Actually I’m interested how it looks legally ( it somebody cares about it at all ). Whether the Russian contributors could ask to revert their changes as they most likely never signed the contract to transfer their code copyrights. For sure it will have a big impact on foss because if you have at least one American and Russian contributors, you may get in the biggest shitshow. Additionally if I was considering now to become a contributors, I’d be wondering if it’s worthy at all to work for free and then to be banned no thanks for whole free work years
I am quite disappointed at the lack of transparency regarding this.
My first thought is that this was to make Linux palatable to western regulations, like how companies can’t use Kaspersky anymore. Stupid if I’m right because it’s not like the fsb is going to sneak spyware into Linux.
Edit: Linus commented on this and I was right: https://lemmy.world/comment/13034386
Wasn’t that XZ Utils backdoor recently with state ties or am I just remembering wrong
Possibly, but that’s a much smaller project being run by 1 guy. Linux has a lot more people and reviews involved.
No one knows yet. Given the scale of the operation it’s most likely a large organization.
They very well could. However, it also could come from some US intelligence agency as well.
LMFO I was on the reddit thread reading this post and coudn’t believe my eyes reading the comments. We’re living truly revelation times. Like you said this is a long due wakeup call for the rest of the “uncivilized” world.
I was wondering what’s up with the comments but then I realized the main feed sent me to .ml.
deleted by creator
Linus Torvalds Confirms Decision to Remove Maintainers from Russia
You couldn’t come up with a more powerful spit in the direction of FOSS. And from Linus, who is now kind of showing f*ck to the entire community. Here you have freedom, openness and all that. Today they just wiped their ass with it, and by one of the founders.
This is the moment when the split politics, dirty ones from all sides, have penetrated into the very heart of OpenSource - into the Linux kernel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_YozYt8l-g
Linus is an absolute cunt for not only following this gleefully but then attributing pushback to “russian trolls” and “state propaganda” fuck you man.
These people weren’t the MIT pricks who inserted vulnerabilities into the kernel, they were contributors who did hard work and helped advance FREE software. Linus is now turning his back on the GPL and manning it clear that Linux can be controlled by the US state on a whim.
Also from seemingly reasonable commenters there are many arguments around security coming up. I don’t get how one can jump to that idea? This obviously has nothing to do with security, it’s about sanction compliance. And yes, likely a pretty pointless sanction compliance in this instance, as the sanctioned entities don’t have a direct benefit from having an employee name mentioned in the kernel. However that’s not how sanctions work, both just because, and also intuitively it makes sense: Sanctions wouldn’t be enforcable at scale if every single case would have to be judged on merit - it’s hard enough to enforce them as is.
And btw I so hope most of the comments on here are Russian trolls, but I fear many are people that fully drunk the Russian trolls’ cool-aid and are now fully brainwashed…
But Torvalds is from Soviet Finland [SF]
Spent too much time in .ml I see
Dude, WHAT. This is totally against what Linux and Open source in general stand for.
I don’t support the thing that I’m sure was their reason for this but I definitely don’t support banning someone from contributing to an open system solely off nationality.
So what eventually only the “good guys” can contribute to and use open source software? Who exactly decides who the “good guys” are in this scenario? USA? China?
The implications of what this can cause in the future for potentially all of the open source community is absolutely sad. We should welcome all our fellow human beings to contributing to open source.
Reminds me of a comment the other day on a post about Ventoy. Whatever the situation there is, which definitely needs clarification still, the person was saying that you shouldn’t trust it at all because the maintainer is Chinese, even though he has emigrated away. Because the CCP will be able to leverage his family still there to force him to create a backdoor.
That’s just thinly veiled racism in my opinion.
Where is that argument wrong, though?
Think about how completely unacceptable binary blobs are for most people in this community. And now comes a guy who for no reason whatsoever puts a binary blob of unclear origin into a project that can be used to inject code on a bootloader level. And that’s somehow okay?
And the threat of the CCP is real. Look at the xz situation. The Chinese agencies are willing and capable to invest a lot of money to get access to systems, and they also have a track record of taking families essentially hostage (or just taking the target hostage directly, if they happen to visit).
Don’t you understand that China is ruled by an evil party? The maintainer could be the nicest bloke in existence, with the best intentions and highest intellect - but if he can be pressured by a dictatorship, that’s a problem. And that’s not even a personal thing, I wouldn’t blame him for giving in to the pressure - I would cave in too, probably.
You have to grow up and don’t just throw around racism for everyone you don’t like. That’s not helpful and actually diminishes actual racism.
Just an fyi but blob already stands for binary large object
That’s plain racism honestly.
I knew a (asian) guy who was working for a government contractor serving the US military. The racism is very serious to say the least. He got framed when something went down and was almost tied with treason. (that carries the death penalty) The authorities hit him with questions about his loyalty to the US for 5 hours even though he grew up in the US and so did his parents.
