Linus says to read the news, but I don’t see anything about new sanctions and the British government page on sanctions against Russian was last updated two weeks ago. What are the new sanctions that apply to open-source projects? This seems like something that other projects should be aware of, but no other project I’m involved in has heard anything.
FWIW I recognise some of those names from back when I was doing a lot of embedded Linux. At least one or two of the removed entries show personal email accounts of people who worked, or are still listed in various places (e.g. Linkedin, Github, company directories, all of which may be out of date though) as working for companies which are now under international sanctions, and used to maintain their contributions under their work email until not too long ago.
I don’t know if their removal is fair or not. Depending on what actually prompted it, this is probably not the right forum to discuss that, either. I just wanted to point out it may well be due to existing sanctions, not new ones.
The whole enterprise Linux/silicon industry clientelle in Russia is 95% government, and of those probably 90% is state security/military for sofware and 100% for hardware.
It need not to be new. It might be just enforcement of the old ones.
Hypothetically, Linux Foundation might have received an email from some alphabet soup branch of the government that has jurisdiction over it. If previously no one was looking too closely at who was where on the globe then suddenly it became an urgent problem to be solved.
Is there a difference based on whether the sanctions are new or old? Delays in taking action based on sanctions do not invalidate those actions as long as sanctions are active, especially when the sanctions continue for years with no signs of progress in their removal.
Found the answer to my question from the Phoronix article:
A big chunk of the reason it’s taken so long just to get the above is that the Lawyers (of which I’m not one) are still discussing the specifics and will produce a much longer policy document later, so they don’t want to be drawn into questions like this. However, my non-legal-advice rule of thumb that I’m applying until I hear otherwise is not on the SDN list, not a problem.
This is the right decision and it has nothing to do with “US law” as some of the lwn people seem to be talking about. Russia is a dictatorship with sophisticated state-powered cyberwarfare capabilities. Regardless of whether a Russian-based maintainer has malicious intent towards the Linux kernel, it’s beyond delusional to think that the Russian government isn’t aware of their status as kernel developers or would hesitate to force them to abuse their position if it was of strategic value to the Russian leadership. Frankly it’s a kindness to remove them from that sort of position and remove that risk to their personal safety.
It may or may not have been the right decision, but it was definitely the wrong way to go about it. At the very least there should have been an announcement and a reason provided. And thanks for their service so far. Not this cloak and dagger crap.
Indeed this was quite the inhumane way to let maintainers with hundreds of contributions go, this reply on the ML phrases it pretty well:
There is the form and there is the content – about the content one
cannot do much, when the state he or his organization resides in gives
an order.
But about the form one can indeed do much. No "Thank you!", no "I hope
we can work together again once the world has become sane(r)"... srsly,
what the hell.
Edit: There is another reply now with more details on which maintainers were removed, i.e. people whose employer is subject to an OFAC sanctions program - with a link to a list of specific companies.
I hope we can work together again once the world has become sane(r)
This would be a completely inappropriate response because it mischaracterizes the situation at hand: if the maintainers want to continue working on Linux, they only have to quit their jobs at companies producing weapons and parts used to kill Ukrainian children. It has nothing to do with the world being (in)sane, and everything to do with sanctions levied against companies complicit in mass murder.
Yes, the decision is reasonable whether or not it is right, but the communication and framing is terrible. “Sorry, but we’re forced to remove you due to US law and/or executive orders. Thanks for your past contributions” would have been the better approach.
This is true of quite a few governments, including those you think are friendly, and it is a huge blind spot to believe otherwise. Dictatorship doesn’t have anything to do with it, it isn’t as though these decisions are made right at the top.
Do you have the same reaction to contributions from US-based companies that have military contracts? While the US isn’t a dictatorship, the security and foreign policy apparatuses are very distant from democratic feedback.
Regardless of whether a Russian-based maintainer has malicious intent towards the Linux kernel, it’s beyond delusional to think that the Russian government isn’t aware of their status as kernel developers or would hesitate to force them to abuse their position if it was of strategic value to the Russian leadership.
It’s hard to single out Russia for this in a post-Snowden world. Not to mention that if maintainers can be forced to do something nefarious, then they can do the same thing of their own will or for their own benefit.
Frankly it’s a kindness to remove them from that sort of position and remove that risk to their personal safety.
The Wikimedia Foundation has taken similar action by removing Wikipedia administrators from e.g. Iran as a protective measure (sorry, don’t have links offhand), but even if that’s the reason, the Linux actions seem to have a major lack of compassion for the people affected.
It wasn’t xenophobia. The maintainers who were removed all worked for companies on a list of companies that US organizations and/or EU organizations are prohibited from “trading” with.
The message could have (and should have) been wrapped in a kinder envelope, but the rationale for the action was beyond the control of Linus & co.
Here’s what Linus has said, and it’s more than just “sanction.”
Moreover, we have to remove any maintainers who come from the following countries or regions, as they are listed in Countries of Particular Concern and are subject to impending sanctions:
Burma, People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.
Algeria, Azerbaijan, the Central African Republic, Comoros, and Vietnam.
