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Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

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Re: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

#131

Post by red-iron-pine »

whimsicalism wrote: post #129
nomilk wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really appreciate informative comments like this, basically explaining from first principles and not assuming people are idiots for not immediately understanding the implications. It also made me realise what a cushy, insular world I live in not having to worry about those threats when I write software. Made me more aware of what others might face.

It’s a made up scenario that has never been documented to happen with a major OSS project. The solution seems like an incredibly poor fit and this justification is retroactive. The notion that they are actually doing the Russian maintainers a favor is ridiculous. When a society starts shadowboxing figments of its own imagination, that is not a good sign for the health of the society.

Yeah im sure those Chinese and NK hackers are keen to document their blackmail, no way that could go badly for them

Re: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

#132

Post by red-iron-pine »

hulitu wrote: post #114
csense wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let me spell it out for you: If Project P in Country A is identified by Country B as a potential target for planting cyber-attack-enabling backdoors, Country B has an incentive to find people to put a backdoor in P. If Country B is a free country with rights and ethics, they will say "Help us put a backdoor in P. We'll pay you very well for services rendered," or try to get someone who already works for Country B int…

Removing US based kernel maintainers from positions in which they could conceivably help insert a backdoor into the kernel hopefully removes the incentive for the US government to threaten (or carry out) horrific violence against these individuals and their families. cough xz cough

why would they threaten violence when they can offer money?

the Linux User Group of Northern Virginia, the suburb of DC with all of the money, used to hold their events at local Palantir office.

lotta Red Hat contracts with the FedGov. And RH commits a lot of code to the kernal and other FOSS projects.

Re: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

#133

Post by red-iron-pine »

analognoise wrote: post #90
snvzz wrote: post #69

Not a good idea for Linux to get involved in geopolitical drama. Any self-respecting maintainer will not come back after this. Linux might have a lot of developers, but has a hard time finding and retaining maintainers. This is not a good development.

Most of the developers are paid by US companies. I don’t think this will really affect anything at all.

IIRC the single biggest source of contributions are Intel, Google, RedHat, AMD, and Huewei. Not necessarily in that order.

Something like 80-90% of said contributions are essentially corporate.

Re: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

#134

Post by krick »

Timber-6539 wrote: post #124

My initial reaction reading the thread was just to shake my head. What's the point of open source?

I guess that's it. Open source is a fantasy that started coming to an end about 15 years ago. We lived in a fantasy world in 90s-00s, where there were no governments, no corporations and almost no people that make you shake your head. It was so easy (and of course silly, in the hindsight) to believe, that the internet is some another world, where earthly matters do not concern us. And everything was just about improving this world for ourselves. It's not like people often agree to work for free otherwise. Working for free is incompatible with capitalism, and we learn to believe that nothing else is truly possible in the real world. It's not like "open source" doesn't have a point in that imperfect world with governments, corporations and 8B people, that the internet seemed disconnected from for a while, it just doesn't have place. It simply almost doesn't happen there.

So, now the real world has slowly catched up to that fantasy world of ours. The winter has really come.

Re: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

#135

Post by hulitu »

jiggawatts wrote: post #84
an_guy wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not just because of sanctions, but because they don't allow me to. It's illegal for me No it's because aws/azure failed to follow local Russian laws + sanctions imposed by US. If you need Russian vps, you can contact Russian providers.

Microsoft seems to have no trouble “following local laws” in every other country they’re present in. What’s different about the local laws in Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea?

> Microsoft seems to have no trouble “following local laws” in every other country they’re present in.

Except in EU when it comes to GDPR and data processing laws. But they pay well. /s

Re: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

#136

Post by whimsicalism »

red-iron-pine wrote: post #131
whimsicalism wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a made up scenario that has never been documented to happen with a major OSS project. The solution seems like an incredibly poor fit and this justification is retroactive. The notion that they are actually doing the Russian maintainers a favor is ridiculous. When a society starts shadowboxing figments of its own imagination, that is not a good sign for the health of the society.

Yeah im sure those Chinese and NK hackers are keen to document their blackmail, no way that could go badly for them

It's open source, any exploit introduced by a maintainer is self-documenting. Provide a single example for the Linux kernel, please.

Re: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

#137

Post by yeputons »

gorbachev wrote: post #97

If you scroll down on the thread linked, someone mentions the reason isn't that the developers are Russian, but because their employers in Russia are sanctioned companies. I don't know if that's accurate, but seems feasible. If so I'm 100% behind it. It'd be nice to know the exact reasoning for this, rather than just see a commit without any context of why they're being removed. I'm pretty sure we'll know in due time…

Well, we have a response from Linus himself, in his usual style: https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=whNGNVnYHHSXUAsWds_MoZ-iEg...

Not much exact reasoning added, if you ask me. Quoting:

> Ok, lots of Russian trolls out and about.

> It's entirely clear why the change was done, it's not getting reverted, ...

> And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren't troll farm accounts - the "various compliance requirements" are not just a US thing.

> If you haven't heard of Russian sanctions yet, ...

> As to sending me a revert patch - please use whatever mush you call brains. I'm Finnish. ...

Re: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

#138

Post by nineteen999 »

diggan wrote: post #109
nineteen999 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely irrelevant. They are not the owner of the Linux kernel. Linus holds the trademark. The copyright holders are the contributors to the source code. Nobody "owns" it, that's the point, it's an international project.

Linus, who since 2010 is an American citizen. Effectively, the US is probably the country closest to "owning" the Kernel, in that if the US wanted to put an abrupt cease to kernel development, they could, if only for a short period until the project re-organizes. I don't think any other country posses even the ability of doing so.

Any other person from any other country in the world can and could fork it in a heartbeat 100% legally. It wouldn't stop diddly squat, except that it loses its BDFL and finds another one in short order. There is absolutely zero the US could do about this.

Re: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

#139

Post by Suppafly »

mokoshhydro wrote: post #103
gorbachev wrote: post #97

If you scroll down on the thread linked, someone mentions the reason isn't that the developers are Russian, but because their employers in Russia are sanctioned companies. I don't know if that's accurate, but seems feasible. If so I'm 100% behind it. It'd be nice to know the exact reasoning for this, rather than just see a commit without any context of why they're being removed. I'm pretty sure we'll know in due time…

Huawei is under same level of sanctions, but nobody with `xxx@huawei.com` is removed from Maintainers list. So, probably "sanctions" are not the reason.

>Huawei is under same level of sanctions

is it? the actual specifics of the sanctions matter, I don't think any of the US sanctions would prevent them from participating in kernel programming.

Re: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

#140

Post by Suppafly »

thayne wrote: post #78
whimsicalism wrote: post #7

Strongly opposed to any sort of sanction regime that results in this.

Do sanctions ever actually work as intended? To this casual bystander it seems like they usually hurt innocent citizens far more than the leaders of the usually authoritarion regime that it targets.

>To this casual bystander it seems like they usually hurt innocent citizens far more than the leaders of the usually authoritarion regime that it targets.

That's kinda the point. The common folk put pressure on their leaders to correct their behavior.

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