for years.

Switzerland also has sanctions against Russia.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

I seriously doubt they are the same as the US ones.

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TheBlackCat13@reddit

What specifically is different about the Swiss sanctions?

[-]

you can search with swiss sanction filter at https://www.opensanctions.org/datasets/ch_seco_sanctions/ , for example Baikal is under the SECO sanction list: https://www.opensanctions.org/search/?q=baikal&scope=ch_seco_sanctions

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

What exactly are the sanctions, because they weren't listed there.

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syjer@reddit

In general, they are of 3 types: asset freezes, travel bans, and restrictions on trade.

You can search the name in https://www.seco.admin.ch/seco/en/home/Aussenwirtschaftspolitik_Wirtschaftliche_Zusammenarbeit/Wirtschaftsbeziehungen/exportkontrollen-und-sanktionen/sanktionen-embargos/sanktionsmassnahmen/suche_sanktionsadressaten.html -> you will see, in the docx you can download, the reference to the law.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Assets freeze, travel bans and restrictions on trade do not cover intellectual trade, even if that is made by a person employed by a company being sanctioned.

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I would not be as sure as you.

You could fight it in court because, as noted, no goods or services are exchanged, I was following the rules and nothing except code (something immaterial, basically, knowledge) was exchanged. And you will most probably win... in a fair court I mean... which I presume most European countries have.

That's why you should send an email to the SECO and ask clarification.

Of course I will inform myself upfront. But I'm not the one trying to move a foundation from one place to another, am I... neither is the LF (as far as we know)... but it should be doing just that if it isn't.

I would also add that any company that work internationally will be quite cautious when interacting with known sanctioned companies.

The interaction in this particular case is just with the individuals employed by those particular companies. The LF had nothing to do with the companies in particular. The LF didn't even know that he was paid by said company to contribute to the Linux kernel... and, even if they did, lots of other companies do, should all of them be held accountable? Maybe at some point in time Intel did business with the Russian military, but Russia never had a chance to use the rockets with the Intel chips in them till the war in Ukraine... should Intel be held accountable? Or the person that wrote the code for those missiles? Or maybe Linus and everyone that contributed to the kernel at that point, in which, maybe, a stripped down version of the Linux kernel was included in the firmware for that rocket 🤔?

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syjer@reddit

The interaction in this particular case is just with the individuals employed by those particular companies

This is enough for any compliance officer in any bigco to have a look and make sure to avoid risk.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Last time I looked, the LF is not a corp.

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syjer@reddit

A foundation is still legally liable FYI.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Ah, so trying to actually question a law or it's consequences by that entity is completely out of the picture 🤨? Just play dead and comply, even if that means we have to do things that are insane, that is OK, because it's the law.

Ah, but the collateral damage is not that big, so we can live with that... when are people gonna realize, it's not about the damage or who got removed, it's about what this means to the project, it's basically doing the bidding of one country. They may be right about this now, which doesn't mean they will be right about everything else in the future. This opens Pandora's box and things should be taken way more seriously regarding where the LF resides and where it's infrastructure is.

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MardiFoufs@reddit

Okay, but this doesn't just affect the Baikal devs. So which sanction exactly would be relevant to banning contributors with a .ru email address?

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syjer@reddit

Your question is not relevant. I'm only specifically talking about the Swiss sanctions.

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MardiFoufs@reddit

So the original point that Switzerland would've been a better host for the project, even with the sanctions they implement, is accurate? I'm actually curious, I don't know enough about this.

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syjer@reddit

In my opinion not. Especially for being a foundation with international reach (and thus subject to any secondary sanctions).

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henry_tennenbaum@reddit

Switzerland is not part of the US, it's a part of the EU.

They will be surprised to hear this, as they're famously not.

Maybe inform yourself a bit before commenting on a topic you're ignorant about.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

OK, yeah, it's part of Europe, my mistake 😁.

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Lord_Rednas@reddit

This is true, yet they do not have to comply to the US OFAC listings (a lot of companies still do ofc due to secondary sanctions). It would be a good first step. Moving the Linux foundation to become a true international organization, having infrastructure be fully independent,... would also help.

It is not as if there aren't any international organizations that went down this route (CERN, which also ended cooperation with russian scientists ig...) IDK, how else would you solve this problem?

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dondarreb@reddit

you are free to join Chinese or Russian forks (already existing), or start your own foundation etc.

Linux foundation was started and is still governed by Linux. People came to him and work with him, because 1) he is not greedy, 2) he is not an asshole, 3) he is extremely smart and thoughtful individual. So far all of his decisions are beneficial. (unlike windows managers chaos etc.).

Solving this problem is an easy thing. Russians can make their country not a mortal threat to their neighbors.

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Lord_Rednas@reddit

Linus Torvalds is the lead maintainer of the Linux kernel, not the leader of the Linux Foundation. Linus is very well know to be anti-social when something is not going the way he wants, which can be a good or a bad thing depending on what is happening.

I'm sure that the Russian ex-maintainers should just stage a coup against Russia's government?

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dondarreb@reddit

Linux foundation as it is now is an corporational umbrella over everything "linux" and not only.

The core which defines linux is linux kernel. (the rest can be run as sub MS windows).

Lead maintainer is the director position in Open community. His words are always final.

"anti-social" becomes mild variant of "fascist" thrown around in order to negatively label people you don't like. He is quite direct and doesn't like stupidity.

I don't care what these russians will do. Their mother RusBITech was banned from Foundation a year ago. My remark was about "we need to solve it"....No we don't. The russians should (all of them).

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burning_iceman@reddit

Are you saying that the Russian ex-maintainers should just stage a coup against Russia's government?

What specific sanction prohibit US nationals from using Russian code?

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Which should be corrected ASAP. It should be located in a neutral country.

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Lord_Rednas@reddit

Neutrality in open source is of prime importance.

Would you ignore good scientific research simply because Iran made it?

The quality of the work the maintainer created is what should matter, not what the infrastructure is used for. Else nobody would be allowed to contribute to open source at all, considering the sheer amount of military applications in the US that use linux/open source.

Also calling a total of 308 998 004 humans "evil" is absurd. Literally echoes the fascist ideology that you claim to want to prevent. Bush era propaganda "axis of evil" bs. I'm sure the WMDs will be found any day now right?

Opening up a path to preventing a significant part of the world to contribute properly to your project simply because ideological reasons is a waste of resources and goes against the core reasoning behind the tit-for-tat logic of open-source. It does not help any nation or organization further.

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doctorx32@reddit

I surprised how Russians tries to blame anything but themselves - if they even tried to stop war (if they wanted ofc), nobody wasn't against them.

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devnullix@reddit

Maybe you read the point of them and letter's author about worst idea by generalization "Russian", "German", etc. Russian developers isn't russian government isn't it? Elsewise, Is all Germans or Ukranias (because many of them have nazi tatoo) nazi? Once you let it drop, don't stop.

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28874559260134F@reddit

I'm glad to see that another known entity in the Linux field is able to point out the obvious double standards in place while also taking into account what "just following the law" usually incorporates. Especially since the initial handling of the case didn't even communicate the correct tenor but kept to vague terms after already executed actions.

While it's certainly true that an organisation cannot simply avoid legal pressure and that this, usually, is something the whole system hinges on, it's also true that "a law" only defines what is getting enforced, not how good or bad the idea behind it ever was or will be. Additionally, it's an artifact of a peasant mindset to accept such rulings blindly, in a democracy, without wondering how much, well, democratic input the process before allowed in the first place.

I openly applaud to his awareness of the various other actions one could use to exclude almost every big nation on this planet from participating in... anything, if the same mindset as in the Russian case was applied. By this, he, being an older fellow, hasn't yet fully accepted the distinction of the "worthy and unworthy victims" Mr. Chomsky and Herman described in their book Manufacturing Consent.

He's an original thinker after all.

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rocket_dragon@reddit

Serious question: when people are pointing out the double standard, why is it almost always

"Russian defense contractors should not face consequences for atrocities"

and not

"US defense contractors should also face consequences for atrocities"

Could we normalize holding governments and their contractors accountable for war crimes?

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Budget-Supermarket70@reddit

US is not going to sanction itself

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rocket_dragon@reddit

Other countries like China can and do sanction the US.

For sure it's a problem that the US is the dominant economic force in the world, China is fast catching up and Russia would be further along if it didn't impale itself on a pointless conflict.

If the EU wasn't struggling with its own right wing goobers it could be a progressive counterweight to the war crimes of the US.

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Particular-Brick7750@reddit

"it's a problem that the US is the dominant economic force in the world"

Holy fuck can you chapo tree house morons stfu and just move to china already

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Ironxgal@reddit

Why do you think the EU is some bastion of no war crimes lol?? The US had quite a few coalition partners from the EU after 9/11 fighting the war on terrorism. Plenty of European military troops dispersed in Africa. Sure the EU has much better social services but they’re not opposed to warring and frequently support the US in its efforts.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Could we normalize holding governments and their contractors accountable for war crimes?

The other you know full well, and only invoke because you know it's meaningless: the LF is registered in the USA. The USA will never enforce such sanctions on itself or its allies. So it's a moot point only brought up to obfuscate the obvious double standard.

It's very easy to say "🤓 well actually yes America should too but that doesn't mean Russia should get away with it" (which is not what anyone is saying anyway) when you know that that will never, ever happen.

It's hard to take Americans and their allies in mostly western Europe seriously when they only display this sort of all-encompassing humanitarianism and demand that all guilty parties be punished when you only ever see it invoked to hand-wave the one-sidedness and self serving nature of moves like this away.