For People’s Republic of China, there are about 500 entities that are on the U.S. OFAC SDN / non-SDN lists, especially HUAWEI, which is one of the most active employers from versions 5.16 through 6.1, according to statistics. This is unacceptable, and we must take immediate action to address it, with the same reason
[Comment removed by moderator pushcx: Pruning an argument about defining Russia's political system. Telling people you are laughing at them doesn't help anything.]
The same could be said of US contributors to Linux, even moreso considering the existence of National security letters. The US is also a far more powerful dictatorship than the Russian Federation, and is currently aiding at least two genocides.
The Linux Foundation should consider moving its seat to a country with more Free Software friendly legislation, like Iceland.
In other words, refusing to comply with international sanctions. This is in fact an incredibly high bar to clear for Iceland. It would require the country to dissociate itself from the Nordic Council, the EEA, and NATO.
a kernel dev quoted in the Phoronix article wrote:
Again, we’re really sorry it’s come to this, but all of the Linux infrastructure and a lot of its maintainers are in the US and we can’t ignore the requirements of US law. We are hoping that this action alone will be sufficient to satisfy the US Treasury department in charge of sanctions and we won’t also have to remove any existing patches.
that made me think it was due to US (not international) sanctions and that the demand was made by a US body without international jurisdiction. what am I missing?
Without a citation of which sanction they’re referencing it’s really hard to say. I assumed this sanction regime was one shared by the US and the EU, and that Iceland would follow as a member of NATO and the EEA. If it is specific to the US, like their continued boneheaded sanctions against Cuba, than basing the Linux foundation in another country would prevent this specific instance (a number of email addresses removed from a largely ceremonial text file in an open source project) from happening again.
Note however that Icelandic law might impose other restrictions on the foundation’s work. The status of taxation as a non-profit is probably different.
even if it has to do with international sanctions, their interpretation and enforcement seems to have been particular to the US. it reeks of “national security” with all the jackbootery that comes with it.
I’ve tried to read through the various posts but I really don’t understand the controversy. Guilt by association is unfortunate but it doesn’t make it any less of a fact of life especially when nation states are involved. I have yet to see any new or interesting takes on that subject which makes this feel more like run of the mill lkml drama with a fresh coat of geopolitics.
I am unfamiliar with the Linux kernel culture. What is the significance of being on the MAINTAINERS list? Do you get some sort of fast-track commit access?
FOSS projects run on a combination of grants, contracts and clout. It is similar to academia in that way. This would be roughly equivalent to being fired as a professor at a prestigious university. Maintainers have commit access and are the gate through which everybody else’s changes must pass through. So if you want to change something in the part of the codebase they manage you have to cater to their whims and desires.
This is not really the right way to put it. Only Linus really has “commit access” (and he usually sends patches to the mailing list anyway). Subsystem maintainers have their own trees where they apply patches. They then create pull-requests to get those changes merged into linux/master. Driver maintainers may just review patches and let everything get applied via the driver’s subsystem tree.
Not going to say anything about the ban or sanctions. But arguably they did a terrible job implementing the ban. And Linus Torvalds’ behavior here really isn’t defensible, he really added fuel to the fire.
Still waiting for some headline like “Russian kernel developer hits hard Ukrainian plant thanks to a cyberwarfare kernel patch in the Ascot 2E TV driver”.
Oh absolutely. Frankly, as someone who follows the Ukrainian war very closely and has seen the ample evidence of wanton murder, rape and so on, I can’t say this attitude hasn’t rubbed onto me.
It absolutely is understandable. The question is whether it should guide the actions of the Linux BDFL.
(Admittedly my framing of this as an “emotional” problem came across as negative, sorry about that. I tried to write the comment in a neutral way, so as to not require a political discussion. Apparently I failed))
IMO, we should not allow any state identified as a terrorist state to take part in a democratic society, regardless of the benefits or influence it brings. “Should” as in “in the interests of humanity”
There’s a basic rule that applies to all situations, regardless of politics.
The Paradox of Tolerance suggests that communities that tolerate intolerance ultimately perish. The ultimate aim of any society is to preserve the community. Removing influence of intolerant countries from a democratic society is more important than adhering to [open source] community rules or rules of inclusivity as it is directly important for the existence of society.
Who’s doing the identifying? There’s likely plenty of countries where a majority of citizens would identify the USA as such.
I’m all for paradox of tolerance, but I’m not sure “removing the Nazis from this bar” and “not permitting a country to participate in wider society” are comparable, simply because I don’t know how you ever hope for reconciliation if you don’t permit the (individually relatively powerless) citizens to feel like they do in fact belong to the world at large. I have Russian friends, neighbours, extended family, and know lots of folks with Russian friends; it’s that they can still see society as theirs that there’s hope for things to come back; it’s that we can still be connected that members of ‘democratic societies’ can still remember their lives are as real and important as ours, despite what their government has been doing.
The difference between the Nazis in the bar and Russian citizens is the former are each responsible for their views and actions; the vast, vast majority of the latter have no connection to nor recourse against the actions you wish to hold over their lives and humanity.
By the rules of democracy, it should be an entire society: Europe, the USA, and other democratic countries, all at once. It’s crucial to note that nobody should possess the ability to convert an entire nation into a terrorist state, and as far as I know, no one currently can.
Considering the current situation, this solution seems solid since we essentially have North Korea/Iran*/Russia opposing the democratic society, and the rule is straightforward.
