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Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers
(www.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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The central project of open-source community closes doors to people based on nationality, and everyone is cheering...
Why? You seriously miss the implications of breaking the very basic principles of open source? You are ready to forgive literally anything if it is claimed to target Russia or Russians in any way?
For those of you who say about backdoors:
The only reasonable way to avoid backdoors is to meticulously check the submitted code. Threat actors can be anywhere - and Russia is not some unique threat location, nor was it banned with that justification - just "compliance requirements".
This is politics permeating the sacred place we all had. This is a giant threat to the community, and the way Linus framed it in his message is even more terrifying. This was never meant to happen.
Which is the job of maintainers. Which now aren't Russian, any more. To the best of my knowledge the kernel is still accepting code from Russian citizens, ultimately not having Russians in maintainer roles isn't going to stop the FSB from infiltrating the kernel but it certainly does make it harder.
This also isn't in any way a judgement on the removed people, it's just that it so happens that if you're a Russian citizen you're quite vulnerable to wrench attacks. You could even say that the kernel org is protecting them from being used like that.
"Protective restrictions" is a code for discrimination. Or would you argue that not allowing, idk, women to vote is a good measure for protecting them against being violently coerced to vote one way or another?
(this is a random example, just a small mark so I wouldn't be eaten alive)
I’m actually shocked by how people are acting about this.
You see, it’s actually a really bad thing to ban devs from an open source project based on nationality over all else. “Oh, but they are state actors!!!” How do you know? Because they are Russian?
OK, this is bs.
They're not banning devs, they're banning maintainers.
Russians can submit as many patches as they like for review, they just can't sign off on their commits themselves.
Seems pretty fair to me.
It seems they're not being removed because they're Russian, but instead because they work for specific companies who are subject to US sanctions:
I'm not. Ever since the war, every single closet xenophobe of the west has been taking full advantage of finally having an acceptable group of subhumans to hate. If any of this surprises you, you haven't been paying attention.
Exactly! Being Russian doesn't mean having any political affiliation.
Moreover, even Russia the state is adopting Linux and is greatly disinterested in messing it up. If anything, this could really be the attack on Linux-reliant Russian infrastructure, but even then it most likely will be a reason for a fork, no more, no less.
No, the basic principles of open source are either the four freedoms (if you agree w/ Stallman) or the OSI open source definition. Here are Stallman's four freedoms:
Russians still have these freedoms WRT the Linux kernel. They can still run, study, and redistribute modified versions of the Linux kernel. There's no violation here.
And the OSI definition is similar (and longer, so I won't repeat it here).
No part of the definitions of open source or free software obligate a maintainer to work with anyone else, the only obligations are to the legal freedom of the code. Russians can still use, modify, and redistribute the software, they just aren't allowed to have maintainer positions within the Linux foundation. They can still submit code, and it's up to the maintainers if they choose to look at that code.
That said, I'm sad that it has come to this. I hate the idea of international politics interfering w/ FOSS, but I still maintain that it's 100% fine for Linus Torvalds (and his legal counsel) to make this call. So I agree with the core of your argument, that politics interfering w/ FOSS is bad, but I disagree that it violates any part of the basic concept of FOSS, FOSS maintainers should always be able to decide who they work with, and the rest of the community gets to decide if they're okay with that or if they'd rather follow someone else's fork.
Fair on your part, I might've gone too far with my argument.
I was talking more about collaborative nature and what happens to it when the major open-surce project decides to gatekeep based on something highly arbitrary.
Linux is long past a simple hobby project, and it should be managed responsibly and with respect to the people that make this all happen.
Sure, the roots of FOSS came from collaboration, with people sharing code between universities and whatnot. But the process has always been "here are my changes, take them if you like." So even the term "collaboration" is a bit of a stretch, since it was almost always a bunch of solo efforts and people would pull in the changes they like. The idea of any kind of structure to FOSS development was added later to help organize it, but the foundation was always someone working on a thing and then advertising those changes for others to pull, if they wanted.
A collaborative project would work something like Python where a core team decides which features to add (i.e. PEPs), and people on the dev team or the community at large would develop those features, and any development that's not part of those approved features tend to be rejected until it goes through the review process.
Linux isn't particularly collaborative in that sense, it's more like the old-school FOSS development process where individual developers would build a thing, use it themselves, and then submit their changes for upstream consideration. I worked on a team where we maintained our own kernel patches separate from upstream for years before trying to submit them upstream, and every time we'd upgrade the kernel, we'd have to reapply the patches, occasionally fixing some things that had changed. The network of maintainers is largely a convenience for working in this more chaotic model, where maintainers are responsible for reviewing and passing along changes for a certain area of the kernel, they don't actually guide development in any meaningful way.
So the main change here is that Russian contributors can still contribute, they just aren't trusted as inner-circle reviewers. It's still collaborative in the same sense that it has always been, there's just a bit more scrutiny over which reviews to trust.
Torvalds responses make clear he has spent too much time with the wrong people. Calling everyone paid actors is such an embarrassment to his own intelligence. When the linux kernel starts falling behind because of a lack of competent maintainers after banning any country that NATO isnt friends with, we will know that this is where it started and that people cheered.
Yeah, arguing that everyone disagreeing is a paid Russian troll is a cherry on top.
So you think Russian trolls wouldn't want to spin this narrative? By virtue of what? Honor?
No, I just say that writing down any disagreement to the evil intentions of someone in power is extremely counterproductive.
There is plenty of people who are in sincere disagreement over this decision, and Linus just tries to silence them. This ain't alright and leads to direct abuse of power.
This is literally a chapter of an authoritarian playbook.
Open source IP laws operate under the jurisdiction of the citizen's country. What kind of principles do you think open source represents? Because if it's about free movement of information and global collaboration, I'm pretty sure that pirates are the group that better represents those values
Arrrgh!
Russians can still contribute code, don't bundle those together just to have something to list. You are correct about pegasus, but this is about kernel and rights to commit without review.
True, but it seems like they were mostly united by just having Russian e-mail domains. Some also worked on support for Baikal CPUs, but they are essentially a failed product now.
Also, the personal response of Linus is a clear F*** you to Russians in particular, so he kinda cleared this out, at least on the level of "I don't give a damn about Russians whatsoever, they're evil"
Yeah well getting invaded by a country twice in living memory will do that to you.
Germany's like: "uh-oh"
Germany is repentant of their past.
Russia wants to return to it.
Russia, or Putin?
Both.
The comment right above you is fantasising about how America will have to disarm russia and execute the army and install a puppet government. It's not that people don't care about America, it's that they cheer for it's crimes.
in today's political landscape: genocide is acceptable and ignorable; progressives are dirty commies that you should ignore at all costs; and being russian is enough to get you kicked out of contributions to FOSS and all this comes from people who call themselves "liberal".
A lemmy.ml user criticising others for supposedly believing genocide is acceptable. Remarkable.
Russia is committing a genocide in Ukraine.
Some sanctioned Russian companies can no longer have maintainers in the kernel. Boo fucking hoo.
And kicked out of all FOSS contributions? Why are you lying? Russians can still contribute.