The email thread continues. Linus later responded with: >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. Which I find pretty concerning statements, quite a disservice to the community. It's a…
Open source means put up or shut up. If you don’t like the institutions, then build it yourself. You can’t cry foul when the group is literally providing you with free software. Open source institutions don’t own anyone anything beyond open software.
As an open source community leader, putting up consists of leading well, and transparently. It's not just a coding role. He may have inherited the leadership role by being the original coder but he has to keep it by being a worthy leader.
I speculate Linus or Greg received the equivalent of a National Security Letter. Otherwise they could point to the regulations.