Official statement regarding recent Greg’ commit 6e90b675cf942e from Serge Semin
Hello Linux-kernel community,
I am sure you have already heard the news caused by the recent Greg’ commit 6e90b675cf942e (“MAINTAINERS: Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements.”). As you may have noticed the change concerned some of the Ru-related developers removal from the list of the official kernel maintainers, including me.
The community members rightly noted that the quite short commit log contained very vague terms with no explicit change justification. No matter how hard I tried to get more details about the reason, alas the senior maintainer I was discussing the matter with haven’t given an explanation to what compliance requirements that was. I won’t cite the exact emails text since it was a private messaging, but the key words are “sanctions”, “sorry”, “nothing I can do”, “talk to your (company) lawyer”… I can’t say for all the guys affected by the change, but my work for the community has been purely volunteer for more than a year now (and less than half of it had been payable before that). For that reason I have no any (company) lawyer to talk to, and honestly after the way the patch has been merged in I don’t really want to now. Silently, behind everyone’s back, bypassing the standard patch-review process, with no affected developers/subsystem notified - it’s indeed the worse way to do what has been done. No gratitude, no credits to the developers for all these years of the devoted work for the community. No matter the reason of the situation but haven’t we deserved more than that? Adding to the GREDITS file at least, no?..
I can’t believe the kernel senior maintainers didn’t consider that the patch wouldn’t go unnoticed, and the situation might get out of control with unpredictable results for the community, if not straight away then in the middle or long term perspective. I am sure there have been plenty ways to solve the problem less harmfully, but they decided to take the easiest path. Alas what’s done is done. A bifurcation point slightly initiated a year ago has just been fully implemented. The reason of the situation is obviously in the political ground which in this case surely shatters a basement the community has been built on in the first place. If so then God knows what might be next (who else might be sanctioned…), but the implemented move clearly sends a bad signal to the Linux community new comers, to the already working volunteers and hobbyists like me.
Thus even if it was still possible for me to send patches or perform some reviews, after what has been done my motivation to do that as a volunteer has simply vanished. (I might be doing a commercial upstreaming in future though). But before saying goodbye I’d like to express my gratitude to all the community members I have been lucky to work with during all these years.
But folks who work for US companies building weapons for Israel are totes okay?
It’s honestly fucking wild that an internationally developed open source project has to play by the US government’s rules when the US government is out here helping commit genocide right the fuck now.
Like, look in the fucking mirror on this why don’t you.
Maybe the better rule is that if you work for a company that produces weaponry for war you shouldn’t be allowed to contribute, period.
Wow, I didn’t know that being a Linux/open source contributor meant you don’t have to follow your country’s laws.
It’s developed internationally but devs still reside somewhere and have to abide by the rules at that place. Linux in this case being represented by an US entity means they have to follow the gov’s sanctions. If you want more or less of those, that’s where (the government) you act.
This isn’t about them being kicked out, this is about the fact we don’t know the process that resulted in this. Was this a decision Linus made after a night coding and thinking about the world? Was the foundation ordered to do it?
It lacks transparency into the process even if the outcome is fine and the way it was done doesn’t feel transparent, even if it makes sense not to include Russian coders in the project.
You may be amazed to learn that there aren’t many international sanctions against the USA at this time, but I imagine you could probably get into legal trouble for collaborating with Americans if you’re in, I don’t know, North Korea maybe.
It’s crazy how the US Treasury isn’t sanctioning companies for working on US government approved contracts. /s
It would be if Blinken weren’t burying government reports proving that it legally must.
You may be amazed to learn that the reason there aren’t many international sanctions against the USA at this time is not because the USA is a beacon of peace, freedom, democracy, and national sovereignty. Because the US is very much not that.
Well it’s by far the biggest economy in the world and the whole world uses the tech developed in the US. sanction them and they could cut off your access to technology.
Address your complaints to the government of the USA. Or, if you have the right to do so, cast a vote in the upcoming election there to prevent it taking a big step in the opposite direction from a world in which it might consider anything like similar sanctions against Israel.
But folks who work for US companies building weapons for Israel are totes okay?
Who here said this?
No, you are making strawman arguments and using whataboutism in an attempt to deflect.
Maybe the better rule is that if you work for a company that produces weaponry for war you shouldn’t be allowed to contribute, period.
This is something I can actually get behind on.
But, you see, there is just one teeency weeency tiny problem with that. They spend trucks of cash on whatever they deem will give them what they want, including funding organizations that they profit from.