I'll take you seriously when the war in Ukraine is over and you're still campaigning tirelessly to have Americans who work for big tech companies that aid the US government (essentially all of them) banned from kernel dev.

I'll watch this sub, as I have for years as well as other Linux spaces for years, and eagerly wait for this budding movement to take off. I keep seeing this sentiment expressed, surely it won't totally disappear as soon as it's not a convenient excuse, right?

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rocket_dragon@reddit

"Whataboutism" is when you're planting a red herring, to make the conversation focused on only the US and stop talking about Russia.

It's a really easy fix: just say, "hell yeah sanction Russian defense contractors, and now let's sanction US defense contractors next".

I'll take you seriously when the war in Ukraine is over

If you used Gaza or Iraq as examples, you would have made an outstandingly valid point.

There's no justification for Putin's war, he's a loser who is scared to look weak and he's the laughing-stock of the entire world. Putin makes Russia much like th US's leadership makes the US look bad.

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frog_inthewell@reddit

If you used Gaza or Iraq as examples, you would have made an outstandingly valid point.

Oh, I did make a valid point. You just missed it. The point is, when the main focus is not on the crimes of another country, then I'll admire you for your consistency in following through on your oh so humane demand that the USA face the same consequences. Until then, it only comes across as a hollow acknowledgment of what you clearly understand is hypocrisy.

Also, I don't know if guys like you are bots that are better than I'm used to spotting in the wild, or if you're genuinely incapable of understanding simple points.

The point is not to defend Russia's illegal war in Ukraine, and if you'd stop inferring that from any and all criticism of the global US-led sanctions regime which target many countries, starving and humiliating millions, that'd be great, m'kay? People are right to complain that a country lead, consistently over consecutive administrations, by genocidal freaks gets to make the decisions. And, again, it's the weakest cop-out to say "well yeah, I support sanctions on the USA and Russia!" (two countries I actually do support sanctions on, compared to about half the planet that is currently sanctioned for something-or-other).

We're saying the same thing, but when you say it, it is meaningless because we know that sanctions will never, ever be placed on the USA. You only say it to go "hey, look over here, don't think about the hypocrisy!". Where I live, a country subjected to unimaginably cruel sanctions by the USA for the crime of winning its freedom and then crushing the Khmer Rouge, we have a term for certain people. It translates to "dog brain".

Only such a person would infer that a criticism of the fuckin USA, of all places, being the country with the power to impose sanctions, actually means that invading and annexing Ukraine is good, actually. Maybe you're not a 🐶 🧠, though, to be fair. Maybe you're actually smart and cynically employing Mcarthyite rhetorical tactics to avoid real criticism of your country. Who's to say, really?

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rocket_dragon@reddit

If you're concern-trolling about "hypocrisy" when it comes to sanctions on Russia, then you don't actually support sanctions on Russia, it's that simple.

mmmboppe@reddit

I can't name a single country on this planet that isn't its own biggest enemy

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

That is true... in a philosophical sense, but yes, it is true.

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frog_inthewell@reddit

Oh, I fully agree. I'm just trying not to further split people in trying to make a point to, in a subreddit that I (rightly) rarely talk politics in, so I don't know the "temperature" of the general population here on that.

One would think FOSS people are generally pretty humane, but I've made the mistake of dragging too many sub-arguments into exactly this topic and being received poorly as a result (well, probably also had to do with the extremely long furious screeds I was writing, but you get the picture).

Then there's the zîö bõt håsbärá types who literally search any and all subs, no matter how small, for keywords.

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No_Share6895@reddit

While I wouldn't be upset if they were banned they aren't being sanctioned by the USA unlike Russia

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zinsuddu@reddit

Do you see where this starts to fall apart? I'll give you two: the first is that it would lead to total breakdown of international FOSS cooperation

When I try to understand the behavior of large sophisticated organizations, such as the very capable American state, or "Deep State", agencies, I follow the rule that "the outcome was the goal". The agencies that impose economic and technical sanctions for example, have the most perfect Harvard/Yale/Oxford trained minds in the world and almost infinite resources for their work. If the outcome of their "rules" and "sanctions" were to weaken the FOSS culture and degrade FOSS software then that is their intention.

Consider that just a few weeks ago the "White House" issued a warning against relying on software written in C and C++. What would be the outcome of eliminating C and C++ software from out computers today? (Hint: the linux kernel is written in C, Gnome software is written in C, KDE software is written in C++)

They may say that "it is necessary for security" but the outcome will probably be less security and will certainly be less human cooperation on perfecting the Linux system that runs so much of the world today. If security were actually the goal they would have continued insisting that their critical avionics be written in Ada -- but they did not.

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zinsuddu@reddit

Do you see where this starts to fall apart? I'll give you two: the first is that it would lead to total breakdown of international FOSS cooperation When I try to understand the behavior of large sophisticated organizations, such as the very capable American state, or "Deep State", agencies, I follow the rule that "the outcome was the goal". The agencies that impose economic and technical sanctions for example, have the most perfect Harvard/Yale/Oxford trained minds in the world and almost infinite resources for their work. If the outcome of their "rules" and "sanctions" were to weaken the FOSS culture and degrade FOSS software then that is their intention. Consider that just a few weeks ago the "White House" issued a warning against relying on software written in C and C++. What would be the outcome of eliminating C and C++ software from out computers today? (Hint: the linux kernel is written in C, Gnome software is written in C, KDE software is written in C++) They may say that "it is necessary for security" but the outcome will probably be less security and will certainly be less human cooperation on perfecting the Linux system that runs so much of the world today. If security were actually the goal they would have continued insisting that their critical avionics be written in Ada -- but they did not.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Consider that just a few weeks ago the "White House" issued a warning against relying on software written in C and C++. What would be the outcome of eliminating C and C++ software from our computers today? (Hint: the linux kernel is written in C, Gnome software is written in C, KDE software is written in C++)

I hope this happens... I really do... maybe then the LF will take things more seriously and move to a country that doesn't have these restrictions.

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henry_tennenbaum@reddit

Consider that just a few weeks ago the "White House" issued a warning against relying on software written in C and C++. What would be the outcome of eliminating C and C++ software from our computers today? (Hint: the linux kernel is written in C, Gnome software is written in C, KDE software is written in C++)

That might be the stupidest conspiracy theory I've heard in a while. Do you think that Windows software is not written in C or C++?

The funny thing being that I'm not even at odds with anything you've listed. Double standards are the very essence of systems being way out of whack.

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rocket_dragon@reddit

Join the communist revolution, each the rich and seize and redistribute their assets.

Without th ultra wealthy fighting over a resource high score, there won't be any wars, and there won't be any defense contractors to sanction.

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Available-Sky-1896@reddit

Which double standard is present here? Russia is at war with a European country and wages hybrid war with the rest of Europe. Locking them out of European matters does not seem irrational nor does it seem to be some sort of a "double standard".

But my guess is that you didn't really think that far, because your thinking stops at "west bad, not-west good". And Chosmky is a pig worth less than the sum of his parts.

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zqjzqj@reddit

This commit is not doing what it is (or was) supposed to do. Biden mentioned a few times that sanctions are not aimed at regular Russians, and are designed to disrupt the supply chain and hurt those profiteering from the war.

In practice, however, Russia is able to sell gas to China and then buy electronic components for their UAVs without disruptions. All while random Russian developers get the boot.

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snappytalker@reddit (OP)

Sounds like century wisdom. Thank you.

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28874559260134F@reddit

Thank you for bringing the open letter to my attention. :-)

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ghoultek@reddit

Thank you for posting this. It wasn't plain before but not it quite plain that we have bumped up against the limits of the Linux project. Most of us thought of it as an international collective project that was beyond the limits borders of countries and brought people from all around the world together to contribute to something very positive. Instead we see that there are a proverbial thousand knives plunged into the project as stakes claiming that the project exists within the confines of some countries' borders and laws. I disagree with Linus' choice.

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gelbphoenix@reddit

The Linux Foundation is based in the US. They have to comply with US laws. The removed maintainers are working for companies that are on the US OFAC SDN List.

cloggedsink941@reddit

What is the risk to linux users? Can you tell us instead of whatever handwaving racism you're doing here? Like ACTUALLY, what could these developers do that would harm you or me?

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I know fully well the xz thing.

So you're one of the people that thinks that foreign secret services are full of idiots who'd just ask a real person from their country to submit a backdoor and hope nobody notices?

Well grek kh tried to sneakily delete a bunch of maintainers and it seems everyone noticed.

Linux kernel isn't a minor project like xz with no active developers where you can become admit just by showing up and being a pushover.

Was this your big insight? Ok so you had nothing behind all of your racist handwaving, as I suspected.

Have a nice day.

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Budget-Supermarket70@reddit

Sure when things where good and countries where working together. We have had a long stretch of realitive peace in the world when countries where dependent on each other. Now they are splitting up and shoring their boarders against each other.

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ghoultek@reddit

I disagree partially. Outside of the realm of the Linux community, Linux development and tech. stuff, there has not been a peace. Peace is more than the absence of war/conflict. The Russian government is not a good actor on the world stage in several areas, but my country, the USA, is not even close to a good actor. I get that the foundation and a chunk of the foundation's infrastructure are in the US but this goes to show everyone that we don't own anything and Linux is not FREE open source software. It is available for use without paying a monetary cost, but the right to continued access to it is contingent upon: * Linus continuing to allow us to access it * the countries in which Linus, the Linux foundation, and the foundation's infrastructure operate in, continuing to allow us to access it

This makes Linux Free-ish.

