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Phoronix: Several Linux Kernel Driver Maintainers Removed Due To Their Association To Russia
(www.phoronix.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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Dude, WHAT. This is totally against what Linux and Open source in general stand for.
I don't support the thing that I'm sure was their reason for this but I definitely don't support banning someone from contributing to an open system solely off nationality.
So what eventually only the "good guys" can contribute to and use open source software? Who exactly decides who the "good guys" are in this scenario? USA? China?
The implications of what this can cause in the future for potentially all of the open source community is absolutely sad. We should welcome all our fellow human beings to contributing to open source.
Lies! You're a communist! Russian troll!
/s for the obtuse
...and we don't know whether they're the former or the latter, no? So maybe a little early to get outraged?
Considering the US foreign policy and the impact it has on the world, regardless of whether the white house is R or D, i propose to ban all american devs... preemptively, ya know?
Inexplicably based
@0x0 @Vincent Yea well that makes about as much sense as banning the Russians, maybe we can stop development of Linux altogether. I'm sure Gatis of Borg would approve.
I don't see what this has to do with my comment. I see no indication that all Russians are blanket-banned.
I am literally saying the opposite: I am saying that it's not clear that this applies to all Russians, or just ones that are sanctioned.
Benefit of the Doubt…
Honestly I wish that was a principle that the internet embraced more. We're so trigger-happy to be outraged.
Oh geez, this the third reply by the same account... Again, I'm just saying that we don't know whether the contributors were assumed guilty, or if they have actual ties to sanctioned companies.
No, I'm telling people not to suspect anything, because we don't know anything.
@griefstricken @Vincent I think bottom line is that it's bad for the open source community and something a grown adult like Linus should know better than to do even if it means moving his foundation to another nation. You can't be as critical to the open source movement and then bow to political pressures like this. The last estimate of Linus's personal worth was placed at 50 million, so not like he can't afford to move.
No, I'm saying that if the banned people are only banned because they're associated with the Russian government (/employed by sanctioned companies), then I'm not going to get outraged over the kernel maintainers. I do not expect them to break the law just to die on this hill.
Yes, that is exactly my point: let's not get all worked up about something where we have almost zero facts. Although:
is definitely the case for the Linux Foundation: it's beholden to US laws. And wake-up call or not, a foundation would always be incorporated somewhere, and beholden to the laws of that somewhere.
Reminds me of a comment the other day on a post about Ventoy. Whatever the situation there is, which definitely needs clarification still, the person was saying that you shouldn't trust it at all because the maintainer is Chinese, even though he has emigrated away. Because the CCP will be able to leverage his family still there to force him to create a backdoor.
That's just thinly veiled racism in my opinion.
That's plain racism honestly.
I knew a (asian) guy who was working for a government contractor serving the US military. The racism is very serious to say the least. He got framed when something went down and was almost tried with treason. (that carries the death penalty) The authorities hit him with questions about his loyalty to the US for 5 hours even though he grew up in the US and so did his parents.
As far as I can read from that, they're still maintainers, just have had their credit removed from the contributors page, no?
Still a strange thing to do and I look forwards to an explanation.
@BobGnarley @kixik Yep this is definitely not a step forward.
[Citation needed]
As I wrote: sanctions. That's what compliance means.
I gotta say, that seems likely. Not sanctions in a direct way, but indirectly through funding or other assistance.
Exactly. But mods here are too butthurt to accept that and rather delete my comments, so they can live in their delusions - which was my point