This is a sad thing for FOSS … why should developers from Russia be penalized for no reason of their own?
Whether or not it results in political change is irrelevant - a crippled Russia is a sufficient end all in itself, just like dead soldiers are a sufficient end all in itself during a war. Wars rarely end with a government being overthrown, but they do often end when a government decides that peace is the better option. Bombed cities, dead soldiers, and starving children are the calculus that pushes governments towards making that decision.
Unless you're targeting military forces or infrastructure in those cities, bombing civilians is a war crime. Of course, who gets tried as a war criminal or not mostly depends on who wins
Given that our militaries don't balk at drone striking weddings and funerals, I can't see how they would take much issue with dropping a couple hundred bombs on a refinery, or a rail yard, or a line of tanker trucks. Which are all things that have been done since 1945, and as far as I'm aware, nobody has been dragged off to the ICC for it.
I imagine the rate of support would be higher if it was a conflict where we weren't the aggressor.
But most Russians affected by these aren't shooting back. They aren't conscripts or have anything to do with the war (doubly so now that sanctions are in effect).
Shooting at solders trying to hurt you is one thing, but that's not what's happening here.
Me refusing to transact with you isn't a war crime.
You refusing to transact with me isn't a war crime, but your line of thinking where normal citizen activities are similar to conscripts shooting at you can certainly lead to one.
It's one thing to target citizens who work on applications for the military, and another to target open source devs because they happen to be Russian. If you can't acknowledge this distinction then I'm afraid we have to agree to disagree.
Also please don't put words in my mouth. Strawmen will get us nowhere.
'Russian Developers' are material to the development of the Russian economy, which is the basis for which the war is projected.
Sanctions could very well spread into software in which FOSS would likely be a part of it, and the terms of the licensing may not really matter.
It's for the same reason that Intel, Nvidia and a host of others have dropped shipments, at least for the time being.
How far would you follow that logic? Which Russians should be harmed, in your opinion, and how much?
No need to harm 'ethnic or cultural' Russians
Just Russian citizens with wealth or those insidevthe legal jurisdiction of Russia.
BTW, you should know that sending money to Russia is almost an impossibility as it is. For example, living in Russia, I couldn't accept a consulting job from Kazakhstan because we couldn't figure out a way for them to pay me.
We have proportionality, we draw lines, we target individuals differently that government than industry than high tech that commodities than consumer services etc..
In my view, we should be doing much more, borderline embargo.
Russian military gains in Ukraine will never, ever be conceded by anything other that either force or 'near collapse' of economic conditions (or overthrow of regime).
Russia can 'put bodies' in Crimea, NW of Kyiv basically to act as targets forever, Kyiv doesn't have the manpower to route them even if they can defend themselves.
Strategically, this implies Russia can merely endure some local pain and make permanent territorial gains.
In 10 years, this war might be like Afghanistan or Iraq, something that '55-75 demographic' watches on the news but otherwise everyone else is busy on TikTok - which is what Putin wants.
He can definitely win the war of attribution because he has a much longer frame view of things, and is willing to pay the cost of 'No Volvos or Starbucks for 25 years'.
Other nations that play the long-tame (like China) are watching.
Just like, overthrow the government - it's so easy!
And if you don't have the guts - well, don't be mad when someone deletes all your files, you collaborator!
Many average Americans directly benefited from US wars as military employees and contractors.
In a way that already has happened in Russia. The sanctions did not lead to less (or more) support for the war. The initial sanctions were justified as they targeted the russian state, but the knee jerk reaction of also imposing sanctions that explicitly were aimed at the population lead to nothing but resentment against the west.
Whether you are on the morally right side or not, it does not matter in that context; you cant really debate your way into convincing someone that you are doing something for his own good when you are doing everything you can to also make him suffer
If the intention is just to hurt them for the war, then sure that will work as intended... but I think it's dishonest to pretend we are doing it for anything more "noble" than that
If nothing works I prefer to apply punishment in hopes that smart Russians emigrate and Russia will crumble. And yes, punishment should affect more civilised and smarter Russians too to either motivate them to clean up their country or leave it.
It's war, so again no moral judgment on that, but sugar-coating it is even worse than admitting the truth.
A bit off topic but if you think the west was supporting and hugging russia or ukraine in the 1990s and 2000s, you might need to revisit how we got here.
There's just no need to pretend it's for their own good when it's trivially easy to prove that sanctions rarely lead to the end of a dictatorship. Just look at Cuba,Iran,NK or even venezuala.
And trust me, democaracy that we got out of discontent stemming from economic devastation is worth every hardship we endured.
True, but the Iraq War was a net negative for the vast majority of Americans, even just financially.
And pushing America's economic interests like prolonging dollar as main currency of resource trade was huge benefit to every USA citizen because main USA export is the dollar. That's why USA van run deficit for decades and be the richest country on Earth.
People like Putin don't need software but people who oppose him do.
Every post-communist county did that on their own.
It can be done. So Russians can do it too. They just need proper motivation.
And that motivation for countries that did that was abject poverty that made the people realise that course change is needed.
No they haven't
https://ti-ukraine.org/en/news/no-progress-ukraine-s-result-...
And you are going to judge what system of power Ukraine has based on 2021 datapoint?
How quickly did your country got rid of corruption that plagued it?
It's a process that just stars with replacing corrupt system of power. You need to adjust whole public sector after that. It can take decades.