I'm sorry but this argument is absurd. Victimizing a population will never make them join your side and especially not when you openly make it clear that you are targeting them. If you followed the internal situation in russia, you'd see that the early opposition to the war vanished after sanctions precisely aimed at civilians started piling up. That's also the difference between actual international sanctions and this type of "activism"; while nation states have the means and the stated objective of specifically hurting the state apparatus and the government of another nation , github repo maintainers literally can only hurt and target normal russian people. Official sanctions will hurt the population too but they at least also target those in power, and those responsible for the war.

Now, obviously, you can say that the russians are themselves the aggressors and should blame their leaders which is totally true. But that doesn't matter because they will absolutely not start supporting the side that is actively trying to punish/victimize them. It's beyond counterproductive and it makes the internal situation much much easier for putin to manage.

By the way, it's scary how how many people are starting to unironically use the same type of argument that bin laden used to attack the US. If you read his letters, he repeatedly said that American civilians were not blameless and complicit to what America was doing to Muslims because they could've changed their government . Worse, they were instead totally supportive of their state's foreign policy! That made them "fair game" as you said. Now if you don't see how dangerous that line of reasoning can be...

Around 15,000 people have been detained for protesting since the start of the war, despite facing 15 years prison sentences for simply calling that war a "war" and russian prisons having documented organized torture rings.

How many times have you faced decades in jail and possible torture?