The BDFL (benevolent dictator for life) title that Linus holds creates limits on access and what we can and cannot do. Borders, governments, politicians, and their sanctions means that Linux (the project and kernel) only exists as products and services of countries. The nation state been reached its limited a long time ago. Capital is global hence the term internation finance capital. Big billionaires don't give a damn about those man-made lines drawn on a map. Germs, microbes, and viruses don't respect man-made borders either. Humans when motivated by need (fear/despair) or greed don't respect borders. Even the US does not respect borders (sovereignty). It invades, destabilizes/destroys, and plunders other countries (why is the US still in Syria today occupying wheat and oil fields). For those who value freedom we have lots of work to do. We have to free ourselves and each other from these wanna be overlords, be they political or corporate. This includes the United Nations which is structured as a vestige of settler colonialism.

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e0m1@reddit

"It is news to me that the MAINTAINERS file was usually containing Companies or that the Linux kernel development is Companies engaging with each other."

Come on man, really? Companies sponsor employees to contribute to open source projects, how is that surprising? My company sponsors 4 employees for different projects, because we use them in our software. It has been like this for...20 years maybe? What the hell does that have to do with anything anyway?

People often confuse open source with the idea that anyone can contribute, but that’s not what it means. Open source means everyone can use the code, but contributing is a whole different story.

I feel really bad for those maintainers, that is a lot of hard work they put in. At the end of the day, you think Linus wanted to do this? You think any maintainer wants more work to do? Of course not. This is more work for everyone else.

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Potential_Penalty_31@reddit

Linux is free software, not open source.

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SmigorX@reddit

I don't think you know what those words mean.

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e0m1@reddit

And for whatever it is worth, he is/was sponsored to do open source work, to be an open source liaison https://lwn.net/Articles/291636/ And good for him, that is the way it should be. But how are you surprised it happens everywhere when he did the same thing? Good maintainers should be sponsored by companies.

He said, and I quote. . "It's a really big opportunity for me being a representative of the community to talk to a company at this high of a level. That's what makes me very optimistic."

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Jeb19780101@reddit

i also think it is critical to remember that anyone contributing from any particular location is subject to that government’s whim. that goes not just for russia or china forcing a citizen to put backdoors in an opensource project, but to a western country forcing a contributor to ban a contributor from an enemy state. another good example is france arresting the telegram founder.

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Ah yes making reddit entertaining was the whole point of making the sanctions after all…

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FatCatDev@reddit

this is the problem you have when one person controls the repo, and then that person starts to become old, stubborn, and stupid

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Octopus0nFire@reddit

Couldn't agree more. It pains me to see the Linux community grow into a bunch of pushovers and bootlickers.

This is not a problem of communication. This is not a PR issue. This issue goes through the very core of what the Linux community is meant to represent.

Stop trying to excuse the inexcusable. The infestation of politically motivated actors and ideologues in the community is showing and glowing. Open you eyes before it's too late.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

This issue goes through the very core of what the Linux community is meant to represent.

Exactly!

Don't know how very few people overlook this! Removing these maintainers is an issue, I agree, but a bigger issue is what this will mean in the future... because this sure as hell looks like the Linux kernel is serving political interests on one side or another, regardless of the side.

Open source projects should not take political sides, period! You avoid that at every possible cost. They didn't even try! I would have had respect for them if they did and lost, but just simply complying with this!?!?... no, just no!

Stop trying to excuse the inexcusable. The infestation of politically motivated actors and ideologues in the community is showing and glowing. Open you eyes before it's too late.

The kernel should be forked ASAP and all contributors with half a brain should quit contributing to the Linux kernel. The project should be renamed and declaratively noted that this kernel has nothing to do with the Linux kernel, political or otherwise, except the codebase.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

Open source projects should not take political sides, period!

This is not the "open source" i signed up for and have contributed to for many years.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

So, they should take sides? As in right or left?

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Some of these maintainers stated that they were no longer getting paid by their employers to work on Linux, but they still kept doing it... I share the passion, I know how it is, I also do stuff for very little or no pay just because of the challenge and because I like what I do. Of course, that's not always the case.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

I assume if they can prove they are no longer working for the company they would be able to continue working on it. Some of them were still using company email addresses.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Maybe they changed employers and their current employer doesn't pay them for that, they just continued doing it for free. It's not uncommon from what I know.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

That's up to the lawyers to decide.

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henry_tennenbaum@reddit

What absolute nonsense. FOSS and the Linux kernel are the product of and indivisibly tied to political beliefs.

It's not neutral or apolitical of you to advocate for the inclusion of defense contractors working for the Russian war machine to be part of that community.

Dictatorships are also antithetical to the spirit of freedom of collaboration and association.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

FOSS and the Linux kernel are the product of and indivisibly tied to political beliefs.

Ones that have no ties whatsoever to IRL political beliefs and values... and I don't mean the "on paper" ones, because most of them are rarely enforced in practice.

It's not neutral or apolitical of you to advocate for the inclusion of defense contractors working for the Russian war machine. These people are also still allowed to contribute, just not as maintainers.

OK, in that case we can remove all Israeli and US maintainers as well... seems fair, right? Given the history of both countries, especially the US.

Dictatorships are antithetical to the spirit of freedom of collaboration and association.

Agreed, I completely agree. But isn't open source kinda like that as well 🤔... the owner of the project is the last authority on whether something gets to happen or not?

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

OK, in that case we can remove all Israeli and US maintainers as well... seems fair, right? Given the history of both countries, especially the US.

As soon as these folks end up on sanctions list from a relevant country then this could happen! So get them on there :)

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

As soon as these folks end up on sanctions list from a relevant country then this could happen! So get them on there :)

Oh, yeah, right 🤣🤣🤣.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

But i hope you get the the point that this is only about what laws say, and nothing about the morals of any of the countries involved or unpunished crimes they have may have committed.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

It's about not even trying to fight this that got people ticked. I could've lived with trying and failing, that is OK, at least you tried. It's about not being transparent, it's about how Linus sees Russians and this issue as trivial.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

The transparency did come. Nothing we can do about linus's personal stance.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

The transparency did come.

Sorry, came too late, the damage was already done. Not that it couldn't be reversed, but Linus clearly stated his stance on this.

Nothing we can do about linus's personal stance.

I agree.

But in that case, me personally, I'm steering people as far away from the Linux kernel project as I can. I'm sorry, but I can't be the only one that sees his stance on this as racist and political. Those sorts of things have no place in open source, period. That is my very strong belief and I thought Linus was above this. Guess I was wrong.

I live in the Balkans. We've had our fair share of bloodshed and conflicts throughout history. I don't believe there is a place that's seen more war on this earth. We're still a powder keg, Serbians, Bosnians, Croats, Macedonians, Albanians... we all live on this small piece of land and we're still bickering with each other. One of the many reasons why I started my own small open source projects is the culture. None of that bs is present in the open source world. We're there for fun and the code. I would never dream of not approving a PR because the person that submitted it was of a nationality that has a problem with my own, and I know for a fact that some locals have contributed. My stance is, RL politics has no place in open source, period.

A lot of people in software dont' realize how many Russian folks have been involved in writing FOSS code and doing it very well.

I actually do know this... which is why I felt so hurt when I read what Linus wrote. You work with these people on a daily basis, why write that and involve politics into this... there were so other ways to make a statement, but he chose the dumbest way imaginable... which showed his stance on Russians in general. You can have personal views and opinions regarding Russians, Americans, whoever, but that has no place in coding, period. You work with these people and you're there because of the code. There is no place for these things in open source.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

You can have personal views and opinions regarding Russians, Americans, whoever, but that has no place in coding, period. You work with these people and you're there because of the code. There is no place for these things in open source.

I agree with most of what you wrote, but not this (in a general sense). I can see applying this to Linus himself since he's a gatekeeper of a major project, but not generally.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Stop trying to excuse the inexcusable.

You first. Maybe you should practice what you preach and not engage in apologism for employees of the Russian defence industry while Russia commits wholesale war crimes in Ukraine.

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DFS_0019287@reddit

The initial communication was, I agree, done very badly.

But banning people who work for sanctioned entities is IMO the right thing to do, even if it is to some extent collateral damage.

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28874559260134F@reddit

I gather that he mainly questions, albeit just rhetorically, how one currently ends up on a (Western) sanctions list. As he points out, the merits of the people in question do not offer any reason for banning or even a reduction of their role. If anything, they have proven to work for the community in the first place.

He also goes into how "we" (in the West) view ourselves and our actions, certainly (without mentioning it directly) pointing to our obvious double standards. And he's not afraid to ask, as a German, how he should be treated if those standards weren't applied as selectively as they are.

So it's quite an honest and self-aware statement to make, especially in public.

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TheBlackCat13@reddit

So what should the Linux foundation do, just flagrantly break the law and hope they won't be punished for it?

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28874559260134F@reddit

I'd say the letter makes a good case for what could have been done and still can be. It also outlines what's happening now, as a result of failure and foresight.

I think it's fair to assume that the sheer risk of "getting punished" is enough for some people to comply with anything and not even starting a discussion around it. But if that's all there is in our democratic system, how is it different to what e.g. the Soviets had running? Or the former German Democratic Republic?

2.

oh burn

he also moved quite far away from Finland

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cloggedsink941@reddit

I don't think moving matters. In finland (and sweden) they are 100% convinced there is no logic behind russia's actions. Just like in USA.

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TheBlackCat13@reddit

I was replying to this comment:

They can at least pretend to push back a bit.