That was really the lesser of my two points, and I think your “rule” is awful; I don’t know what you hope to achieve by bisecting the world. Sanctions are a known way to send a message to a government, and while they still considerably hurt the population, it at least is a secondary effect. Your proposal would instead treat them as one and the same as their state, deprive them of opportunities to even know about the world outside their borders and the propaganda therein, to collaborate with outsiders to effect internal change, to feel solidarity, to …? It just boggles the mind.
Sanctions are a known way to send a message to a government
Which instead should be an actual tool to prevent aggression, not to send messages(as in political meaning)
Your proposal would instead treat them as one and the same as their state, deprive them of opportunities to even know about the world outside their borders and the propaganda therein, to collaborate with outsiders to effect internal change, to feel solidarity, to …? It just boggles the mind.
Yes. You look at it from only the positive side where they’re deprived of the opportunities and etc, while I do see it from mostly the negative side as isolation from the world is much better than allowing the war to thrive
You look at it from only the positive side where they’re deprived of the opportunities and etc, while I do see it from mostly the negative side as isolation from the world is much greater than allowing the war to thrive
Yes, it’s true; but I focus on that positive side because I think depriving them of those opportunities will result in a net negative for everyone — I see a strategy of isolating a target as inherently amenable to producing further isolation, and so decreased opportunities for understanding and reconciliation, and ultimately heightened aggression.
But I could be wrong, and it may well be there’s no future for an intact world without a sharp shock here — I don’t know. But my view is that war is aided by disconnect between societies, not hampered.
I believe it is necessary to assist democratic countries and punish any form of tyrannical government rule. Every country should grant its citizens the freedom to determine the country’s direction, and I strongly believe in the crowd’s wisdom, much more than the wisdom of politicians. In the worst case, the migration process from one democratical country to another should be in place. Punishing the tyrannical rule over an extended period can embed it in the culture and history, reducing the chances of such rule reappearing, at least from my perspective it’s logical.
The only option against an oppressive government is to provide a hidden way out or completely isolate the regime. North Korea is a prime illustration of a country lacking basic agriculture and economy that basically can’t be helped.
Anyway, I digress, it’s out of the topic of the articles
Challenging this socratically apparently risks excessive political discussion, so I will just state that identifying the USA as democratic and not a terrorist state does not hold up to scrutiny.
it’s that they can still see society as theirs that there’s hope for things to come back
Indeed, having friends and relatives in such countries has an immeasurable emotional impact. Some find hope in the chance of returning [to the rest of the society], however, it can be viewed from the other side, when people grieve the inaction of the rest of the world because they want those people to have hope which may introduce deaths.
IMO The ongoing war persists because the world permits the russian government to adapt instead of taking radical action, which proved to be efficient with the banning of bots or killing viruses.
The ongoing war persists because the world permits the russian government to adapt instead of taking radical action, which proved to be efficient with the banning of bots or killing viruses.
I pretty much agree, although we discovered at least one of society’s limits re: radical action when governments successively fumbled what could’ve been effective containment of COVID. I wish we had been much harsher, much stronger, much faster, and much more unequivocal with Russia. And I wish more governments were outspoken now about continuing to apply and increase pressure in a war that must not be lost.
I don’t know your background but most Russians (yes in tech too) share the views of their government with insignificant deviations and are rarely shy about it when you communicate with them as a native of formerly Soviet countries. I can attest that firsthand. Sorting them out individually at this early stage in the world war is impractical just as it would be with Third Reich citizens in 1939.
I’m not here to argue sides, and Linus’ comment is extremely uncouth, but you should understand that it’s due to territorial sanctions, not just because someone is Russian or not. It’s not that Russians are inherently untrustworthy, it’s just that everyone working within Russian territory could be forced to commit espionage for the government and they really wouldn’t have an option besides risking not only their lives but their family’s lives.
There’s absolutely a conversation to be had here, blindly screaming “racist!” at everyone isn’t how to go about it.
It’s not even a matter of territory, it’s a matter of employment. There are plenty of people from Russia on the MAINTAINERS list after this patch set, they just don’t work for sanctioned companies.
No one got removed from the list for being Russian. They got removed because they’re working for companies on the OFAC sanctions list. You don’t have to be Russian for that, you’d get removed regardless of nationality if you’re working for one of those companies, and the company in question doesn’t have to be Russian, either, there are companies from all over the world on that list, including from the US for that matter.
Framing this as xenophobic or racist is honestly kind of awful for those of us who actually experience xenophobia or racism. Not being allowed on a list because your employer is on the wrong list is both a universal problem and not quite the same kind of thing as being called a slur based on where you were born or when they hear your accent.
Not that I want to defend the way this was communicated. You never know why someone’s working for whoever’s employing them. Maybe they agree with their government’s ideology, sure, or maybe they just don’t care and karma woke up grumpy today. But maybe they have an ailing parent and no other realistic prospect of employment, or someone’s literally held a gun to their head, or a relative’s head, or maybe working there is the only reason why their kid isn’t being sent to the frontlines. Basic decency would’ve required an elegant approach, even at the risk of being wasted on people who didn’t deserve it.
