Linus Torvalds comments on the Russian Linux maintainers being delisted
phoronix.com
phoronix.com
> I'm Finnish. ... Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of history knowledge too.
If we're suddenly taking history as a criterion, half of the world should ban British developers from touching their projects in any way, for their repeated aggressions and ruinous colonialism. This sort of behaviour is slowly building a soft Great Firewall around the West, and making it seem like China had the right idea all along.
.... and China.
Junk away.
If that would be the case no russian would have reached the maintainer status to anything related to the kernel.
And even with Linux, it's not Linus' personal project anymore, hasn't been for decades - it's a global project with developers from many countries with their own views and biases. Being BDFL doesn't mean that your geopolitical agenda becomes the whole project's. Or at least, it wasn't so blatantly put on display previously that that was the case.
A high profile project like Linux doing this will have long term repercussions for how open source operates globally.
Open source is fostering collaborative environments, while russia as a state is destroying them deliberately. How does that fit together?
It sucks for the good-faith programmers in Russia but what would you have the rest of the world do? The Russian state must be sanctioned for its blatant disregard for international norms.
Please don’t just respond with whataboutism. The whataboutism in these threads involves different people in different times. This is happening now.
Norms are established through precedents. There are considerable precedents in the 21st century that military invasions DO NOT lead to international sanctions. So this isn't a valid argument, and it's true that that decision was emotional and politically motivated.
The idea that you turn a conversation about fairness for victims into a conversation about fairness for bullies means you don’t actually care about victims.
In other words, there are no norms or standards for handling these situations. It's purely political.
This whataboutism is a circular argument where any brazen invasion can be justified by some previous perceived slight. Because someone somewhere got away with something, now anything is permissible.
We can't have it both ways. Either Russia is a functioning democracy (which I don't personally believe exists anywhere but that is another topic), or perhaps the average person does not actually have very much say in such events.
Sanctions are meant to harm innocent people as much as possible, on purpose, with the idea being that it will cause so much unrest that the government either caves to the pressure or the people revolt. While I find that very sick in and of itself, I would at least appreciate it if we were honest about that rather than making contradictory moral statements.
That said, worse yet, almost hilariously, I cannot think of a single time sanctions have ever truly worked in a situation even remotely similar to that of Russia. Just think about countries like North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria, etc -- like it or not, these countries have not toppled as a result of the sanctions. Do they hurt? Yes, of course, but they evidently do not destroy nations the way we believed they would.
Instead, the innocent are hurt, as was the intention, yet the goal never gets achieved. North Korea still has nuclear weapons, and all we've done is force Iran to develop its own industry, such that, ironically, it is now capable of sending weapons to aid Russia.
We didn't think of the poor Germans when we burned them alive as part of the effort to stop the Nazis and few argue that the Germans aren't collectively complicit save only for those who actively resisted.
I'm fully willing to hold blameless those who burned weapons and recruitment centers, spoke out publicly against the war within or after fleeing Russia, shot their commander, or surrendered to avoid an unjust fight.
I'm aware those are all extremely risky. I know exactly why someone would want to keep their heads down and I none the less blame them no less than I blame all the good Nazis who didn't believe in the ideology but kept their heads down while Jews burned in ovens and their neighbors rotted in battlefields and economic consequences are the least of what is just and fair.
A million people are dead including many of their own they are complicit.
That’s an insane take. The vast majority of their citizens are just regular people like you or me.
All decisions are discrimination, and discrimination in general is fine. There are narrow, specific kinds of discrimination that are suspect and need additional justification. OTOH, a perfectly valid reason was offered: legal advice based on international sanctions imposed on Russian entities in response to Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine. Now, certainly, there was not public information sufficient to assess the correctness of that decision, and I would not prejudge any claim from any party adversely impacted that chose to challenge it.
But I’d also note that where there is not a contractual relationship or some other binding commitment to way against the potential consequences of sanctions violations, legal advice will likely be “better safe than sorry” in that it is better to cut off relations where there is no commitment more broadly than sanctions might require rather than to err on the other side, too. Acting in such advice mag still be a reasonable and prudent decision.
Now it's frequently used as a defense for hypocrisy.
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.
Oh boy, everyone who disagrees with me works for the Kremlin.
Anyway, it is a good alarm signal about open source (especially after npm and xz).
In the end we are all amunition. /s
With what's been going on in the world and with Russia, it really doesn't. That's the thing.
Maybe don't blatantly misrepresent what he wrote, even if you still disagree with it.
If he had just written - compliance, we cannot work with sanctioned entities, that would be fine and understandable.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/china-cold-war-2669160202/
Linus and his lawyers have clearly chosen one side. You seem to have chosen the other but want to appear as if you haven't for whatever reason.
If this was about war, he had 2 years to take action. If this was about law he should let everyone know.
This seems more like he is being compelled by government to do something while masking it as his own. Hence the lack of reasoning for his decisions or calling anyone who questions him as Russian actors.
No, they have actually been banished, because if you're not a maintainer of some Linux kernel subsystem, Linus Torvalds stops accepting merge requests from you. You need to go through an actual maintainer first.
