You have to be arguing in bad faith if you’re trying to say “citizens of nation shouldn’t be responsible for their nation”
The open source benefit is not that they can directly impact it, it’s that their government can’t
So the Rest of the world should trust CIA, NSA contributions but not Russia’s FSB ? come on , opensource should be tolerant towards all espionage agencies no matter their skin color.
How is this keeping to open source philosophies in any way?
“No, you can’t work on this, you’re Russian.”
I don’t support the Russian Government or its actions in any way, but these devs are probably not part of it.
Because there are both US and EU laws preventing code from countries deemed a threat. Torvalds is paid by the Ameircan Linux Foundation, which has to work under US law and he himself is an EU citizen. Also a lot of other developers are from those countries and if they do not comply, they could get into some pretty bad legal trouble.
So it pretty much boils down to kick out the Russians or kick out all US and EU citizens and well we see Linus choice.
risc-v saw this coming a while ago and moved to Switzerland to avoid it.
Switzerland is being routinely strong-armed these days.
😯🤔 maybe I should look that up, where exactly 😂would be fun to work on RISC-V
You can work on RISC-V wherever you are, just post your patches publicly so anyone can get them, regardless of their jurisdiction.
Yea, just checked their job board, most is remote anyway 😂
And it’s also FOSS, so there’s nothing stopping you from working on it w/o officially working for them.
That’s the start, of course. One could always play good cop, bad cop: “I have to do this to comply with the law, sorry, there’s nothing else I can do.” What Linus has done here is play bad cop, bad cop: “the law says I have to obey sanctions, and by the way I support the sanctions and this move anyway.”
He didn’t banned the Russians when the war started, he could, and probably wanted, but didn’t so what’s your point?
It’s not that hard of a choice either ofc, given one is essentially required.
Do you also know Finland is next to russia and it does not have to be US influence for someone like Linus to know Russian gov can pressure developers? This change removes code commit not the contribution rights.
This has nothing to do with open source. If Russians want to work on the Linux kernel, they’re absolutely free to do so, because the source code is free and open source. What they are being restricted from is getting their changes submitted to the normal Linux foundation trees. FOSS doesn’t mean you’re entitled to have the maintainer of a project look at your patches, it means you can use the software however you want.
And yeah, it makes me sad that Russian kernel maintainers are being excluded. That doesn’t mean it’s a violation of open source philosophies (a maintainer can exclude anyone they want for any reason), it just means it’s an unfortunate policy due to international sanctions.
Russians aren’t restricted from getting their changes submitted, they just can’t be maintainers. This means that they need another maintainer to approve their changes, just like if you or me were to submit a change. A lot of people seem to be misunderstanding what actually happened.
I actually just emailed RMS about this and I’m genuinely curious what he says. If anyone else is interested, I’ll ask if he’s fine with me sharing some of the response.
Just what we need. The opinions of someone who thinks having sex with children is a good thing.
He never said that. I agree he was more skeptical than I’d like, but he eventually was informed and apologized.
You are mistaken:
“The nominee is quoted as saying that if the choice of a sexual partner were protected by the Constitution, ‘prostitution, adultery, necrophilia, bestiality, possession of child pornography, and even incest and pedophilia’ also would be. He is probably mistaken, legally–but that is unfortunate. All of these acts should be legal as long as no one is coerced. They are illegal only because of prejudice and narrowmindedness.”
RMS on June 28th, 2003
"I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren’t voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing. "
RMS on June 5th, 2006
"There is little evidence to justify the widespread assumption that willing participation in pedophilia hurts children.
RMS on Jan 4th, 2013
None of those say it is good. I disagree with him, he also disagrees with him and apologized for saying that. But that is very different from saying its good. I don’t think alcohol is good, I also don’t think it should be illegal.
None of those say it is good
Huh?
He said it’s a shame that paedophilia is outlawed and that it was narrow-mindedness that made it so.
He said it’s untrue that having sex with children harms them.
And yeah, he later apologised and said he doesn’t believe it anymore… 2 days after his job became on the line.
Ask yourself this:
A man has been publicly championing raping children for decades. Publicly. He firmly believes he should have the right to fuck children.
News media hears about this, and now his job seems untenable.
All of a sudden, the man claimed changed his mind, that he’s completely reversed his opinion (that he held for decades and publicly shouted to the world). In just 2 days, he’s gone from thinking it’s a tragedy that you can’t fuck children, to thinking fucking a child is bad.
Do you believe him? Or do you think he’s just saying anything he can to try to keep his job?
I don’t think alcohol is good, I also don’t think it should be illegal.
There’s a big difference between “it’s unfortunate that adults can’t fuck children, it really should be legalised. People against fucking toddlers are just bigots” and “well I don’t like alcohol, but I think it should be legal”
How you just equated raping a child and drinking a glass of wine is beyond me. Wow.