This is a complete clusterfuck and I’m sure there’s no shortage of people who are cheering for it because they’re xenophobic assholes, which only makes it worse.
Blindly screaming “racist” isn’t the way to go about it, I will grant. Conversely, screaming “Russian bot”, “troll”, and “I’m Finnish” aren’t ways to go about that conversation either. There may be a very legitimate reason for the actions taken by Linus and friends. But mumbling something about “compliance requirements” (Greg KH) and deflecting with ad hominem (Linus) are not how you run an open source project that values transparency and trust very highly. Especially when that project is global in scope like Linux.
I’m seeing a lot of bad faith “well they do it so I can do” extremist comments around this predicament. Linus is being biased, so we can be too. The US commits espionage, so Russia should be able to as well (I’m not saying Russia is but that’s a sentiment I see being tossed around). None of this is productive. This is a matter of sanctioning laws and Linus not being able to shut his mouth, both problems are old as time. This is not an excuse for us to rip off our shirts and act like cavemen.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the problems around the Rust For Linux project, but the entire Linux project seems to have extreme interpersonal issues in every corner. The entire Linux project is extremely unhealthy, and I’m really not surprised at how this was handled, it seems par for the course at this stage.
everyone working within Russian territory could be forced to commit espionage
The same is very true for the USA, as well.
The most offensive aspect of this drama is that, the door is open for the rest of the world to demand that American’s not be allowed access to the Linux kernel, also - for the same reasons that Russians are now denied it.
Listen to me very, very carefully, we are not talking about morality, we are talking about sanctioning laws. This is not a politics thread, pushcx already had to delete half the comments in this thread because people do not understand that.
It’s especially sad that your post is directly under one of my responses to a response to my post, where I point out how many people are using this as an excuse to act in bad faith and point fingers at everyone for no productive end goal. No, let’s not burn the world down because one country has some sanctioning laws against another, how about that?
Unfortunately for as long as a single nation thinks it has a moral imperative to ‘fix the world’ using its resources, this will always be a political battle.
one country has some sanctioning laws against another
Only the American people think they have the moral altitude to ‘do something about those inferior cultures’.
This isn’t about morality or law. This is about totalitarian-authoritarianism. Point.
The sanctioning laws against Russia are a lot more involved than the US single-handedly deciding Russia is an “inferior culture”, but I’ll stop here. I have a feeling you’re a bit too emotionally invested in this to hold a proper conversation about it.
Nonsense. America sanctions its enemies because it is a form of power and control, and that is the only reason it happens.
America has done everything bad that Russia has done, this century. But who sanctions the USA? Nobody, because only the USA has given itself that ability.
I’m not here to argue sides, and Linus’ comment is extremely uncouth, but you should understand that it’s due to territorial sanctions, not just because someone is Russian or not. It’s not that Russians are inherently untrustworthy, it’s just that everyone working within Russian territory could be forced to commit espionage for the government and they really wouldn’t have an option besides risking not only their lives but their family’s lives.
Can you clarify the origin of this information? It has been hard to find much of anything about the reasons for this action. The most detail I could find was that lawyers said to remove maintainers who work for companies “on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list.” Which would suggest it’s based on companies rather than territory.
Russian aggression is precisely the reason for the sanctions, though. I guess he’s just saying he agrees with them (and given the history between Russia and Finland I’m not surprised.) Admittedly agreeing with sanctions is rather irrelevant from a legal PoV - you still have to implement them, either way.
Assuming that this decision was taken to comply with international sanctions, it would be appropriate for the kernel team to remove access for contributors with ties to Hamas, an organization that is both sanctioned and responsible for the terrorist attacks that the state of Israel is now responding to.
Israel itself is not under sanctions.
Sanctions are a blunt instrument and will affect innocents and non-supporters of the sanctioned state or organization too. However the idea is that they are an international response that leaders should take into account before attacking another country.
While I agree to restrict access for maintainers affiliated with terrorist organizations such as Hamas, I believe that effectively differentiating between innocent individuals, supporters, and non-supporters is extremely challenging and basically not worth it
It’s practically impossible to make an objective decision about whether verbal and physical actions serve the terrorist organization’s purpose or not
I wrote this comment before reading that only those employed by companies on the OFAC list were remove from the list. This is also an imperfect filter but it’s far from the accusations that just being Russian is enough to be removed from the list.
Those russians that do not support russian aggression have much more pressing concerns than contribution to Linux. They should not be distracted from organisation of opposition or migration elsewhere, or a bajilion of other things they should be doing. Doing nothing was somewhat defensible before the full scale invasion but not any more. Doing nothing now is complecency and a tacit support of the current government policy.
This is a basically unreasonable obligation to put on the citizens of any country, and I can confidently say without knowing you that you would not hold yourself, your family, or your friends to the same standard if the situation were reversed.
Linus says to read the news, but I don’t see anything about new sanctions and the British government page on sanctions against Russian was last updated two weeks ago. What are the new sanctions that apply to open-source projects? This seems like something that other projects should be aware of, but no other project I’m involved in has heard anything.
FWIW I recognise some of those names from back when I was doing a lot of embedded Linux. At least one or two of the removed entries show personal email accounts of people who worked, or are still listed in various places (e.g. Linkedin, Github, company directories, all of which may be out of date though) as working for companies which are now under international sanctions, and used to maintain their contributions under their work email until not too long ago.