The question to ask the other folks in turn is: If you imagine a situation where you receive an order that you are not okay with, would you consider pushing back, or would you, under any circumstances, always comply?

That whole "what exactly should they do" aspect is a meant to obfuscate the approval to the double standard being applied. One can hide behind the "See? They cannot do anything, so it must be ok" impression while never having to face that, as long as the own preferences are served by mentioned standards, their application is very much welcomed.

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TheBlackCat13@reddit

See how this works? He/she flipped the burden on you to "answer my question" to then claim a win because you didn't provide the details on an irrelevant aspect nobody cares about.

But, leaving aside what the letter listed, I would ask you if you recall events in recent and current world history which would amount to comparable crimes as the ones you mentioned. If there a none, if this is a singular issue, there is of course nothing to complain about in regard to double standards as there would be no separate category but just a single evil entity.

But if there are some other things of a similar scope and scale, we would have to honestly ask ourselves why those are getting a pass while only certain ones receive attention. After all, a selective application of justice is the basis for... the exact opposite.

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TampaPowers@reddit

You weren't questioning the regulation, you were questioning whether it is appropriate in a democracy to "just play dead and comply" with law.

If you want to have Rule of Law, then in the end, yes, it is incumbent upon law abiding entities to comply with the law. They can appeal and voice their objections, but must also comply with the law.

Perhaps you are meaning that Linux no longer attempts to be a law abiding entity? You're entitled to that opinion, but I don't think the majority of people working on Linux would agree with that.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

You weren't questioning the regulation, you were questioning whether it is appropriate in a democracy to "just play dead and comply" with law.

It's not... but I guess you'd also have to disagree with that law... maybe they agree with it.

Perhaps you are meaning that Linux should no longer attempt to be a law abiding entity? You're entitled to that opinion, but I don't think the majority of people working on Linux would agree with that.

They could at least not comply until they are absolutely sure there is no other way around this. That wasn't the case, they complied without even questioning it... which also leads me to believe that they don't really care... or care enough.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

There are trading irregulations all around the world and increasing.

Finally someone with half a brain!

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

My thoughts exactly.

This can be Pandora's box... it has that potential. People don't realize that now, but it could be right on our doorstep.

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arkiel@reddit

So is this an isolated event or these sanctions will grow in unexpected direction?

You might not have noticed, but there is a war going on, where Russia is invading their neighbor. More sanctions might be applied at any time, this is how these things go.

As for your logic, I'd like to remind you that those developers are on that list because they have been associated with companies that do produce weapon components.

For example, one that was associated with a company producing CPUs for the russian military, and was contributing to the linux support of those processors : https://www.opensanctions.org/entities/NK-YPJWwBAGqGnYJowZ9WAXTV/

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witchhunter0@reddit

You might not have noticed, but there are many wars in the world right now and there have been many in the past.

If there is something wrong with the code, than don't except it ofc. Anyway, it is highly unlikely those companies are using vanilla kernel and that they cannot incorporate their own modules later on.

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mrlinkwii@reddit

It is a process that's documented in law

how linux maintainers get removed due to sactions isnt law in fact theirs no policy

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IAmTheMageKing@reddit

It was known. It was made clear by several maintainers; just not by Greg right off the bat nor Linus in his response.

Harald Welte works for a company that supplies the Russian military, and is the maintainer for drivers for that companies hardware. While his Linux work is allegedly on a volunteer basis, it seems likely that Linux Foundation lawyers were advised that he is considered a part of the sanctioned company.

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plg94@reddit

Harald Welte works for a company that supplies the Russian military

you got any source for this?

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IAmTheMageKing@reddit

Sorry; I mis-remembered the names. Harald doesn’t work for Russia, the de-listed maintainers do. I confused Harald with the author of a different letter complaining about he himself being removed.

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zshfan@reddit

How about Boeing buying titanium products from Russia's VSMPO-AVISMA? Americans are just hypocrites, and Torvalds as a descendant of Hitler's allies is a Finnish-Norwegian Nazi! Once a Nazi, always a Nazi.

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voidvector@reddit

Law alone is not a valid document for any reasonably-size organization -- many laws are not enforced (e.g. adultery), laws are often interpreted (e.g. effectively the job of SCOTUS).

Everything else you said is valid argument, but they should be done before the fact, not after the fact.

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watermelonspanker@reddit

Are you saying that they should just ignore the relevant laws because they might not be enforced? That seems pretty shortsighted

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voidvector@reddit

Conversely, are you saying any lawyer can send a take-down citing random law (e.g. DMCA) to get things taken out of kernel?

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watermelonspanker@reddit

Yes, a lawyer can send a takedown notice. But lawyers can't make you do anything, a court or a judge has to do that. And yes, I'm of the opinion that the kernel development team should not ignore the DMCA

If a lawyer notifies you of copyright infringement in something in your Kernel, and you don't dispute that claim, you should remove it. If you do dispute that claim, a judge gets to decide who is right.

Kernel developer engineers are not the only ones making decisions, but it is the responsibility of the team as a whole (including their legal team) to follow all applicable laws.

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voidvector@reddit

I would have no problem if this PR was submitted by a lawyer and approved by a kernel developer.

However, this was submitted by Greg Kroah-Hartman, a kernel developer, with no indication of additional paper trail.

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watermelonspanker@reddit

I don't know enough about the situation to discuss what sort of legal advice the submitter may have had

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voidvector@reddit

I have worked for larger corporations where we had UI front-ends for ACLs stored in source code. Compliance staff with no technical knowledge do use them. I also mentioned adding "on behave of" as an alternative.

IMO technical contributors (devs) should absolve themselves of outside-of-the-org politics as much as possible.

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watermelonspanker@reddit

I disagree. Politics affects everybody in real, visceral ways.

I wouldn't dare tell a programmer who had to move to western Ukraine because his office was bombed to keep his political opinion about potential Russian influence on a project he is working on to himself. That's tantamount to tacit approval of the invasion, IMO.

You may have different opinions, but neither yours nor mine matter since we are not the ones in the position to make such decisions

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voidvector@reddit

It goes both ways -- we have nurses and pharmacists refusing providing their service due to their own political position.

Tech does not need the same division.

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watermelonspanker@reddit

Medical providers have the right to those opinions and to not feel compelled to do something they think is wrong. And the licensing boards have the right to revoke their licenses and their places of employment have a right to fire them.

If the division is between people who are OK with Russia launching a war of aggression on a peaceful neighboring democracy for no legitimate reason vs. people who think that's wrong, then that division is warranted.

Perhaps you wouldn't have a problem collaborating with, let's say for sake of argument, a dyed in the woold self proclaimed Nazi. I and many others, on the other hand, would have a problem with that.

For an explanation of why, see the Paradox of Tolerance

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voidvector@reddit

The libraries in my district had to reduce hours due to lack of funding, the schools also have to do fundraisers to meet their stationery budget. I think those are my priorities.

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watermelonspanker@reddit

Seems a bit non-sequitur, but you do you.

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voidvector@reddit

If the division is between people who are OK with Russia launching a war of aggression on a peaceful neighboring democracy for no legitimate reason vs. people who think that's wrong, then that division is warranted.

You were effectively saying here the division is between pro-Ukrainians and pro-Russians, and one should take a noble stand. I am effectively responding, I am in a third group that you missed -- someone who prefer not be involved as I have my own problems at home.

My earlier response is effectively saying I prefer having processes and lawyers in place, so I don't have to get involved.

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watermelonspanker@reddit

I didn't say anything about making any sort of stand. I don't want you to do anything. I was commenting on the discussion about *other people* taking a stand. Though you do seem to object to that, which in itself could be construed as you, in fact, taking a stand.

But go do you bakesale. The libraries could use the money

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Russia's sanctioned companies are on a stricter do-no-business list, which means that no cooperation with them in any way is permitted.

Is intellectual exchange considered business? I would like a quote where this is unequivocally stated.

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LvS@reddit

Banning is not the issue

There are a lot of people for whom banning is the issue.

It's the ones who believe only the quality of the code matters, not the quality of the authors.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

It's the ones who believe only the quality of the code matters, not the quality of the authors.

Josef Mengele did horrible things during WWII... that doesn't mean that medicine didn't benefit from all he learned during WWII.

Take whatever is good from what is bad. That's my reasoning. There are hundreds of horrible acts committed every day. If even one of them has a positive impact on something, like passing a law that prohibits something that enabled that act, that is a good thing. The act itself is not, but the outcome of it is.

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LvS@reddit

So you would work together with Mengele.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

No, I never said that.

Maybe Russia should just fork Linux into a totally free version and then people like you can contribute to that one.

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mmmboppe@reddit

write a clone from scratch. in Rust

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Maybe the US should drop support for Israel.

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No_Share6895@reddit

The 4 freedoms are still in tact

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anotheruser323@reddit

You mean like the US ?

Also "..lot of people..", "It's the ones who..". While you yourself have selective reasoning based on your beliefs.

Bunch of hypocrites.

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eriomys@reddit

now only convenient people are put in charge

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Zwarakatranemia@reddit

But since when has the collaboration of individual developers in an open source project been something related to actions completely unrelated to those individuals? Should I as a German developer be excluded due to the track record of Germany having started two world wars killing millions? Should Americans be excluded due to a very extensive track record of violating international law? Should we exclude Palestinians? Israelis? Syrians? Iranians? [In case it's not obvious: Those are rhetorical questions, my position is of course no to all of them].

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rx80@reddit

you say "should someone be tarred with a brush for something historical they had no involvement with".... we're not talking about "historical" and "no involvement", this is literally about now, current time, right now, this instant, for more than a decade now, still ongoing, related company.