As far as I can read from that, they’re still maintainers, just have had their credit removed from the contributors page, no?
Still a strange thing to do and I look forwards to an explanation.
It’s about sanctions, simple as that.
You guys love to walk yourself on how super friendly open source is and that utopia is juuust around the corner, if everyone would finally switch to Arch.
But the reality is, that it’s straight up illegal for the Linux foundation to deal with Russians. Yes, that sucks for a lot of people, but that’s exactly the point of sanctions. Every time some NSA adjacent entity contributes anything to Linux, you all get hysterical, but people living under an openly fascist regime, that is willing to kill literally millions of people, having write access to core infrastructure, that they are known to attack is perfectly fine? You really don’t see the problem here?
You still act like open source exists on a plane removed from everything else. Linux is critical infrastructure, it runs all critical infrastructure. We have to act like it.
it’s straight up illegal for the Linux foundation to deal with Russians.
[Citation needed]
As I wrote: sanctions. That’s what compliance means.
I gotta say, that seems likely. Not sanctions in a direct way, but indirectly through funding or other assistance.
Exactly. But mods here are too butthurt to accept that and rather delete my comments, so they can live in their delusions - which was my point
@BobGnarley @kixik Yep this is definitely not a step forward.
Yeah, being from Russia is a lot different from being associated with the Russian government. If the maintainers are in the latter, then yeah fuck em, but if they live in Russia with no realistic way of getting out and they’re just trying to live a normal life removed from the bullshit and write code as an intellectual escape? And you take that away from them? Precisely how you radicalize people
…and we don’t know whether they’re the former or the latter, no? So maybe a little early to get outraged?
Considering the US foreign policy and the impact it has on the world, regardless of whether the white house is R or D, i propose to ban all american devs… preemptively, ya know?
Inexplicably based
I don’t see what this has to do with my comment. I see no indication that all Russians are blanket-banned.
You are casually declaring all Russians should be assumed to be state agents until proven otherwise, and therefore the negative reaction to this obvious betrayal of principles, not even for convenience but for hatred, is unjustified.
I am literally saying the opposite: I am saying that it’s not clear that this applies to all Russians, or just ones that are sanctioned.
Benefit of the Doubt…
Honestly I wish that was a principle that the internet embraced more. We’re so trigger-happy to be outraged.
No the contributors should not be considered guilty until proven innocent just to give Linus et al the benefit of the doubt fuckface!
Oh geez, this the third reply by the same account… Again, I’m just saying that we don’t know whether the contributors were assumed guilty, or if they have actual ties to sanctioned companies.
I’m pretty talkative on certain subjects when I see people mangling the discussion and engaging in bad faith.
This is just softpedaling it and telling people to suspect foul play just because they are Russian honestly. There are some significant sanctions going up against Israeli companies but nobody seems concerned with that.
Would you say that Linux contributors with ties to MIT and other US universities that get funding from the same organizations of the MIC and intelligence racket are suspect? No? Yeah just Russians. Cold War propaganda chugging little twerp
No, I’m saying that if the banned people are only banned because they’re associated with the Russian government (/employed by sanctioned companies), then I’m not going to get outraged over the kernel maintainers. I do not expect them to break the law just to die on this hill.
This is all hypothetical, they are calling everyone dismayed by this Russian bots, and it’s clear this is happening in sync with US aggression against Chinese professors and tech workers in the west. Most of my comments here have been pretty independent of what you’re saying anyways. The wider context which could even justify speculating about this where open source is beholden to western laws and corporate practices should be a wake up call to people.
This is all hypothetical
Yes, that is exactly my point: let’s not get all worked up about something where we have almost zero facts. Although:
open source is beholden to western laws and corporate practices
is definitely the case for the Linux Foundation: it’s beholden to US laws. And wake-up call or not, a foundation would always be incorporated somewhere, and beholden to the laws of that somewhere.
I think getting all worked up about it is probably the first step to getting more information out of them. ┻━┻︵ (°□°)/ ︵ ┻━┻
Yeah, being from Russia is a lot different from being associated with the Russian government.
Lies! You’re a communist! Russian troll!
/s for the obtuse
You need that reddit.world or shitty.twerks URL to really sell the bit and make the tone indicator necessary IMHO
As a Finnish person I wholeheartedly agree with Linus.
I’m definitely all for Ukraine winning, but this is bullshit, basically the red scare all over again (but for tech).
red scare all over again
It never stopped. Most people still think Russia’s communist. Or any country that calls themselves as such.
Sure but they are not a democracy.
Neither is Canada. It’s full of occupying settlers, for example.
Nope, they’re an oligarchy, pretty much like the US.
Gotta have them “various compliance requirements”, man, gotta have’em. Don’t ask me what they are, but damnit, gotta have’em.
Kernel development is for
only.This is poetry