I don’t know if their removal is fair or not. Depending on what actually prompted it, this is probably not the right forum to discuss that, either. I just wanted to point out it may well be due to existing sanctions, not new ones.
Edit: yep, turns out that’s the case.
The whole enterprise Linux/silicon industry clientelle in Russia is 95% government, and of those probably 90% is state security/military for sofware and 100% for hardware.
those are pretty startling numbers, anywhere I could read more?
It need not to be new. It might be just enforcement of the old ones.
Hypothetically, Linux Foundation might have received an email from some alphabet soup branch of the government that has jurisdiction over it. If previously no one was looking too closely at who was where on the globe then suddenly it became an urgent problem to be solved.
Is there a difference based on whether the sanctions are new or old? Delays in taking action based on sanctions do not invalidate those actions as long as sanctions are active, especially when the sanctions continue for years with no signs of progress in their removal.
Yeah that’s the part that’s still a bit mysterious. And if it isn’t due to recent changes, why two years down the line?
Found the answer to my question from the Phoronix article:
This is the right decision and it has nothing to do with “US law” as some of the lwn people seem to be talking about. Russia is a dictatorship with sophisticated state-powered cyberwarfare capabilities. Regardless of whether a Russian-based maintainer has malicious intent towards the Linux kernel, it’s beyond delusional to think that the Russian government isn’t aware of their status as kernel developers or would hesitate to force them to abuse their position if it was of strategic value to the Russian leadership. Frankly it’s a kindness to remove them from that sort of position and remove that risk to their personal safety.
It may or may not have been the right decision, but it was definitely the wrong way to go about it. At the very least there should have been an announcement and a reason provided. And thanks for their service so far. Not this cloak and dagger crap.
Indeed this was quite the inhumane way to let maintainers with hundreds of contributions go, this reply on the ML phrases it pretty well:
Edit: There is another reply now with more details on which maintainers were removed, i.e. people whose employer is subject to an OFAC sanctions program - with a link to a list of specific companies.
This would be a completely inappropriate response because it mischaracterizes the situation at hand: if the maintainers want to continue working on Linux, they only have to quit their jobs at companies producing weapons and parts used to kill Ukrainian children. It has nothing to do with the world being (in)sane, and everything to do with sanctions levied against companies complicit in mass murder.
it has everything to do with sanity or lack thereof, when such a standard is applied so unevenly
Yes, the decision is reasonable whether or not it is right, but the communication and framing is terrible. “Sorry, but we’re forced to remove you due to US law and/or executive orders. Thanks for your past contributions” would have been the better approach.
This is true of quite a few governments, including those you think are friendly, and it is a huge blind spot to believe otherwise. Dictatorship doesn’t have anything to do with it, it isn’t as though these decisions are made right at the top.
Dictator, you say? I chuckled. Linus is literally a “BDFL”.
Maybe we’ll eventually see an official BRICS fork of the Linux kernel? Pretty sure China has been working on it.
Do you have the same reaction to contributions from US-based companies that have military contracts? While the US isn’t a dictatorship, the security and foreign policy apparatuses are very distant from democratic feedback.
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much more distant than russia’s in fact
It’s hard to single out Russia for this in a post-Snowden world. Not to mention that if maintainers can be forced to do something nefarious, then they can do the same thing of their own will or for their own benefit.
Did you hear this from the affected parties?
The Wikimedia Foundation has taken similar action by removing Wikipedia administrators from e.g. Iran as a protective measure (sorry, don’t have links offhand), but even if that’s the reason, the Linux actions seem to have a major lack of compassion for the people affected.
[Comment removed by moderator pushcx: Don't try to make your point by bringing in every current extreme political event.]
It wasn’t xenophobia. The maintainers who were removed all worked for companies on a list of companies that US organizations and/or EU organizations are prohibited from “trading” with.
The message could have (and should have) been wrapped in a kinder envelope, but the rationale for the action was beyond the control of Linus & co.
Thank you for the explanation, makes sense as is common and compatible with sanctions to other countries. I was replying to the comment above mostly.
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This was what Hangton Chen has to say about this:
Hi James,
Here’s what Linus has said, and it’s more than just “sanction.”
Moreover, we have to remove any maintainers who come from the following countries or regions, as they are listed in Countries of Particular Concern and are subject to impending sanctions:
Burma, People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Algeria, Azerbaijan, the Central African Republic, Comoros, and Vietnam. For People’s Republic of China, there are about 500 entities that are on the U.S. OFAC SDN / non-SDN lists, especially HUAWEI, which is one of the most active employers from versions 5.16 through 6.1, according to statistics. This is unacceptable, and we must take immediate action to address it, with the same reason
did you just deliberately ignore the fact that huawei is covered by special exemption in the sanctions?
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The same could be said of US contributors to Linux, even moreso considering the existence of National security letters. The US is also a far more powerful dictatorship than the Russian Federation, and is currently aiding at least two genocides.
The Linux Foundation should consider moving its seat to a country with more Free Software friendly legislation, like Iceland.
