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Comment by gtsop | Hacker News Reader

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The point is to put soft pressure on a nation across a wide series of avenues to (ideally) enact the desired change

Would you rather we went and ripped the fiber cables out and completely disconnected Russia from the rest of the global internet?

Why not both?

In what way is that a compliance reason? On what earth are you putting pressure by removing kudos from a list?

The west has placed sanctions on Russia. This means western institutions will be penalized for doing business with Russia.

Therefore, removing Russian contributors is how these institutions comply with the sanction.

I’m struggling to understand how this is confusing to you. Sanctions place pressure on rogue governments by limiting access to our markets. We either comply with the sanctions or we get fined or worse.

You're struggling to understand a confusion that doesn't exist. That's why you struggle. Was there any business conducted with these maintainers? In case you live under a rock, these western "sanctions" have been extended to blocking even works of art (theaters, songs, etc) that have been made by Russian artists long before Putin was born. I know that it may be hard for the enterprneurial mind to understand that not everything in life is buisness, same as it is hard for a hammer to understand that not everything is nails. But in the real world, you know, the world were actual wars are happening and people are dying, not the world of markets, there is a hard propaganda from the West to block anything Russian on all matters that is so blinding, only someone with closed eyes cannot see it (and even they can sense it)

Why it's done now when no new sweeping sanctions were introduced? Was Linux Foundation "circumventing" sanctions for many-many months?

The US also has active sanctions targeting Huawei, but there is a fair number of people in the maintainers list with Huawei e-mails. Double standards much?

UPD: As expected, downwotes is the only response to those questions.

The sanction lists are updated quite regularly. When it's reported in the media isn't when the sanctions actually start, and when you've forgotten about it isn't when they stop changing or increasing.

If you think sanctions are placed and enforced with lightning speed in every situation then the answer is no.

But you're just after whataboutism, since Huawei is decoupling from Linux themselves[1]

[1] https://wccftech.com/huawei-harmonyos-next-to-remove-linux-a...

you don't see why having the privileges revoked creates pressure?

Well, let me chart it out simply : If you have something you like taken from you, but the captor is deaf to your complaints, you'll complain elsewhere.

The concept here being : If the US state department/BIS/whoever won't consider your plight, maybe your own government will -- and given enough complaints perhaps it will direct their foreign policy to be more in-line with how the rest of the world would like them to play; thus allowing sanctions to be lightened or dropped.

This is essentially the goal behind all sanctioning that isn't directly involved in economic/agricultural/military loss.

The risk , of course, being that it prompts a schism entirely and promotes independence in the sanctioned state, similar to how mcdonalds vs. vkusno & tochka worked out so far.

In good faith I will just assume that you are incredibly naive.

Go read discussions in the Russian IT communities [1] [2]. The overwhelming reaction is not "let's go overthrow Putin!", but strong negative reaction, loss of respect, and alienation towards Linus, even across those who explicitly against the war and Putin.

[1]: https://habr.com/ru/news/852962/comments/

[2]: https://www.linux.org.ru/news/linux-general/17766938/page3#c...

I guess all the people who downvoted have a based analysis on how removing russians from contribution lists damages the war capacity of Russia and is not categorised under the notion of "propaganda".

Sanctions are an economic tool. They damage the economy, and any impact on the war machine unfold as a consequence of that.

Sanctions are a broad stroke. Nobody is claiming removing contributors from a list is striking a blow against the capacity of the red army. That’s asinine.

Not allowing unpaid labor of Russian developers in your software project somehow damages the Russian economy?

Yeah, this is what I don't get. Basically, the rest of the world is getting a bunch of free labor here, and also keeping these Russians busy doing this free labor that probably doesn't directly benefit Russia's war machine, rather than having them go get a job in the defense sector (or spend more time at work there).

Edit: upon further reading, it seems that the free labor isn't being completely refused, but rather these peoples' maintainership status has been revoked, apparently because lawyers said it was necessary due to sanctions. So they can still contribute, but now they have to submit their patches through a maintainer just like any other regular contributor. And also apparently, all the people involved aren't just random nerds who happen to live in Russia, but rather are directly employed at Russian companies on the sanction list. So yeah, it kinda sucks, and probably feels like a slap in the face to them, but this is one of the harsh realities of international politics. At least it's not like back in the Soviet days when there was essentially zero contact between scientists and engineers on both sides and they couldn't collaborate on projects like this at all.

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