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OrseChestnut@reddit

I was talking specifically about the original post and what that said. If you've got an issue with it, take it up with the maintainer who said it. Meanwhile, try taking your own advice and actually read what I said.

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Yeah, it's ridiculous that people shit on IBM for building the machines making the Holocaust run faster.

Clearly, sanctioning the engineers working on these machines would have been a bad thing and lead us down a slippery slope where today people like Harald Welte aren't sure what would happen to them if they did something like that again.

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ZonotopiUomo@reddit

Just a bunch of whataboutism. What a naive and misinformed take.

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Poppod@reddit

Russia is attacking Ukrainian now. If Germany would act now like it did 90 years ago, German developers should be excluded. Germany got punishment and has been mostly nice ever since.

There are limits with understanding. And attacking and killing innocent neighbors is over the limit. There are all kinds of sanctions on Russia, this is just part of it.

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Exactly... and maybe then everyone will realize how stupid this whole thing is.

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zackyd665@reddit

Why should it be impartial to evil?

You mean like the genocide that the US and Israel are committing?

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MardiFoufs@reddit

Nice downplaying of the Holocaust through a false comparison. Germany has done something that no nation has done before or since (systematic, industrial extermination with only one goal, terminating an entire group). So no, that's not really comparable to anything else.

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Michaelmrose@reddit

There have been events as horrible in every way. Also its a perfectly acceptable analogy. Hell the Russians set up death camps for undesirables and liquidated the people they were supposedly invading to "protect" by using them as meat waves.

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MardiFoufs@reddit

If you can't see the difference between that and industrial extermination, then yeah my original theory that this was just downplaying what the Germans did in WW2 is correct.

Can you point me to industrialized, systemic extermination (btw gulags, as bad as they were weren't extermination camps) done by basically anyone else in Europe or even Russia... ever?

Oh yeah, like you didn't have an interest in all those wars and you didn't install yourself at those front lines all by yourselves, but no one could say a word because you'd go all Hulk on their ass, as usual.

Seriously, quit fucking Linux and write your own goddamn OS.

Agreed! We should fork it and not allow any US citizens in it! Or Israeli! Or Russian! Or Ukrainian! Anyone that has ever lived in a country that was at war with another country shouldn't be allowed to contribute!

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earthman34@reddit

Israel has killed US citizens on multiple occasions. Look up USS Liberty. It doesn't change anything.

Europe chose to pass both their security and their roles as world leaders to the US. After centuries of colonization the rest of the world was kind of fed up. Europe chose to kiss Putin's ass for oil and gas and look the other way after Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova, and now Ukraine... how's that workin' out for ya? Scared yet?

The Russian developers got removed because they work for sanctioned entities directly contributing to the Russian war effort. This should have happened on day one. Seriously, pick a side and quit the self-righteous pearl clutching.

I'm dead serious. Fork your own OS for the morally pure and unreproachable segment of the world that's completely above it all.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Israel has killed US citizens on multiple occasions. Look up USS Liberty. It doesn't change anything.

And yet the US are still giving them help in arms and other things... not invading them 🤨... I'm sure this wouldn't be the case if it was some 3rd world country with no lobby in the US government.

Europe chose to pass both their security and their roles as world leaders to the US. After centuries of colonization the rest of the world was kind of fed up.

And you know this because you have first hand knowledge... because you have seen documents that pass this right to the US, correct?

Europe chose to kiss Putin's ass for oil and gas and look the other way after Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova, and now Ukraine... how's that workin' out for ya? Scared yet?

Ah, yes, you decided to invade for the same thing, natural resources, i.e. oil. Completely different than ass kissing, no doubt, but also costs lives... and it was very convenient for you that none of it was on your soil. Come to think of it, you have never ever fought a war that was on your soil 🤔... well, excluding the civil war. And all of them were started by the US! The Japanese did a number on ya during WWII and you went Hulk on their ass, sending 2 cities back to the stone age! Yeah, we kinda learned our lesson after that, don't mess with them, they have no freaking idea what they're doing. Half of them are insane, the other half are following the insane ones. These current US elections prove exactly this!

You are losing politically, economically and in power and you can't stand that! That is exactly why you have sanctions over half the world, because someone makes a better product than you and you can't stand that it's better... capitalism served you well, until others became better at it.

The Russian developers got removed because they work for sanctioned entities directly contributing to the Russian war effort.

What about devs working for companies in Israel that help the Israeli/Palestinian war? What about Palestinians doing the same? What about devs, in general, working on, oh, let's say, code that's supposed to go in some drone carrying a bomb that's supposed to kill hundreds of people... but if it's for the US war machine, that's OK, but if it's for the Russian one, that's not OK.

If you're gonna remove, remove everyone that is working for the military in one way or another. But there's a problem... you'll be left with 200 contributors if you do that.

I'm dead serious. Fork your own OS for the morally pure and unreproachable segment of the world that's completely above it all.

I wouldn't be surprised if that actually happened... and it's about time it did, the Linux project is no longer an independent open source project like it used to be.

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earthman34@reddit

Please go do it. Then devote 30 years to building it into something, only you'll be doing it on the backs of all the people who came before you. But before you do, go look up the definition of open source and tell me what that has to do with any of what you said.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Then devote 30 years to building it into something, only you'll be doing it on the backs of all the people who came before you.

They chose their path, I get to choose mine. It is under GPL and is completely legal.

And I'm fairly certain most devs would agree with me... at least in principal. I know most won't contribute to the fork.

But before you do, go look up the definition of open source and tell me what that has to do with any of what you said.

Only quality of code matters. Nothing else. Doesn't matter who you are, who you work for, whether you're black, asian, white, a monkey... as long as you can make quality code, it doesn't matter who you work for and who you are.

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earthman34@reddit

"Quality of code"? LOL, you guys better start worrying about that code then, you've got so many unpatched critical errors it's comical. After that xz fiasco I would have thought the wisdom of more tightly regulating who actually has access as a developer would have gotten more scrutiny, but the problem with the whole present system is that there's zero accountability, so who gives a shit, right? Who cares if they're Russian assets, or Chinese assets, or North Korean assets, as long as their code is functional, it's all good, right? LOL...

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Yeah, we should probably give accountability to a government... or better yet, a corp... yeah, that seems right... I mean, we already do... kinda... apparently...

Who cares if they're Russian assets, or Chinese assets, or North Korean assets, as long as their code is functional, it's all good, right?

Yeah, because the US never asked for anything malicious to be included in the code... yeah, right...

Everyone is the same, they all care for their own asses, as long as anyone's malicious code is not in the kernel, I really don't care who is responsible for the commit.

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earthman34@reddit

Yeah, hey, if Kim Jon Un or Heinrich Himmler were great coders, why not let them contribute? You guys are hilarious. FYI, it was Microsoft who figured out the xz exploit. It was a corporation that discovered Heartbleed. If it wasn't for "corporations" Linux would be just another hobby OS, as relevant as Haiku or ReactOS. You should give credit where credit is due. Open Source can't police itself, since it can never agree on anything.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Yeah, hey, if Kim Jong Un or Heinrich Himmler were great coders, why not let them contribute?

I would. If they're great coders, what difference does it make who they are.

I don't care what they do in their personal lives, they can and should burn in hell. But, if they're good coders, I can't deny that 🤷.

Facts are facts. If a person is a piece of shit in their personal lives, doesn't mean they're not good at what they do professionally... or just outside of their personal lives. There are literally thousands of examples throughout history.

FYI, it was Microsoft who figured out the xz exploit

No, it was a Microsoft EMPLOYEE. Big difference... not only that, but outside of work hours. Therefore, it was just an individual that happened to stumble upon the exploit... and not through code analysis I might add.

It was a corporation that discovered Heartbleed.

Again, through off the record effort by employees.

If it wasn't for "corporations" Linux would be just another hobby OS, as relevant as Haiku or ReactOS.

It more or less still is 🤨... at least regarding the desktop market. if corps cared so much about the Linux desktop market, why isn't a single corp involved in any of the DE or WM projects? Why didn't they make their own spin of, IDK, KDE?

Open Source can't police itself, since it can never agree on anything.

Open source was just fine till corps and governments started meddling, a perfect example, the one we're currently talking about.

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earthman34@reddit

And that kind of brain dead amorality is what turns so many people off to open source as well as provides us with endless amusement watching the constant drama and escapades in the "community".

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Your braindead take on "the law is the law" is why we still haven't moved one inch over 100 years ago. We have a PC in our pockets, yet we still have famine around the world. We have electric cars, but flying cars is a "funny concept" according to some vehicle commercials I recently heard. There are hundreds of examples like this and it's because people are blindly following "the law". You need to wake up.

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It's goddamn idiotic. You don't get peace if you let bad actors like Russia run free. That's what was done before the Ukrainian war and that's exactly what emboldened them to start it.

Welcome to international relations 101. What - exactly - do you think the EU has done since the fall of the Iron Curtain?

The idea you speak of is at least as old as Kant and was the main reason why especially Germany took so long to actively oppose Russia's more and more blatant attacks. Our former chancellor was working very closely with Putin in the early 2000s and is still working with him.

We ignored Georgia and even Crimea for the most part and were still going ahead with Nord Stream 2 until very recently.

Nations and especially dictatorships don't act like rational actors who are concerned with what's best for humanity or even its citizens.

It was stupid of Putin to do what he did and it still is. Didn't stop him though.