If you're not a maintainer you cant maintain the kernel. D'oh.
You should not be demanding charged language just because it elicits an emotional reaction.
(I've reverted the title now.)
Communicating clearly that you cannot currently accept contributions from people potentially associated with problematic businesses is an understandable decision. Tone of voice stated following the removal of a list of names of people you used to work with not too long makes this sound like a petty statement if anything.
I really wish that you and those close to you experience the joy russians bring.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russian_inva...
/\ that is just from the last 2 years
If that is so, then this is comparable to booting people with nazi connections from western scientific projects in 1930s, i.e. perfectly fine and in fact the only reasonable thing to do.
Again, this is not being done because these people are russian. Claiming ethnicity-based oppression where none exists is a known russotroll dogwhistle, and I think the commenters on this forum should be sophisticated enough to understand that.
2. Does punishment by a nationality means USA is nazi itself?
3. What about that public hatred against a Russian nationality expressed by Torvalds? Is it OK to use a nazi hatred for decisions in USA?
The specific criteria is legal advice received regarding sanctions regimes.
> Does punishment by a nationality means USA is nazi itself?
No, because (1) nationality alone isn't the basis of the action, (2) Linus has specifically noted that the compliance issues were not solely US law, (3) treated people differently based on their nation of nationality and residence (not your own citizens by national ancestry) is not, even approximately, sufficient to be described as “nazi”.
> What about that public hatred against a Russian nationality expressed by Torvalds? Is it OK to use a nazi hatred for decisions in USA?
Torvald’s expressed that it was irrational to expect him to backtrack and violate the rules on behalf of people connected to the Russian state while it is conducting aggression given the history involved, which is... well, beyond a stretch to call that a “nazi” attitude.
But nice job trolling on behalf of Russia and calling everything hostile to the interests of the Putin regime “nazi”.
2. If not USA law then what? What is the state selective criteria to honor their dictate? "Good" states are entitled to dictate, all others are ignored. Is this the way how LF works?
3. Torvalds said his decision is based on the past war where Finns were on the Hitler's side. Still so pathetic about that loss.
2. Invalid premise, since they're not punishing by nationality
3. Also invalid premise, Torvalds is not expressing hatred towards Russian nationality
AFAICT, it is ones employed by sanctioned entities (which presumably is because of those entities connections to the regime, but the direct impetus for the Linux action is compliance with the sanctions regime, not an assessment of regime connections by anyone involved with Linux.)
Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status
And if anyone thinks a Finn of all people would buy any BS or sad tears from their "annoying" neighbour (to put it mildly) you need to read up on some history
Of course in the end it sucks for a lot of people that has nothing to do with it.
Before there were BCacheFS and "Rust for Linux" controversies this year.
> As to sending me a revert patch - please use whatever mush you call brains. I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be supporting Russian aggression? Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of history knowledge too.
Russia is the reason that Finland still has compulsory military service.
Finland is also the only European country bordering Russia (excluding Norway and its small border w Russia) to escape being a Soviet Socialist Republic after WW II. Sure, they allied with Nazi Germany to accomplish that, but they joined the allies against Germany eventually.
Individual Russian programmers are not responsible for the invasion of Ukraine, so I would be reluctant to punish them for Putin's crime and to deprive Linux of their contributions.
They can still contribute to Linux - being removed as a maintainer doesn't mean you can't fork Linux. If they have downstream changes they want to contribute to everyone upstream, there is nothing here preventing them from doing it the same way everyone else does.
So this isn't really about individual Russian programmers at all.
Delisting them is actually best for both - maintainer and linux. Russia cannot break your skull anymore and linux keeps a contributor.
True, but individual Russian programmers are not free of Putin's influence, and could be compelled to do undesirable things.
The day after the invasion of Ukraine, my employer locked out all contractors we employed who resided in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. They got their access back once they relocated to a non-combatant country, which most of them did in short order. That probably also saved many of their lives, since it meant they escaped the draft.
Are you, like, completely ignorant of what's going on in the world?
The day after the invasion one of them, totally unprompted, basically apologized on behalf of his country in our standup and said he opposed the war (they still had access to Office 365 throughout).
WTF, man? I actually worked with a few of those folks. I don't think they were spies, but the policy was understandable, given the context. It dealt with risks that were practical to mitigate on such short notice when there was a lot of uncertainty, but didn't mitigate all risks. Nothing's perfect.
1. Linux is occupied by USA
2. US praises public hatred against a nationality
No, the targets are only contractors of specific firms.
IIUC in case they want to contribute, they must send the patch to the new maintainer of that part of Linux, instead of sending it directly to Linus.
using: It's GPL2. Everyone can use it, nobody can add restrictions. (Some people think this is a feature and some that it's a bug.)
There is a term for open source software: BDFL (benevolent dictator for life). At Wikepedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life ), Linus is included. But the virtue of being benevolent is too difficult to ensure and maintain.
WWII in Soumi is called "Continuation war" - does this rings a bell?