The discussion around this has been physically painful to read. From what I gather, the delisted maintainers are people on sanction lists, i.e. somehow connected to the Russian state, and they have been given the opportunity to prove their innocence by providing some (admittedly unspecified) documents to Linus and the Linux Foundation.
Judging by Linus’s updated comment in that article there are legal concerns involved, as the Linux Foundation is a US-based organization. Though even if they weren’t, it is the morally correct thing to do to give Russian state actors the boot.
No, but I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not going to go into the details that I - and other maintainers - were told by lawyers.
I’m also not going to start discussing legal issues with random internet people who I seriously suspect are paid actors and/or have been riled up by them.
Connection to the state sounds like a much better reason than ‘being Russian or using Russian email address’. I understand why the internet ‘discussion’ mostly fails to notice this difference
To be fair to the internet discussion, Linus’s (and the other maintainers’) communication on this could have been better. Still, it should’ve been pretty obvious from the start that this is a sanctions thing, and people and companies don’t end up on sanctions lists for no reason – though it is easy to end up on the list if you have even indirect ties to the Russian state.
Linux Foundation is a US foundation but Linus lives in the US and is bound by the laws there but depending who wins the vote these sanctions might not matter for long anymore if Putins orange wins.
But he is also still a citizen of Finland- which is bound by very similar EU sanctions. And the Finish police is known to take these things seriously, as do a lot of other EU countries (not all of them,sadly. Hungary and Italy don’t give a shit,for example). So if he fucks things up here he might have two major legal targets painted on his back-both the FBI and a bunch of EU law enforcement agencies under Europol can massively hinder his further travel options.
In the end there is a lot to lose for him and Linux(him being persecuted, companies pulling funding from the association) and little to gain(feeling edgy and being applauded by Russian shills)when he keeps these maintainers.
And tbh, from the outside it looks like a fair process was followed.
Though even if they weren’t, it is the morally correct thing to do to give Russian state actors the boot.
Meanwhile Linus is fine with supporting USA DOD and making a profit from it. Funny how morality changes when you introduce other interests… It’s a purely business move and has nothing to do with ethics.
Not only that, he’s likely using the whole “I’m Finnish” thing as an excuse. According to Wikipedia at least, he’s now an American citizen living in -of all places, Silicon Valley.
So many bad-faith arguments being made about this.
Independent of any arguments about who asked for this to happen and why: A free software project always has the right to choose which contributors it trusts and which it doesn’t. I’ve seen no evidence that these people are banned from submitting patches due to their nationality. They’ve been remove from a particular role in the project due to political reasons. An organization is an inherently political entity.
Remember when codes of conduct destroyed all of free software and nothing ever got built again? Me neither. It’s the same thing.
I try to stay away from getting overtly (geo)political in technical communities like this, but in this case, it’s the very nature of the article. And Linus himself underlines this fact:
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.
We do not live in a vacuum. World events affect real people. Sometimes, it is necessary for even ideally apolitical groups to respond. This is one of those times. Слава Україні.
Are you aware of the rich history of your last sentence? And the mandatory salute to go with it?
Are you aware that the salute to which you’re referring was used for only a short while before they got rid of it, and that the saying has additional rich history beyond what you’re referring to, both before and after it was used by Ukrainian nationalists in the Second World War, and is generally accepted as a slogan of national pride and resistance to tyranny these days?
Legally, it doesn’t seem like he had much choice. The war has been going on for 2+ years now? I’m just surprised it took so long.
Regardless, this is probably going to have an impact on existing maintainers as it most likely isn’t clear who will act as replacements. I’ll bring it up again: 2% of the Linux Foundation’s money simply isn’t good enough for the Linux Kernel. It should be way way way more.