Everybody suffers thanks to him and letting him do what he wants without resistance would lead to even more suffering.

You advocate for isolationism if you want nobody to come to the help of Ukraine, not the people who want to help defend it.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

That is what you get for being "naive"...

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CandiceWoo@reddit

Harald sounds naive af

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ObolonSvitle@reddit

Of course there should've been some german guy to be the first one in making the most grotesque, naive and totally-not-russian-apologist claims in this situation.

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sensual_rustle@reddit

Of course a German is trying to excuse Russians to continue contributing. This violates reddit TOS for being supportive of terrorists

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FryBoyter@reddit

Of course a German

To condemn a whole group of people because of the actions of individuals could be described as racism. I suspect that may well be a violation of Reddit's TOS.

I also do not condemn every American just because Guantanamo Bay still exists and some innocent people were imprisoned there for a long time and, as far as I know, are still partially imprisoned.

is trying to excuse Russians to continue contributing

Based on his entire article, I think it's more likely that he doesn't just divide the world into black and white.

He literally calls what the Russian government has been doing in the Ukraine for over 2 years a war crime. And I agree with him.

And I also think that the tsar and his entourage must be stopped. Because if that doesn't happen, he will continue. Maybe with Poland. Maybe with Romania. Maybe with Hungary.

That's why I'm definitely in favor of sanctions against Russia. But I also see that it affects innocent Russians. For example, traders who can no longer sell their timber to various countries.

Is that fair? No. That's why I would prefer a different solution. But which one? If you make exceptions for certain people, you can never be sure you've chosen the right people. In addition, I don't think it should be fair from the point of view of other countries that have introduced sanctions. It should hurt the whole of Russia. In the hope that at some point the normal Russian population will get fed up. Which, unfortunately, I doubt will happen. Or that at some point Russia will simply no longer be able to continue this senseless war.

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sensual_rustle@reddit

Funny how you leave out the context of how it is a german (which is a "democratic" country known internationally for their ties to Nazism, expansionism, and xenophobic treatment of others) that is promoting inclusion of individuals from a terrorist country currently actively committing genocide in Ukraine. Completely left that part out. Reddit needs to stop allowing terrorist propaganda

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Steve_Dekart@reddit

He means the people, not the government. He explicitly mentions that this does not apply to Russian companies. If you want to say about the people, then this is racism

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littleguy632@reddit

Hehe in America as long as fits our agenda: everything is A OK.

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githman@reddit

I'm waiting eagerly for Harald Welte to be called a Russian bot.

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Mlch431@reddit

https://theintercept.com/2024/10/17/pentagon-ai-deepfake-internet-users/

The offensive use of this technology by the U.S. would, naturally, spur its proliferation and normalize it as a tool for all governments.

To all that are concerned so very much about bots and "trolls", Russian or otherwise; why aren't you protesting the US which assuredly employs vast manipulation of social media, in ever increasing ways, as highlighted in the above link?

The Pentagon is trying to make these bots indistinguishable from a human being. Even going as far as "deepfake selfie videos".

Personally though, at least from my perspective on using reddit as an US citizen, I don't notice the vast swaths of "Russian" bots or trolls that people cry foul about. Being anti-US imperialism/etc., anti-DNC/Democratic party is not pro-Russian. Full-stop.

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But are open-source projects really "entities" in our legal system? Aren't they just a bunch of lines of code in a repository, and if anything, you could enforce sanctions on the people contributing to it or maintaining it, but not on the project itself?

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mina86ng@reddit

you could enforce sanctions on the people contributing to it or maintaining it, but not on the project itself?

Yes, and that’s what has happened. Vast majority of contributors to Linux are based in countries with sanctions against Russia so they chose to abaide by the sanctions.

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DoucheEnrique@reddit

The Linux Foundation an organization registered in the US and every single kernel developer living there are entities in that legal system.

Sure they could move the technical and organizational project infrastructure to some neutral country that does not impose sanctions but ...

What country would it be? The Swiss also sanctioned Russia.
Who would actually want to do that and for what gain. Looks like many are fine with removing people working for defense / govt. organizations in a hostile country from critical positions. So just do it out of principle?
IANAL so I couldn't even say if going through a proxy organization in a neutral third country would be enough so individual kernel devs in the US can keep working with sanctioned entities ... and in the worst case it could just lead to that proxy organization get sanctioned too.

The same is happening on the Israeli/Palestinian border... yet no sanctions have been pushed on that side...

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Michaelmrose@reddit

The Gaza issue threatens 2M and has killed around 50,000. The Ukrainian war has killed a million and threatens all of humanity because 2 nuclear powers are effectively at war. At minimum a conventional war could easily kill 50-60M.

People also have less sympathy due to Gazans starting it by a gross act of terror and most of Gaza supporting the terrorists.

People are bad at nuance and thus are less aware or interested in how many gazans are innocent (the overwhelming majority) or how immoral and unnecessary the harm that is being done is.

Because elements within Gaza fit the definition of villain and Israelis oppose them we cast them as the good guys we ignore the nuances essential for actually moral actions.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

The Gaza issue threatens 2M and has killed around 50,000. The Ukrainian war has killed a million and threatens all of humanity because 2 nuclear powers are effectively at war. At minimum a conventional war could easily kill 50-60M.

And that automatically makes it OK to have sanctions against one, but not the other... numbers... how many people died... not each individual life... great reasoning... exactly why we are where we are a century and a half after the industrial revolution. No regard for ACTUAL HUMAN LIVES, but instead treating each and every one of them AS A NUMBER, nothing more!

Because elements within Gaza fit the definition of villain and Israelis oppose them we cast them as the good guys we ignore the nuances essential for actually moral actions.

Logical analysis and acknowledging the problem doesn't make the problem go away. It's just the first step... and we're stuck on that, as humans, always stuck on that! One war matters, but hundreds of others don't. Why? Because one of them is happening near first world countries and the others are so fucking far away that... well, who the fuck cares 🤷.

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Michaelmrose@reddit

Are you mad because they excluded sanctioned Russians or and that they haven't excluded people who work for Israels government and adjacent companies if these people even exist.

If you think its unfair to exclude anyone if we don't meet an fanciful kindergarten standard of fairness I'm sorry you have such an illogical moral philosophy that you believe life is fair decisions should actually be made that way.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Are you mad because they excluded sanctioned Russians or and that they haven't excluded people who work for Israels government and adjacent companies if these people even exist.

If you're gonna exclude everyone that works for a company that has some sort of dealings with any military, you're gonna be left with barely 10% of the original dev list, that is a fact. Most of these people work for big companies that at one point in time or anotherz enabled some military, regardless of which.

If you think its unfair to exclude anyone if we don't meet an fanciful kindergarten standard of fairness I'm sorry you have such an illogical moral philosophy that you believe life is fair decisions should actually be made that way.

Yeah... and excluding people just because of who they work for, and not only that, but for which side in this particular case, is OK. That makes my moral standards weird, wanting fair treatment...

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Michaelmrose@reddit

The Russians aren't being sanctioned for having ever done something they are being sanctioned because they are as we speak murdering hundreds of thousands of people in an unlawful and evil act.

I doubt you are too stupid to make this distinction so I presume you are being maliciously disingenuous.

You could make the argument that for instance Israel and Iran both ought to be excluded. Great. If they are not excluded Russia still ought to be. The moral calculus is incredibly simple. If A and B acts have moral or practical value individually then failure to do B mean you are morally or practically better to skip A as well.

In this case the "fairness" argument is an argument for stupid children. The perceived fairness has no virtue unlike the acts themselves.

Not only that but it is even stupider than it looks. The way this gambit goes is knowing that B is impractical you would use B as leverage to ensure A is not done. Your business and goal is pure malice. You have no interest in the other bad acts than as cover for those you would enable.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

The Russians aren't being sanctioned for having ever done something they are being sanctioned because they are as we speak murdering hundreds of thousands of people in an unlawful and evil act.

So are a lot of other armies in the world... yet they're the only ones being sanctioned.

If you're gonna remove, remove all contributors tied to a company that has military contracts, in general. Then everyone might realize how stupid that is, when you're left with barely 10% of the original contributor list.

If A and B acts have moral or practical value individually then failure to do B mean you are morally or practically better to skip A as well.

I don't think I follow, give a real world example please.

In this case the "fairness" argument is an argument for stupid children. The perceived fairness has no virtue unlike the acts themselves.

In that case, every argument ever made for things like equal treating of people regarding whatever, is a childish argument. You're basically equating this human right as childish. I hope people in the UN don't have your stance on these sorts of things.

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Flash_Kat25@reddit

2 nuclear powers are effectively at war

vorbster@reddit

I completely agree with Harold. Sanctions are applied to specific companies and individuals. If a developer is a sanctioned individual or writes code as an employee of a sanctioned company - completely justified. But ban someone for a Russian name or .ru in the email is absurd. Russian developers no matter where they work made a lot of great individual contributions to the kernel and free software in general. I respect Linus as a developer but sometimes he behaves like a high school bully with same manners and gestures.

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orus_heretic@reddit

If a developer is a sanctioned individual or writes code as an employee of a sanctioned company - completely justified

The removed maintainers are employees of sanctioned companies which are Russian defense contractors.

From a clarification posted by James Bottomley:

If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list

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vorbster@reddit

They have gmail, mail.ru accounts listed - those are not corporate accounts but personal.

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OrlandoEasyDad@reddit

Ultimately the Linux kernel is a volunteer project, and the volunteers have tacitly agreed that Linus is the ultimate authority, and that's that. The project is maintained by the foundation, but there is no "official" status that being a maintainer grants you.

