Hey - an explanation. Who’da’thunk it?
We’re gonna start seeing large open source communities start to break into smaller ones because of sanctions from now aren’t we?
You don’t need sanctions. I’ve seen you petty fucks fork projects over a font.
This article gives a good discussion about a potential coming East/West political split in the world of FOSS.
https://thenewstack.io/avoiding-a-geopolitical-open-source-apocalypse/
This sets such a bad precedent…
Arguably, ITAR set the precedent in the 1990’s during the crypto wars. USians used to have to travel to Canada to work on cryptographic code in OpenBSD because their commits couldn’t legally be exported.
The bad precedent was starting a war
Yeah I’m sure the maintainers are in talks with Putin directly
Removed by mod
If/when the Russian government comes knocking on their door and tells them that they need to do x, y, and z with the kernel
CIA could do that too.
Ah yes. The Finnish CIA.
They have one?
As a finn, I understand that there are probably legal reasons for doing this.
I just wish they would be transparent and share those reasons with us. The Linux kernel is certainly not the only free software project that is impacted, if this comes straight from EU/US sanctions. Maintainers of other projects have a lot of interest in what is happening.
Transparency is also important because if EU/US policy/sanctions are causing issues for free software projects, then that discussion needs to be public, so that there is a chance to amend the policies if necessary.
Politics should not be on FOSS development.
FOSS is inherently political though, but I guess you mean country vs country politics moreso than ideological politics.
That is hardcore wishful thinking, the nature by which critical digital infrastructure is developed and maintained is of keen importance to political systems everywhere. This situation was inevitable with the ongoing escalation of war
That’s why the “should be” I guess, though that’s not to say there aren’t idiots (right in this thread too) actually shilling for this.
If current open source licenses still have flaws like this, we’re gonna need new ones.
He alludes to sanctions being a factor but never clarifies on advice from his lawyers. ngl I don’t like the look of it just from a transparency perspective.
Probably because the advice in question was lengthy and technical (subtype: laws and legality), and the short form had the disclaimer "Please don’t publish the short form because it’s too much like giving legal advice.) Something similar happened back in 2012 with Project Byzantium, when we were consulting with the EFF with respect to having cryptographic libraries included in the distro.
Everyone who disagrees with me is a paid russian troll of course. Nobody would oppose blacklisting people based on nothing but their nationality unless they were getting paid for it.
That’s true, as he said just use your brain, Russia is under sanctions he literally said that, so Russian troll is a actually very accuracy
“The imperial core is sanctioning Russia therefore you are a Russian troll.” Impeccable logic.
I guess it’s difficult to otherwise explain the position you have? It’s not like people face criminal charges in Russia just for speaking against it. It’s easy to see how the state would want to introduce backdoors to most western systems.
It’s extremely sad that a lot of good Russians get swooped in this. But even abroad their lives are in danger to fight the state.
I doubt if someone wants to introduce a backdoor, they would do that with a russian mailing address. People removed were open and transparent about their nationalities which means there is even less chance them being bad actors than some random guy pretending to be American.
Aren’t the removed commiters with direct access to the kernel? It’s not like it’s some rando that makes pull requests.
I think you’re making up a world in your head. Who are these “lots” of “good” Russians who are abroad and whose lives are in realistically danger of state assassination? Not that it has never happened, but you’re blowing things out of proportion. Probably Russia does it at a scale roughly similar to the US.
I think you’re making up a world in your head.
My friend, they poisoned people in the UK with a fucking nerve agent. They are so brazen and open about people being killed for not doing that the Kremlin tells them.
They have purposely made a meme out of the “suspiciously fell from window” thing, because they want people to know exactly what happens and why.
they poisoned people in the UK with a fucking nerve agent.
Yes, they did. How often is that happening? Proportion.
We’re not talking about taking out former spies in foreign, sovereign nations you dolt. I used that as an example to show just how brazen and open they are about this stuff. Using such a dangerous method, on foreign soil, is basically unheard of.
If you actually want to talk about frequency, we should be looking at the defenestration cases…
This shit is happening so frequently that there are several wiki pages dedicated to listing them:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_deaths_of_notable_Russians_in_2022
Scroll down to “see also” for a long list of related articles about the Russian government assassinating citizens and low-level bureaucrats.
Assuming you actually give a shit
Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.
In any case, the defenestrations I’ve heard of have been within Russia, not outside it.
Using such a dangerous method, on foreign soil, is basically unheard of.
Not unheard of. US drone strikes on US citizens is a no-less dangerous a method.
Very nice link that not only does not have a list of names but also fairly explicitly explains that it is not talking about Americans killing Americans.
I am not going to spend more than 30 seconds on it but here is the first list of “lots” of Russians that are believed to have been assassinated by their own government.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_deaths_of_notable_Russians_in_2022–2024
Despite your personal attacks, the trivially discoverable facts are not on your side.
I used Wikipedia since you apparently find it credible.
My favourite “suicide” of a notable Russian in the last couple of years was the one that had a suicide note signed by “illegible signature” ( what it actually said ). I guess the FSB did not totally understand the instructions.
Indeed A LOT of falling out of windows. Quite a bit of poisoning as well. These are the successful ones. How about that time they poisoned the entire Ukrainian peace team including the owner of the Chelsea Football Club?
