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On Linux MAINTAINERS file removal of Russian developers

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Re: On Linux MAINTAINERS file removal of Russian developers

#41

Post by krisoft »

instagraham wrote: post #40
krisoft wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This could happen with any country and any group of people. And that is why it is a good idea to keep people who want to start a war of conquest out of power. So it doesn’t happen to your country and your people. > Who will be next? Whoever decides to murder their neighbhours.

> Whoever decides to murder their neighbhours. To what extent can most people actually move the needle of their government's actions? As a thought experiment, consider a world where all Americans are banned from contributing to software projects because of the long and dismal history of US foreign policy - which involves murdering people so far from US borders as to make such murder fundamentally questionable at a na…

> To what extent can most people actually move the needle of their government's actions?

I’m not unsimpathic to this argument. In wars innocent people gets hurt. Sometimes that means your name is removed from a text file, sometimes it means that your family is blown up in a missile attack. Either way the solution is the same: stop the war and take the troops home.

I’m not going to adress the textbook whataboutism line by line. Generaly i’m easy to convince that a lot more negative consequences should have followed a lot of attrocities. If you think you caught me in some contradiction by selecting examples then you are wrong.

Re: On Linux MAINTAINERS file removal of Russian developers

#42

Post by chx »

mdp2021 wrote: post #37
chx wrote: post #35

Apparently people working on open source are just looking for an excuse to pontificate. Same as with Bitwarden, simply raising the issue and then waiting a little for an answer is enough. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/e7d548a7fc835f9f3c9cb2e5ed97dfd... > If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list, our ability to collaborate with you…

> simpler [...] That's all Actually it is not, because the confusion shifts to OFAC and the question becomes "why should people employed by companies under those identified by etc. be barred from contributing to the Linux Kernel".

> why should people employed by companies under those identified by etc. be barred from contributing to the Linux Kernel

Because the OFAC literally prohibits a US person receiving anything at all from a sanctioned person.

Can't find the specific sanction but here's a typical sample from https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1102

> All transactions by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated or blocked persons are prohibited unless authorized by a general or specific license issued by OFAC, or exempt. These prohibitions include the [...] receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

Note: for both "U.S. persons" and "blocked person" also consider corporate personhood. It's not just individual people. And so the Linux Foundation, Linus himself and every Linux user in the U.S. can't receive anything at all from the sanctioned so it's no wonder they needed to be excluded.

You are welcome to lobby the OFAC to carve out an exemption for open source contributions. Or the White House or the Congress, what do I know who has the authority to write such.

Re: On Linux MAINTAINERS file removal of Russian developers

#43

Post by MrHamburger »

ajdlinux wrote: post #6

"I was under the naive assumption that it's individual developers who work together, and their employers do not really matter." This assumption is not just naive but completely oblivious under normal circumstances, let alone in a discussion about sanctions regime compliance and risk management.

It looks like being oblivious from outsiders perspective, but people living in Russia have culture of being apolitical, because as long as you don't care about politics, politics (Russian Government) does not care about you.

That then leads to bizarre situations when Russia is waging full scale war and Russians are doing their best not to notice.

Re: On Linux MAINTAINERS file removal of Russian developers

#44

Post by sam_lowry_ »

mdp2021 wrote: post #25
chikere232 wrote: post #16

At this point I kinda have to assume posts like these are just concern trolling and aren't really worth taking seriously If it's genuinely naive, this is a great time to wake up to the fact that russia is conducting a war of conquest against a european country, and this is why they, and a bunch of companies associated with that, are being sanctioned. Why would any reasonable project try to circumvent such sanctions?

Also in other articles, it was not clear why those individuals were targeted, and it seemed it could be just because of the passport. (It seems, from other sources, that it is because of their employer.)

Serge Semin who wrote the goodbye letter [1] worked for Baikal Electronics, a military contractor.

However, Baikal Electronics has been bancrupt for half a year, and he says he worked on the kernel as a volunteer lately.

I think Chinese COTS suppliers are more used by contemporary Russian army, but none sanctions them.