Oh yes, an update would be really interesting! (Even though I agree with @sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works in all points.)
My opinion on this whole topic: I don’t like the decision, a Free Software project should only prevent people from contributing in very rare occasions (e.g. having actively tried to sabotage the project). I don’t think this was the case, because I presume that the Linux Foundation was forced by the U.S. government to kick the maintainers out. The should’ve also communicated more clearly to prevent the confusion. (Russian trolls will cry out no matter how they phrased that.)
Absolutely idiotic take that endangers not only Linux but fractures the concept of open source itself.
Was worth it just to see you morons fume
Go look at the principles of open-source or free software as defined either by the OSI and the FSF and then come back when you find the one that says that Linus needs to violate US sanctions to keep employees of Russian companies in trusted roles within his project.
I think it’s a great change. But then again I’m not a lemmy.ml user.
Thinking this endangers Linux is pretty hilarious. Linux will be fine without a handful of Russian maintainers lol.
I’m surprised how many people treat GPL to ignore borders. The IP law still operates only by the rules your country decides.
I can understand the desire for information to be free, but unless Open source movement becomes it’s own country the discussion should end there.
altlinux devs:
oh come on we are not trollsI really hope this thread is filled with bots because otherwise you have really hit the bottom. The thread is filled with racism and bigotry, and it’s allowed only because it’s against russians…
SELinux from NSA is evil. Got it.
You know. I don’t like what the Russian leadership and military are doing. I feel like ultimately we’re in the cold war era. But you know, at the height of the cold war, radio operators around the world still worked Russian stations.
Yes, there was a very clear policy, neither side talked about ANYTHING beyond their signal report and working conditions (information about radio, power output and aerial basically). At the height of the actual cold war, the individuals were not cancelled like this.
Sanction the leadership, sanction the money, and sanction the military. But the normal people that are subject to the propaganda? I don’t understand the benefit in doing this. I also don’t see how the sanctions effect an open source project…
Seems a bit weird. Maybe there’s information we’re not privy to, but on the face of it, just based on what we’re seeing. Seems like a very very odd move.
I don’t understand the benefit in doing this.
Security. Torvalds did this for security.
Is it really that hard to parse?
And I’ll say the same here as I did above. If it was for security, their code is tainted too. It’s an arbitrary reaction that is not complete as a solution to anything.
You can’t untaint code if the tainters (lol that sounds funny) can still edit the code.
If Torvalds is correct (he is), patching can now take place for vulnerabilities.
Good point!
Well it seems it was more to do with sanctions, if the open letter from one of the chopped developers is to be believed. In which case, I think the right thing is to move the names to contributors (they did still contribute), remove them from maintainers (some maintainers are actually paid by the foundation, I mean not a lot, but some are paid).
I still find it all a little odd. But likely there was a bit of a prod from somewhere higher as to how sanctions should be followed.
They can check existing code. You have to be able to trust people who are contributing.
They can check new code by these risky people as it comes in, but it why risk it?
don’t understand the benefit in doing this.
FSB wants backdoor in kernel. FSB notices subsystem maintainer is Russian, lives in Chelyabinsk. Can close eyes to backdoor, can pretend to review. FSB in Moscow makes call to FSB in Chelyabinsk telling them to buy heavy wrench at hardware store.
I don’t think this only happens now, governments like Russia, USA, China, Israel will likely always be making these attempts.
Same could be said for any intelligence service . it is better to focus on preventing and detecting these things through analysis and code reviews.
And they could just offer boatloads of cash to someone in another country to insert something so this doesn’t really prevent anything it only isolates a certain subset of people.
So if we can’t completely 100% deal with a problem, we shouldn’t even try? I mean, you’re correct, but we can’t solve all problems at once. If we deal with at least one, then we’ve made progress. Then we can try to deal with the next one.
No but this doesn’t do anything to “deal” with the problem as anyone can built up trust like Jian tan showed. The argument that this makes us more secure is like saying closed source is more secure cause the hackers dont have access to the source.
We have evidence of the US messing with nist standards so by that same logic should we assume all us actors are bad ?
The solution is to verify the code maybe have multiple people from different locations have to review stuff. Build more checks into the process.
We have evidence of the US messing with nist standards
What… You realize that NIST is literally a government agency? It’s part of the United States Department of Commerce. It’s literally the US government. Are you saying that the government is messing with itself? What does that even mean?
If that were true, surely they’d not trust ANY of their existing work, or at least any done since the Special War Operation. Wouldn’t that make sense?
They’ve left the code, and removed the people arbitrarily. Seems a bit off to me.
I am on your side and don’t understand the fury of down votes in this section regarding this stance. I am from a shit hole of a country too and if my life long contribution to open science (hypothetically speaking) could be so completely disregarded because of something ultra shitty that my country did, I would be super sad and probably mad at the OS community for leaving me behind so quickly.