Your name lives in a file, and other people give you a presumption of competence by being listed in the file, and that's it. Those people can still presumably contribute.

The volunteer nature of the project gets weird when companies hire you and dedicate you to working on the project.

There is no functional difference between an individual being listed on an embargo list and a company being listed. The risk is for companies who do business, who can't do business with embargoed companies, because of their local law or legal framework.

A US-based company has limits on what business it can do with an embargoed company or individual.

For everyone involved, it sure feels like separating how to deal with contributions from an individual employed by a embargoed company is juice that isn't worth the squeeze.

There is nothing stopping the blacklisted contributors from forking the kernel, running a standalone version of the project, and even collaborating with Russian companies in the spirit of open source.

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setwindowtext@reddit

And with 90% of new code contributed by employees of large international corporations, mostly American, you can hardly call it volunteer anymore.

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OrlandoEasyDad@reddit

Is it really 90%?

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dondarreb@reddit

there is something fundamentally wrong in German Linux community when even smart people refuse to take things as they are and prefer to stick tosome abstract idealistic ideas.

Simple reminder to everybody about who maintainers are and what maintainers do:

"....

Maintainers must review all patches touching exclusively their drivers, no matter how trivial. If the patch is a tree wide change and modifies multiple drivers - whether to provide a review is left to the maintainer.

When there are multiple maintainers for a piece of code an Acked-by or Reviewed-by tag (or review comments) from a single maintainer is enough to satisfy this requirement.

....

an outsider the Linux kernel may resemble a hierarchical organization with Linus as the CEO. While the code flows in a hierarchical fashion, the corporate template does not apply here. Linux is an anarchy held together by (rarely expressed) mutual respect, trust and convenience.

.."

Nobody controles maintainers. They are trusted watchers over different pieces of kernel code. They are finally responsible over software you all use. There is should be trust that these people will do due diligence.

There were already numerous instances (likely not all reported widely) when malicious code was entering kernel source-base. Russia officially since 2008 (actually 2003) participates in the hybrid war against what they call "West".

P.S. "poor communication" comes from lawyer/political "talk". They can not actually say "under American law", because there are no actual restrictions...only massive liabilities if something goes wrong.

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dgm9704@reddit

Let me guess, op is either russian or a russian sympathiser?

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nshire@reddit

theblasterr@reddit

Ahh good ol' whataboutism. Well anyways, I remember being horrified. I was just a kid and saw the news footage of Bagdad getting bombed. I didn't really understand the whole thing given I was just a kid. Also I'm not American so don't know what more could have I done.

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sonobanana33@reddit

Ah morals just for the others, of course of course :)

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theblasterr@reddit

What?

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henry_tennenbaum@reddit

It's because they see themselves more likely to be in the place of a member of a terrorist right wing regime than as one of its victims.

For those not fluent in dog whistles: Globalist means Jews.

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dgm9704@reddit

well of course he does.

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Tsubajashi@reddit

no, seems to be german.

i also dont understand how its intransparent, given theres a commit to see for everybody.

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dgm9704@reddit

A quick glance shows that OP is active in both russian and belarussian subreddits.

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Tsubajashi@reddit

oh, you mean the OP of the post, not the OP of the open letter.

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dgm9704@reddit

yes

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This_Is_The_End@reddit

The whole issue is the administration. Washington is known for hard stances even against the so called human rights, when necessary. One wrong word and people were on NoFly lists or worse. Even Tulsi Gabbard went on the NoFly list. There is a good reason why the US is that low on the freedom of press index. I can understand why the Linux foundation has done this quietly and has not taking any chances.

Moto-Boto@reddit

I don't think / standpoint "don't try to justify invasions and war crimes" is a "poison for the world" like you suggest.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

Not making a difference between politics and people is quite common in wars to damage the other side. Harald Welte is naive by ignoring the realities of politics. In our times it's cheap to destroy a life.

Accepting this as normal is what bothers me to be honest...

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CptPicard@reddit

The internet has enabled us to communicate and avoid brainwashing politician mass media. Let's make use of this for good.

This afterword here is very telling. Considering how active the downvoting here is for anything that does not adhere to a typical Russian propagandist POV, I'd say this whole topic really is a propaganda effort.

I also used to be an idealist about the Internet's powers of enabling communication, but if someone is talking about the Ukraine war and Russia's behaviour in terms of "politicians brainwashing through mass media", it's definitely a Putinist talking.

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cowbutt6@reddit

>It is news to me that the MAINTAINERS file was usually containing Companies or that the Linux kernel development is Companies engaging with each other.

>I was under the naive assumption that it's individual developers who work together, and their employers do not really matter.

Maybe 30 years ago this was the case. But today... https://lwn.net/Articles/989528/

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mmmboppe@reddit

it's age as well. Linus has started to turn into Biden. this kind of Biden https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vei_18YcC6E

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cowbutt6@reddit

It's the age, as well. During the 90s, after the end of the Cold War - when Linux development commenced - there was hope that this would bring a sustainable era of international peace.

But since then, the great powers have all gone back to their old ways, and one has to ask oneself which values one supports, and which values one opposes - even though clear "goodies" and "baddies" don't exist outside of fiction.

Who's next? Maintainers from China, whom employer is Huawei

To make sure they absolutely stay away from Taiwan, yeah I'd sign that order any day. Did y'all forget that Huawei is already seen as a foreign agent by dozens of countries? Allowing these autocracies any hold in a tolerant society is not okay. You can't both stand for freedom and peace and allow those that fight those points to play in the same sandbox. That's betraying your own cause and, as it has shown, looking away only serves to escalate. Sending a strong signal to these guys: "Play nice or you can get the fuck out"

Is it troubling that this affects people that have little to do with it? Yeah, but that's the point of sanctions. That bald-headed dunce won't feel but his own people kick him to the curb and how you gonna do that if not by sanctions.

It's not great it has taken this long to both act on the imposed sanctions and communicate it properly and directly, but anyone that works with Linus should now better by now that this is generally how things tend to go. We all know what a mess companies can be, so expecting the folks writing the kernel to have a flawless structure is pushing it.

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History didn't begin on October 7th.

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username_6916@reddit

No. But this war did.

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Hamas is not the elected government of Gaza.

In the 2006 election they won 44% of the vote, with Fatah getting 41% and the rest being split between smaller parties.

They couldn’t form a coalition, partly due to international pressure on Fatah, and so instead seized control of Gaza, replaced police with their own militants, and instituted a dictatorship

What's the stated goal of Israel towards Hamas?

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Valianity@reddit

Hamas' openly stated goal is the total annihilation of Israel. Supported by concrete steps towards trying to achieve that goal.

I don't like doing this in a Linux sub out of all places but please look at yourself in the mirror and think about this

Hamas doesn't have the means to achieve the total annihilation of Israel . Go ahead and argue that Palestinians support hamas all you want and it still won't excuse Israel just yolo bombing everything and literally targeting reporters while in few months of that shitshow killed more civilians than the Ukrainian war in 2 years.

In the fact the October massacre was the biggest blow to Israel hamas has ever achieved and yet Israel instead of invading with their superior military they just blow everything because if you criticize you are anti Semitic meanwhile Ukraine and Russia have their own shitshow that started between separatists backed by Russia and Azov backed by Ukraine.

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Wanderer-91@reddit

It doesn’t matter whether Hamas or Hezbollah or another terrorist organization have the means to annihilate Israel. What matters is that they have the means to prevent any meaningful resolution of this conflict that doesn’t include the annihilation of Israel. They are the main obstacle to peace, and have derailed any attempt at achieving Palestinian independence because this would mean accepting Israel’s right to exist.

This inevitably led to the Israeli hawks getting stronger over the last 20 years - can’t expect to have failed peace negotiations over and over again without the peace supporters losing political support.

The Israeli policy have shifted from trying to negotiate with Palestinians to instead improving the relationships with rich Gulf countries, essentially isolating Palestinians to the point where they risk being told the terms of settlement by the other Arab states. Of course isolating Iran is the main goal. Derailing this was the main reason behind October 7 attacks, and it didn’t succeed - the Saudis made it very clear that they will resolve negotiations with Israel as soon as possible, and UAE are not breaking off their deal.

So you may downvote me all you want - it doesn’t make any difference. The Palestinian refusal to engage in real peace negotiations is making them increasingly irrelevant. They have unleashed the wave of bullying and intimidation in the west and it’s not working either. They are sticking to the failed strategy.

And their leaders are not dumb. The simple fact is, they are professional revolutionaries / terrorists / freedom fighters - call it as you like. They can’t build states. If Palestine becomes a state, they will have to give up power (or face a massive upheaval once they run the economy into the ground). So it’s in their best personal interest to never make it happen. Arafat was not killed by the Israelis, he was poisoned over a cash account worth tens of millions of dollars.

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Mysterious_Lab_9043@reddit

It's not the individuals' fault is it?

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adrianvovk@reddit

It is if they work for companies that supply the Russian military

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dgm9704@reddit

That, or if there is a possibility that the ruzzian regime holds an influence over them that compromises the integrity of the project they are maintaining. With bribes, extortion, threat of violence to them or their family, etc

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setwindowtext@reddit

Ah, alright then, let’s keep them on MAINTAINERS list.

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fearless-fossa@reddit

The letter clearly states that this is "an attempt to impose collective responsibility similar to the events in Germany."

Except it isn't. There are still Russian maintainers around. The ones that were kicked and where we know their day jobs happen to work for companies in Russia's defense industry.