I can't really judge for the others, but in his case, the exclusion was either too late or totally unjustified.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41932225

Re: On Linux MAINTAINERS file removal of Russian developers

#45

Post by ajdlinux »

MrHamburger wrote: post #43
ajdlinux wrote: post #6

"I was under the naive assumption that it's individual developers who work together, and their employers do not really matter." This assumption is not just naive but completely oblivious under normal circumstances, let alone in a discussion about sanctions regime compliance and risk management.

It looks like being oblivious from outsiders perspective, but people living in Russia have culture of being apolitical, because as long as you don't care about politics, politics (Russian Government) does not care about you. That then leads to bizarre situations when Russia is waging full scale war and Russians are doing their best not to notice.

The author of this blog post is German.

Re: On Linux MAINTAINERS file removal of Russian developers

#46

Post by mdp2021 »

google_boy wrote: post #39
mdp2021 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now he attacks critics with the Russian troll meme You should really provide more grounds for stating that.

One second to find using Google: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/23/linus_torvalds_affirm... Quote in the middle of the article.

No, you misunderstood the statement. That article on the Register I had abundantly read when it came out.

The poster should show that that one sentence from Torvalds could be dismissed - we do not know exactly what interventions he called "trolls". Maybe they were, maybe they were not.

Re: On Linux MAINTAINERS file removal of Russian developers

#47

Post by mdp2021 »

chx wrote: post #42
mdp2021 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> simpler [...] That's all Actually it is not, because the confusion shifts to OFAC and the question becomes "why should people employed by companies under those identified by etc. be barred from contributing to the Linux Kernel".

> why should people employed by companies under those identified by etc. be barred from contributing to the Linux Kernel Because the OFAC literally prohibits a US person receiving anything at all from a sanctioned person. Can't find the specific sanction but here's a typical sample from https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1102 > All transactions by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States…

> Because the OFAC literally prohibits a US person receiving anything at all from a sanctioned person

That does not answer the question - it is circular. "Why does the low forbid X?" // "Because it is the law". [I mistyped 'law' as 'low'. I'll keep it.]

Of course the doubts are about whether that action makes sense.

Re: On Linux MAINTAINERS file removal of Russian developers

#48

Post by instagraham »

krisoft wrote: post #41
instagraham wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whoever decides to murder their neighbhours. To what extent can most people actually move the needle of their government's actions? As a thought experiment, consider a world where all Americans are banned from contributing to software projects because of the long and dismal history of US foreign policy - which involves murdering people so far from US borders as to make such murder fundamentally questionable at a na…

> To what extent can most people actually move the needle of their government's actions? I’m not unsimpathic to this argument. In wars innocent people gets hurt. Sometimes that means your name is removed from a text file, sometimes it means that your family is blown up in a missile attack. Either way the solution is the same: stop the war and take the troops home. I’m not going to adress the textbook whataboutism lin…

It matters because software projects are border-agnostic. There are people who benefit from code, and people who benefit from having people contribute to code.

You drew the line on who gets to be a part of this, Geopoliticising something ostensibly unpolitical. If you want a rule of law in code, you’ll need more than a framework that only punishes Russia. Otherwise it’s no longer open source, it’s America-source.

For what it’s worth I’d favour a host of military and economic measures against Russia. I think the only way this war stops is with military aid, maybe even intervention. I’m not here to defend Russia. I just don’t see what you expect Russians to do by nuking them from a Linux maintainer list.

It’s a net loss for all of us to keep their coders out of open source. If we’re gonna do that with a logic that somehow spares America but punishes everyone else, then we just create a precedent that makes the whole ecosystem worse for a lot of people with nothing to do with this.

Re: On Linux MAINTAINERS file removal of Russian developers

#50

Post by sshine »

chikere232 wrote: post #16

At this point I kinda have to assume posts like these are just concern trolling and aren't really worth taking seriously If it's genuinely naive, this is a great time to wake up to the fact that russia is conducting a war of conquest against a european country, and this is why they, and a bunch of companies associated with that, are being sanctioned. Why would any reasonable project try to circumvent such sanctions?

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