I also don’t understand the benefit of doing this. Most people seem to claim it’s for security reasons but that does not make sense to me. Closing doors to someone without any proof if malintent is so against open source philosophy that it is perhaps more damaging in its core. And being the kind of government Russia is (or for that matter Israel, China, USA etc etc) they will always try to gain cyber war advantage by such methods. This approach is therefore clearly unsustainable. You would have to restrict dev access to only a handful of countries in the world.
It sure as hell won’t scratch a dent in the Russian government’s armor when all these sanctions did not. It is not going to achieve 1/1000th of what all those ambargoes, frozen accounts etc failed to achieve too.
Therefore there is either missing information (external pressure to take this action) or this is simply an action based on personal judgement.
Therefore there is either missing information (external pressure to take this action) or this is simply an action based on personal judgement.
Looking at the other post about NVidia drivers, I am starting to wonder if western governments (or perhaps just the US) are going after large orgs and suggesting how current sanctions should be interpreted. In which case, not sure I can then blame the Linux foundation, since you know, you don’t need government heavy breathing down your neck.
He didn’t expel all Russians, just the ones working for sanctioned Russian companies.
Just goes to show that even a legend can act like an idiot.
He makes a habit of that tbh (See tivoization, etc)
Like not risking his lifelyhood to fight US and EU sanctions against a genocidal regime?
Exactly. He obviously isn’t the one pushing for this, because if he was, he would’ve done it when the war started (or even before). That said, as a Finn, he doesn’t have any reason to stand up for Russians, so when legal push comes to shove, there’s not a good argument for him pushing back.
I agree with the person you’re replying to in the sense that Linus’s decision is OK, but the delivery could be less “idiotic”. This could be a different message entirely. Even a cold “Yes we have some things happening. Can’t tell more for now” would’ve been fine.
I’m Finnish. Did you think I’d be supporting Russian aggression?
Where did that come from? Sir this is a kernel mailing list. Why the nationality chest beating? I’m Polish and I have a smirk all day on November 4 but it’s just so childish from Linus.
You can look at the thread. The initial one got a lot of replies from a “Vladimir Putin” saying “You should kill yourself NOW!”. The Git commit is even worse, with the a lot of insults. Not what usually happens on that kind of places, not that they are always kind and lovely.
I mean he’s legally obligated to, not really a choice. He can say screw it, but then he opens himself up to legal troubles.
FFS, this makes me think of the new x86 group thing. Linus is a great person so have as a silent advisor, but they’ve made him and Tim Sweeney public figures for it. Pretty much ensuring something that should be great for the industry turns into a bunch of posturing and controversy.
To directly quote Linus:
Ok, lots of Russian trolls out and about.
It’s entirely clear why the change was done, it’s not getting reverted, and using multiple random anonymous accounts to try to “grass root” it by Russian troll factories isn’t going to change anything.
And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren’t troll farm accounts - the “various compliance requirements” are not just a US thing.
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.
As to sending me a revert patch - please use whatever mush you call brains. I’m Finnish. Did you think I’d be supporting Russian aggression? Apparently it’s not just lack of real news, it’s lack of history knowledge too.
Linus really pouring on that “white death” energy.
Linus is xenophobic pos. It’s clear as day now.
Stop spilling your dumb orc blood on Ukrainian soil and watch the deserved anti-Russian hatred melt away.
Note that they didn’t ban ethnic Russians or people of Russian decent, just cowards who still live in Russia and didn’t flee the war.
Lol. I would like to remind u that Nazis have taken over Ukraine in a violent coup.
What government has to go away and then there will be peace
Linus in 2012: Nvidia fuck you
Linus in 2024: Russia fuck you
“Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it”. Back when Pearl Harbor happened, people started to see japanese citizens as enemies. Not solely the Japanese government to that time, but even the humble japanese, even if those had despises against their government. Almost a century after, humanity is making the exact same thing, this time involving Russians and Ukrainians, as well as Israeli and Palestinians (exactly, “both sides”). Like how it happened back in Pearl Harbor, the prejudice extended all the way to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Medical), the subject of this community and thread.
I was born a Brazilian, without my consent. Also, without my consent, there is this thing called “Brazilian politics”. I hate both the current and the former governments. I have no money nor conditions to simply leave the country but even if I did, I’d stay born as a Brazilian. Everyone who meets a Brazilian readily asks things such as “how’s carnival, how’s samba, how’s football, how’s Neymar”. Being a Brazilian necessarily mean that I have to like those things? Being a Brazilian necessarily mean that I consented to the current politics within this country? If Lula is sided with Putin, does it necessarily mean that me, a Brazilian citizen unknown to Lula or the entire government (I’m just one among 220 million people), endorse him as well? Should I blame myself for my entire life for being born Brazilian? Should a Russian do the same? An Ukrainian? An Israeli? An Palestinian?
