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Comment by wraptile | Hacker News Reader

I used to work at Tesonet (as software engineer) and I'm not familiar with corporate politics / ownerships but they're lovely people that would 100% walk out if there were some real Russian ties involved.

Lithuania is a really small country and IT has been a huge economic strategy since early 00s as a way to become economically independent specifically because of Russia and it worked out really well.

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I have a good friend from Lithuania, who has told me so many amazing/wonderful/superlative things about the country he grew up in and loves very dearly, as well as its people. I can't wait to visit someday. Unfortunately, he only has Russian and American citizenship, so he can't purchase real estate there currently, but luckily most of Lithuania's restrictions have been very common-sense (applying only to people who frequently travel between Russia and Lithuania).

From what I can tell, Tesonet seems like a very patriotic group (as much as a corporation can be personified at all), and genuinely puts resources, both human and financial, towards raising up the local communities.

It's interesting to me that Tesonet has concentrated the most popular VPNs under one roof and is involved in so many companies that could be described as "dual-use" (white hat/black hat) such as residential/mobile proxies, ai-powered scraping, etc. It tells me that Tesonet has a very sharp understanding of gray-hat landscapes. It does seem like their portfolio could be leveraged as a valuable asset to any powerful interest, regardless if they are benevolent or malicious or misguided.

I mentioned Tesonet's stance towards Ukraine because Lithuania has a number of wealthy ex-soviet/Russian citizens and business-owners with differing politics, and wanted to clarify that for any readers who might wonder.

Additionally, I've always been very impressed with Estonia's digital infrastructure and Ukrainian software engineering - not just JetBrains but also other vendors that I've worked with personally. Seems like there are a lot of highly skilled people concentrated in your region.

I couldn't really get that segue from Lithuania to Estonia. Did you mean to type "Lithuania" in the last paragraph as well?

Here..

> Additionally, I've always been very impressed with Estonia's …

Before that you were talking about Lithuania exclusively.

And then:

> … Estonia's digital infrastructure and Ukrainian software engineering - not just JetBrains …

I think it was founded in CZ and is now HQed in NL. Right?

A typo? Or there's some relation between the two countries and whether JetBrains has some history with these two that is missing here?

(I am not trying to nitpick, really interested in knowing whether there's some angle/twist here, since the post itself is about hidden connections and what not).

They're neighboring small countries with similar (centuries' long) histories of tension with Russia, in its various guises. They're often considered en bloc:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltic_states

> (I am not trying to nitpick, really interested in knowing whether there's some angle/twist here, since the post itself is about hidden connections and what not).

Honestly that shone through even from the first sentence.

I mentioned Estonia because Lithuania/Latvia/Estonia have a bit of shared identity, kind of similar to Sweden/Norway/Finland or USA/Canada.

> I think it was founded in CZ and is now HQed in NL. Right?

Yes I was just wrong. I was convinced it was Ukrainian for some reason.

I agree that the combination of those two points made my post particularly confusing.

JetBrains was russian (as in were most people initially actually worked). They were smart enough (like any business in russia not wanting to be trapped) to have registration outside of the country.

Some part of management were in CZ. Most of the technical team were in three buildings in St.Petersburg.

Wow. Didn’t know. As an Android developer I find it specially interesting. Not for any nefarious reasons, for I so far believe that JetBrains is one of those companies that has been a net positive on tech ecosystem in general (touchwood!) — be their dev tools or the Kotlin itself. I also follow these people and tools, partly out of professional needs/curiosities.

FYI Kotlin language is named after https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotlin_Island

Aha. I see that it was also called "Kotling". I guess they missed this opportunity, or maybe KotLang, in which case people would have started calling it just Kot.

Also the place seems to have quite a few rebellions under its belt.

> most of Lithuania's restrictions have been very common-sense (applying only to people who frequently travel between Russia and Lithuania).

Common-sense like a complete ban for entering the country for red passport holders.

Lithuania is a wonderful, beautiful country and I understand the need to push the hardliner stance in the EU, but their decisions during the conflict have been strictly political, not in the slightest "common-sense".

Isn't Lithuanian passport red ? or the context here is communism ?

Turns out it's indeed red, but it's been green for a long time.

Context here is Russian Federation.

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