Don't paint this as some "Russians are discriminated against" bullshit. The Russian Federation is murdering, raping and torturing in Ukraine and is now wondering why the West doesn't want to play with them anymore.

Who's next? Maintainers from China, whom employer is Huawei (that listed in sanctions), ok that pull request has been (t)rolled yet.

Huawei isn't banned from participating in projects like this. The US made it illegal to transfer knowledge to them, but they can still contribute, and they can still access everything that is open-source.

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henry_tennenbaum@reddit

Don't paint this as some "Russians are discriminated against" bullshit. The Russian Federation is murdering, raping and torturing in Ukraine and is now wondering why the West doesn't want to play with them anymo

This falsehood that any actions against Russia's state employees is motivated by racism has been spread by official Russian channels for years, so at this point you can't even tell if you're confronted with some ignorant person or an actual puppet of the Russian state.

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SadraKhaleghi@reddit

And we still have idiots like this defending these actions. Show me a single maintainer involved in the war. Why can't we just work as a whole this once to keep an OPEN OS running!?

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nshire@reddit

Maybe you should blame the ones writing the sanctions. Unless these open source devs are officers in the Russian MOD(which they're not), they have no control over what their country does.

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dgm9704@reddit

No I blame ruzzia for their war crimes and atrocities. If the names were of citizens of nazi germany, nobody would even blink. So we shouldn’t have a reaction now either.

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Miserable_System_522@reddit

If the names were of citizens of nazi germany, nobody would even blink.

FizzySodaBottle210@reddit

If you are a skilled worker you can usually get some form of a visa... Yes if you aren't it becomes much harder but I would assume linux maintainers to be "skilled"

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SadraKhaleghi@reddit

And that's how I parted ways with my Mint install as my daily driver & Ubuntu server on my NAS.

We seriously have people who call discrimination against black people (a quality they can't control about their body) "Racism", yet think it's perfectly fine to block Russians (who have zero control over the war). You're RACIST, & I unfortunately can't run an OS made by such low lives who unethically steal code from people who put their heart and soul into the project. Block theirs government from using the OS, but once you touch the normal people, that's where my red line lies.

Sigh.. Harald harald HaRaLd.. You want to cling to the past, when Linux was this relatively unknown OS maintained by hobbyist and enthusiast. If you want those days, then please look at BSD (keep in mind, its popularity is rising) or something obscure like Plan 9 (We would love to have you!)

Well, those days are long gone as Linux is now part of the mainstream and if you will, the third viable end-user OS option today. With that being said, need to look at where the contributions are coming from.. yep, hobbyist, enthusiast... Oh... big mega corps contributing. Oh.... Based in the US, Europe and others with sanctions again Russia.. OH... the entity that signs the paychecks for Linus and crew.. Oh.. they're an American entity.

Guess what Harald.. Just in case, you missed the news. The US along with other nations have sanctioned Russian companies due to the ongoing hostilities in Ukraine.

Its sucks.. it truly does suck. Cause no one wants to paint those Russian maintainers as enemies or otherwise, as they have nothing to do with the hostilities nor supporting it. And everything I've heard and read about them, they are good folks who are genuinely interested in helping Linux. And please keep in mind, with them being in Russia.. they have to play along with Russian society or.. "someone had an accident and fell out of a window".

So what are they to do?? Tell the American or other national governments to eff themselves, cause its opensource. Yeah, you are pretty much begging for Linux itself to get caught up in the drama. You want Linux to lose funding, support and contributions cause it got listed on the sanction list cause they choose to ignore the sanctioned entities list? Or maybe be a moron and fork the kernel with some kind WOSS model (Worldly Open Source Software) licensing and create your derivative to get around the sanctions? Let me know how that works out for the project and yourself when you get noticed and hammered on.

So in the end, be an adult.. suck it up.. and just move along. The war will end (however it plays out), the sanctions will come down and everyone will go back to what they were doing or they've moved on themselves.

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TheBlackCat13@reddit

as they have nothing to do with the hostilities nor supporting it.

They are engineers and therefore not responsible for the horrors they create.

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LunaSPR@reddit

I don't agree 100% with every point from Harald. But clearly there are two things going very wrong here.

GKH's quietly removing contributors from MAINTAINERS without any valid explanation, nor any effort showing that they were trying to give out one at the same time. Remedies have been made later but they definitely should have been done either before or at the same time when GKH took the action.
Linus being an asshole. Unfortunately this isn't the first time (not even the second time in my memory) for Linus and clearly he isn't trying to change this any time soon. Being Finnish should not be used as an excuse and his prejudice/bigotry is not any better than racism.

There's nothing wrong for taking the action based upon local laws and regulations. But action towards your contributors should be taken with sympathy not hate.

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Business_Reindeer910@reddit

GKH's quietly removing contributors from MAINTAINERS without any valid explanation, or any effort showing that they were trying to give out one at the same time. Remedies have been made later but they definitely should have been done either before or at the same time when GKH took the action.

Agree, He probably couldn't have mentioned why due to the legal circumstances, but he could have at least made clear that an explanation was coming later.

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budgefrankly@reddit

Harald’s some fool if he thinks the majority of Linux developers are unpaid volunteers.

As far as I can see many (all?) of the blocked developers were paid to work on Linux at their day job, and their day jobs were at Russian tech companies under sanction for being part of the Russian war machine.

One can chose not to sell goods to the Russian military after all. Now there might be severe consequences, but that is the nature of a moral stand.

One could also choose to quit working for those companies in a personal moral stand.

To use the history behind Harald’s sippenhaft metaphor, Ukraine is a street full of broken windows, and he’s suggesting we appease the window-breakers in return for an easy life, because they’re not all bad, probably.

And lets not pretend like Russia/Ukraine war is the only one that is currently ongoing. You have the exact same situation with Israel/Palestine, yet nobody talks about it because Israel is US backed.

This is saddening, painful, and frankly infuriating. And some people here take actual pride in this decision. Shame on you all.

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hegginses@reddit

Anyone can see where this is going to lead now. US starts slapping more sanctions on rival states as they continue to lash out over their declining global influence, the world further divides once again into East and West and Linux gets an Eastern fork where Russian, Chinese and devs from other US rival nations can contribute freely. We’re basically going to end up with a Western Linux kernel and an Eastern Linux kernel

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Northzen@reddit

Thank you for formulating it in a such clear magnet like you just did.

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budgefrankly@reddit

It was neither sudden nor arbitrary.

Companies in Russia were sanctioned when they supported the military that invaded a sovereign European nation.

The US, EU, and other nonaligned countries like Norway, Switzerland, Japan and the rest all applied sanctions.

People who chose to remain employees of those companies — irrespective of nationality — were this sanctioned.

Clearly there was some negotiation between Linux Foundation and US authorities as to what was necessary, until the sanction was enforced.

Had these people quit working for sanctioned companies as soon as the sanctions were announced, they’d probably still be kernel maintainers now.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

But this was such a sudden and arbitrary decision that was hand waived at first, then tried to be swept under the rug, and then we received some corporate speak response.

Imagine the outcry if a UK Prime Minister or a US President worked for Putin and collected Russian salary after leaving office.

People seriously believe that geopolitics has no affect on big funded FOSS projects or that they don't understand that Linux wouldn't be a thing without corporate investment...

But honestly I guess there's a lot of bad faith concern trolling going on with the constant framing "just for being member of nation X, they're getting targeted" bs.

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abotelho-cbn@reddit

I think people believe that "community" means indoviduals not associated with any company. It's insanely naive and completely ignores that Linux is Linux because huge corporations saw value in helping it grow.

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Octopus0nFire@reddit

"Sorry it's the law"

- A german concentration camp guard in 1939.

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

”Sorry, it's the law."

An Israeli soldier shooting at civilians.

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SadraKhaleghi@reddit

"Sorry, we can't let you be better than our own brands" -The US unlawfully, unfairly, and unethically Sanctioning Huawei

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MeanLittleMachine@reddit

They may also have sanctions against Xiaomi, since I have a few people from the US I converse with on a semi-regular basis, they say they've never heard of Xiaomi and that they can't buy their phones in the US.

Can't say for certain though, it's just a few people... and they might not have looked hard enough.

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throwaway490215@reddit

God damn the level of cognitive dissonance to come up with this shit.

Instead of making a WW2 comparison like:

American chemical scientists stopped corresponding directly with German military personal, but their papers were still available to the Germans in public journals.

You came up with the comparison to someone who willingly signed up to help slaughter undesirable prisoners.

You need a good therapist and a healthy doze of shame for posting this fart.

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Octopus0nFire@reddit

Willingly? No, sir. It's a requirement from the government. And we must comply with governmental requirements. It's not our fault, you see. There's nothing we can do. Civil disobedience? Nah, that would be quite the nuisance.

Now, face the wall...

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Drwankingstein@reddit

it is really silly that the sanctions can apply to the kernel like this.

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Someone13574@reddit

Its almost like the legal system doesn't care how you feel, and still applies to Linux.

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Swizzel-Stixx@reddit

If the us could sanction tornadocash and arrest its founders, despite it being completely headless, then the us could sanction linux for having developers in the russian defence sector too, which would be a major loss for open source in the us, or worse, other countries would copy.

Basically it seems that the linux foundation’s hand was forced, they had to do it to comply, or they could easily be stopped dead in their tracks.

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devnullix@reddit

Repeat myself comments about this:
>Any organization, as a system, must be protected from the "madness of its creator". Will this become a reason for new kernel forks? Doesn't sound so bad for the end user.

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throwawayerectpenis@reddit

Based and truth pilled