Free as in… obeys US foreign policy
In the article, Linus explicitly said that it’s not just a US thing:
And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren’t troll farm accounts - the “various compliance requirements” are not just a US thing.
I’m pretty sure not just the US wants Russia sanctioned to the oblivion. All of the Europe that borders Russia wants that. Now why would it be like that?
It makes no sense to discuss here.They probably follow Russia’s narrative of Europe being a puppet of the US.
He’s gonna ban american and “israeli” maintainers too then, I guess?
Why? There aren’t any sanctions for them in Finland?
Linus said it was to prevent security backdoors.
It can be two things.
Linus has never been the best communicator, but he usually speaks the truth. But this is just bonkers and wrong. Not everyone living in Russia has “ties with Russia” other than “they were born there”. If this is about sanctions, he could have still just told them that. But instead he just disrespected contributors completely and then double down in it by being xenophobic.
Hate to break it to you, but if you live in Russia and can be useful to the government, they will make you useful. Unless you don’t mind you, or your family suffering and dieing, there is no stopping that.
Russia has no law to protect its citizens, only to scare and oppress their citizens. If Russia wants you to do something, such as working in a backdoor in software, you have no choice. So it is a good choice to not leave that door wide open in my opinion.
Yup. If you don’t want to “mysteriously fall from a window,” you do what they say.
I agree 100% with Linus here
It’s really disappointing seeing Russian contributors being disrespected like this, the regime that rules Russia wasn’t entirely their fault, and allegiance, nationality, and ethnicity are all clearly different things
Also, wouldn’t a state sponsored Russian hacker pretend to be from the US or something anyway? No way they’d contribute code as a Russian, that’d just increase others’ suspicion
I agree with Linus a lot too but I strongly disagree here. I hope he’s just being made to say this because of government policies
And the most dangerous part here is the whole rethoric of “if you disagree, you are a Russian shill”.
I don’t understand how sanctions can impact free software, tbh, what’s free about this? This leaves a weird taste, I have to admit.
Linux foundation is a US company, and he’s a EU citizen and there’s companies that those devs where employed that are under sanction , hot that hard to understand
Shame to see this shit from torvalds
I’d really like to see the criteria for delisting people, though. As Russia is not the only one waging wars, there are worse countries out there. I guess it all boils down to Linus being from Finland.
The US and EU governments have the criteria for sanctions available.
- https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/sanctions-against-russia/sanctions-against-russia-explained/
- https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-information/sanctions-related-to-significant-malicious-cyber-enabled-activities
- https://ofac.treasury.gov/sanctions-programs-and-country-information/russian-harmful-foreign-activities-sanctions
- https://www.bmwk.de/Redaktion/EN/FAQ/sanctions-against-russia/faq-russland-sanktionen.html
- https://www.trade.gov/russia-sanctions-and-export-controls
Yeah the kernel might end up being forked if this shit keeps going. Sanctions affecting open source software like this was not something I expected…
Nah. If anything, USian and non-Russian companies will add one or two more devs to their efforts to take up the slack. Linux is the bedrock of their revenue streams.
There may be worse countries, but rest of the word is not in a proxy war with them.
Man, I wish he’d leave the communication to someone else. He is so, so bad at it. And this isn’t the first time
The way he attacks critics puts himself in a bad light. But much more importantly, I read this and am still unsure if he has administrative/legal reason, security reasons or political reasons…
If I’d work in Russian propaganda, I’d love this so much. Hope this will not cause disruption in the community.
It is inherently disruptive. And “knowing” Linus, if he apologizes for the communication, it won’t come soon enough.
the comments on the article started off pretty good but pretty quickly devolved into a cancerous combination of NAFO and Hasbara.
Banning Israeli contributers too?
The west is sanctioning Russia because their daddy US tells them to. Similarly they don’t sanction Israel because of daddy.
Unironically I would support it
I would never. The idea that any person should be disbarred from contributing to FOSS due to the actions of their government, is incredibly exclusionary. Linus is acting as much like a toddler as daddy USA is.
No, it’s not like Israel is attacking its neighbors. It doesn’t, does it?
They would never!
ALL of them? Not at once. Usually.
so are we okay with banning development time donated to foss because of nationality?
are these people found to support heinous shit or is this just wartime shenanigans?
Dude is Finnish, from his own mouth, it’s just normal racism against an aggressive imperial, like how people hate the us
finland has pretty bad climate-change-exploitation-fucking-over-the-third-world dealings in my country, despite enforcing seemingly very good stuff inside their own borders so meh, id argue they aint close to the victims they make out to be. some would argue that as a consequence for having a strong socialist influence.
i have mixed feelings about them as a country, but i recognize there are plenty of good (and even well known good) people on there because of the aforementioned good stuff, linus included. for different but not that dissimilar reasons i think contemporary russian citizens should not be blanket banned from helping everyone out.
finland has pretty bad, climate-change-exploitation-fucking-over-the-third-world dealings in my country
Which country is that, and what dealings?
brazil, and they do some shady stuff in the amazon. mainly fuck you extrativism.
Can you find any links where one can read about this?
If Finland is wasting tax payer money to something shady, it should be brought to the local media.
Wow, some real clown behavior from Linus.