I’m Icelandic and regret I only have two eyebrows to raise at that.
it’s an incredibly low bar that Iceland has to clear, as this story demonstrates
Please expand on how Iceland would act to be seen as a more FLOSS friendly place, as opposed to for example the United States.
not mandating the removal of maintainers
In other words, refusing to comply with international sanctions. This is in fact an incredibly high bar to clear for Iceland. It would require the country to dissociate itself from the Nordic Council, the EEA, and NATO.
a kernel dev quoted in the Phoronix article wrote:
that made me think it was due to US (not international) sanctions and that the demand was made by a US body without international jurisdiction. what am I missing?
Without a citation of which sanction they’re referencing it’s really hard to say. I assumed this sanction regime was one shared by the US and the EU, and that Iceland would follow as a member of NATO and the EEA. If it is specific to the US, like their continued boneheaded sanctions against Cuba, than basing the Linux foundation in another country would prevent this specific instance (a number of email addresses removed from a largely ceremonial text file in an open source project) from happening again.
Note however that Icelandic law might impose other restrictions on the foundation’s work. The status of taxation as a non-profit is probably different.
even if it has to do with international sanctions, their interpretation and enforcement seems to have been particular to the US. it reeks of “national security” with all the jackbootery that comes with it.
There is some additional information about the bans: Some Clarity On The Linux Kernel’s “Compliance Requirements” Around Russian Sanctions - Phoronix
I’ve tried to read through the various posts but I really don’t understand the controversy. Guilt by association is unfortunate but it doesn’t make it any less of a fact of life especially when nation states are involved. I have yet to see any new or interesting takes on that subject which makes this feel more like run of the mill lkml drama with a fresh coat of geopolitics.
[Comment removed by moderator pushcx: Don't insult people to pick a fight.]
I am unfamiliar with the Linux kernel culture. What is the significance of being on the MAINTAINERS list? Do you get some sort of fast-track commit access?
FOSS projects run on a combination of grants, contracts and clout. It is similar to academia in that way. This would be roughly equivalent to being fired as a professor at a prestigious university. Maintainers have commit access and are the gate through which everybody else’s changes must pass through. So if you want to change something in the part of the codebase they manage you have to cater to their whims and desires.
This is not really the right way to put it. Only Linus really has “commit access” (and he usually sends patches to the mailing list anyway). Subsystem maintainers have their own trees where they apply patches. They then create pull-requests to get those changes merged into linux/master. Driver maintainers may just review patches and let everything get applied via the driver’s subsystem tree.
Not going to say anything about the ban or sanctions. But arguably they did a terrible job implementing the ban. And Linus Torvalds’ behavior here really isn’t defensible, he really added fuel to the fire.
Here is a good example what he should have done: https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/e7d548a7fc835f9f3c9cb2e5ed97dfdfa164813f.camel@HansenPartnership.com/
What characteristics distinguish this response as good and Linus’s as bad?
[Comment removed by moderator pushcx: Adding Nazis already knocked this discussion into a pretty bad place, as it pretty much always does.]
please change the title to “several workers of russian tech companies lose kernle maintainership status”
Still waiting for some headline like “Russian kernel developer hits hard Ukrainian plant thanks to a cyberwarfare kernel patch in the Ascot 2E TV driver”.
It’s more like “OOO ALT Linux has troubles mainlining their latest features developed for FSB”.
This brings joy. A lot (if not most) of these people are affiliated with Russian state security and military suppliers like Baikal or ALT Linux.
Screw them and those of you here siding with them.
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Oh absolutely. Frankly, as someone who follows the Ukrainian war very closely and has seen the ample evidence of wanton murder, rape and so on, I can’t say this attitude hasn’t rubbed onto me.
It absolutely is understandable. The question is whether it should guide the actions of the Linux BDFL.
(Admittedly my framing of this as an “emotional” problem came across as negative, sorry about that. I tried to write the comment in a neutral way, so as to not require a political discussion. Apparently I failed))
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[Comment removed by moderator pushcx: Pruning politics thread.]
[Comment removed by moderator pushcx: Pruning politics thread.]
IMO, we should not allow any state identified as a terrorist state to take part in a democratic society, regardless of the benefits or influence it brings. “Should” as in “in the interests of humanity”
There’s a basic rule that applies to all situations, regardless of politics.
The Paradox of Tolerance suggests that communities that tolerate intolerance ultimately perish. The ultimate aim of any society is to preserve the community. Removing influence of intolerant countries from a democratic society is more important than adhering to [open source] community rules or rules of inclusivity as it is directly important for the existence of society.
Who’s doing the identifying? There’s likely plenty of countries where a majority of citizens would identify the USA as such.
I’m all for paradox of tolerance, but I’m not sure “removing the Nazis from this bar” and “not permitting a country to participate in wider society” are comparable, simply because I don’t know how you ever hope for reconciliation if you don’t permit the (individually relatively powerless) citizens to feel like they do in fact belong to the world at large. I have Russian friends, neighbours, extended family, and know lots of folks with Russian friends; it’s that they can still see society as theirs that there’s hope for things to come back; it’s that we can still be connected that members of ‘democratic societies’ can still remember their lives are as real and important as ours, despite what their government has been doing.
The difference between the Nazis in the bar and Russian citizens is the former are each responsible for their views and actions; the vast, vast majority of the latter have no connection to nor recourse against the actions you wish to hold over their lives and humanity.
By the rules of democracy, it should be an entire society: Europe, the USA, and other democratic countries, all at once. It’s crucial to note that nobody should possess the ability to convert an entire nation into a terrorist state, and as far as I know, no one currently can.
Considering the current situation, this solution seems solid since we essentially have North Korea/Iran*/Russia opposing the democratic society, and the rule is straightforward.
That was really the lesser of my two points, and I think your “rule” is awful; I don’t know what you hope to achieve by bisecting the world. Sanctions are a known way to send a message to a government, and while they still considerably hurt the population, it at least is a secondary effect. Your proposal would instead treat them as one and the same as their state, deprive them of opportunities to even know about the world outside their borders and the propaganda therein, to collaborate with outsiders to effect internal change, to feel solidarity, to …? It just boggles the mind.
(Also, you might mean Iran instead of Iraq.)
Responded in the message below
Which instead should be an actual tool to prevent aggression, not to send messages(as in political meaning)
Yes. You look at it from only the positive side where they’re deprived of the opportunities and etc, while I do see it from mostly the negative side as isolation from the world is much better than allowing the war to thrive
Yes, my bad, edited the message
Yes, it’s true; but I focus on that positive side because I think depriving them of those opportunities will result in a net negative for everyone — I see a strategy of isolating a target as inherently amenable to producing further isolation, and so decreased opportunities for understanding and reconciliation, and ultimately heightened aggression.
But I could be wrong, and it may well be there’s no future for an intact world without a sharp shock here — I don’t know. But my view is that war is aided by disconnect between societies, not hampered.
I believe it is necessary to assist democratic countries and punish any form of tyrannical government rule. Every country should grant its citizens the freedom to determine the country’s direction, and I strongly believe in the crowd’s wisdom, much more than the wisdom of politicians. In the worst case, the migration process from one democratical country to another should be in place. Punishing the tyrannical rule over an extended period can embed it in the culture and history, reducing the chances of such rule reappearing, at least from my perspective it’s logical.
The only option against an oppressive government is to provide a hidden way out or completely isolate the regime. North Korea is a prime illustration of a country lacking basic agriculture and economy that basically can’t be helped.
Anyway, I digress, it’s out of the topic of the articles
Indeed, we got a bit far there — thanks for discussing this with me. <3
[Comment removed by moderator pushcx: We're not going to define "democracy" and valid political moral authority in a computing form.]
[Comment removed by moderator pushcx: We're not going to define "democracy" and valid political moral authority in a computing form.]
[Comment removed by moderator pushcx: We're not going to define "democracy" and valid political moral authority in a computing forum.]
You mean West allies who identify themselves as “democratic”.
[Comment removed by moderator pushcx: We're not going to define "democracy" and valid political moral authority in a computing form.]
Challenging this socratically apparently risks excessive political discussion, so I will just state that identifying the USA as democratic and not a terrorist state does not hold up to scrutiny.
Indeed, having friends and relatives in such countries has an immeasurable emotional impact. Some find hope in the chance of returning [to the rest of the society], however, it can be viewed from the other side, when people grieve the inaction of the rest of the world because they want those people to have hope which may introduce deaths.
IMO The ongoing war persists because the world permits the russian government to adapt instead of taking radical action, which proved to be efficient with the banning of bots or killing viruses.
I pretty much agree, although we discovered at least one of society’s limits re: radical action when governments successively fumbled what could’ve been effective containment of COVID. I wish we had been much harsher, much stronger, much faster, and much more unequivocal with Russia. And I wish more governments were outspoken now about continuing to apply and increase pressure in a war that must not be lost.
I don’t know your background but most Russians (yes in tech too) share the views of their government with insignificant deviations and are rarely shy about it when you communicate with them as a native of formerly Soviet countries. I can attest that firsthand. Sorting them out individually at this early stage in the world war is impractical just as it would be with Third Reich citizens in 1939.
I am also a native of a former Soviet country. I don’t share any of your experiences or views.
[Comment removed by moderator pushcx: Don't pour gas on the fire by adding even more geopolitics.]
I’m not here to argue sides, and Linus’ comment is extremely uncouth, but you should understand that it’s due to territorial sanctions, not just because someone is Russian or not. It’s not that Russians are inherently untrustworthy, it’s just that everyone working within Russian territory could be forced to commit espionage for the government and they really wouldn’t have an option besides risking not only their lives but their family’s lives.
There’s absolutely a conversation to be had here, blindly screaming “racist!” at everyone isn’t how to go about it.
It’s not even a matter of territory, it’s a matter of employment. There are plenty of people from Russia on the
MAINTAINERSlist after this patch set, they just don’t work for sanctioned companies.No one got removed from the list for being Russian. They got removed because they’re working for companies on the OFAC sanctions list. You don’t have to be Russian for that, you’d get removed regardless of nationality if you’re working for one of those companies, and the company in question doesn’t have to be Russian, either, there are companies from all over the world on that list, including from the US for that matter.
Framing this as xenophobic or racist is honestly kind of awful for those of us who actually experience xenophobia or racism. Not being allowed on a list because your employer is on the wrong list is both a universal problem and not quite the same kind of thing as being called a slur based on where you were born or when they hear your accent.
Not that I want to defend the way this was communicated. You never know why someone’s working for whoever’s employing them. Maybe they agree with their government’s ideology, sure, or maybe they just don’t care and karma woke up grumpy today. But maybe they have an ailing parent and no other realistic prospect of employment, or someone’s literally held a gun to their head, or a relative’s head, or maybe working there is the only reason why their kid isn’t being sent to the frontlines. Basic decency would’ve required an elegant approach, even at the risk of being wasted on people who didn’t deserve it.
This is a complete clusterfuck and I’m sure there’s no shortage of people who are cheering for it because they’re xenophobic assholes, which only makes it worse.
Blindly screaming “racist” isn’t the way to go about it, I will grant. Conversely, screaming “Russian bot”, “troll”, and “I’m Finnish” aren’t ways to go about that conversation either. There may be a very legitimate reason for the actions taken by Linus and friends. But mumbling something about “compliance requirements” (Greg KH) and deflecting with ad hominem (Linus) are not how you run an open source project that values transparency and trust very highly. Especially when that project is global in scope like Linux.
I’m seeing a lot of bad faith “well they do it so I can do” extremist comments around this predicament. Linus is being biased, so we can be too. The US commits espionage, so Russia should be able to as well (I’m not saying Russia is but that’s a sentiment I see being tossed around). None of this is productive. This is a matter of sanctioning laws and Linus not being able to shut his mouth, both problems are old as time. This is not an excuse for us to rip off our shirts and act like cavemen.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with the problems around the Rust For Linux project, but the entire Linux project seems to have extreme interpersonal issues in every corner. The entire Linux project is extremely unhealthy, and I’m really not surprised at how this was handled, it seems par for the course at this stage.
The same is very true for the USA, as well.
The most offensive aspect of this drama is that, the door is open for the rest of the world to demand that American’s not be allowed access to the Linux kernel, also - for the same reasons that Russians are now denied it.
Listen to me very, very carefully, we are not talking about morality, we are talking about sanctioning laws. This is not a politics thread, pushcx already had to delete half the comments in this thread because people do not understand that.
It’s especially sad that your post is directly under one of my responses to a response to my post, where I point out how many people are using this as an excuse to act in bad faith and point fingers at everyone for no productive end goal. No, let’s not burn the world down because one country has some sanctioning laws against another, how about that?
Unfortunately for as long as a single nation thinks it has a moral imperative to ‘fix the world’ using its resources, this will always be a political battle.
Only the American people think they have the moral altitude to ‘do something about those inferior cultures’.
This isn’t about morality or law. This is about totalitarian-authoritarianism. Point.
The sanctioning laws against Russia are a lot more involved than the US single-handedly deciding Russia is an “inferior culture”, but I’ll stop here. I have a feeling you’re a bit too emotionally invested in this to hold a proper conversation about it.
Nonsense. America sanctions its enemies because it is a form of power and control, and that is the only reason it happens.
America has done everything bad that Russia has done, this century. But who sanctions the USA? Nobody, because only the USA has given itself that ability.
technically many countries have sanctions against the US, though it’s usually a response to the US sanctioning them first.
Can you clarify the origin of this information? It has been hard to find much of anything about the reasons for this action. The most detail I could find was that lawyers said to remove maintainers who work for companies “on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list.” Which would suggest it’s based on companies rather than territory.
Linus’s comment does seem to suggest some animus towards Russia. Bringing up “Russian aggression” is willd to me.
Russian aggression is precisely the reason for the sanctions, though. I guess he’s just saying he agrees with them (and given the history between Russia and Finland I’m not surprised.) Admittedly agreeing with sanctions is rather irrelevant from a legal PoV - you still have to implement them, either way.
Assuming that this decision was taken to comply with international sanctions, it would be appropriate for the kernel team to remove access for contributors with ties to Hamas, an organization that is both sanctioned and responsible for the terrorist attacks that the state of Israel is now responding to.
Israel itself is not under sanctions.
Sanctions are a blunt instrument and will affect innocents and non-supporters of the sanctioned state or organization too. However the idea is that they are an international response that leaders should take into account before attacking another country.
It is; for instance:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_League_boycott_of_Israel
While I agree to restrict access for maintainers affiliated with terrorist organizations such as Hamas, I believe that effectively differentiating between innocent individuals, supporters, and non-supporters is extremely challenging and basically not worth it
It’s practically impossible to make an objective decision about whether verbal and physical actions serve the terrorist organization’s purpose or not
I wrote this comment before reading that only those employed by companies on the OFAC list were remove from the list. This is also an imperfect filter but it’s far from the accusations that just being Russian is enough to be removed from the list.
Those russians that do not support russian aggression have much more pressing concerns than contribution to Linux. They should not be distracted from organisation of opposition or migration elsewhere, or a bajilion of other things they should be doing. Doing nothing was somewhat defensible before the full scale invasion but not any more. Doing nothing now is complecency and a tacit support of the current government policy.
This is a basically unreasonable obligation to put on the citizens of any country, and I can confidently say without knowing you that you would not hold yourself, your family, or your friends to the same standard if the situation were reversed.
[Comment removed by moderator pushcx: We are not going to Solve Global Immigration on a computing forum.]