https://lwn.net/Articles/995186/

So, the Linux Foundation joins the racist list?

@admin Please comment.

@monsieuricon Please comment.

@tusooa "If you work for companies under direct US or EU sanctions, you are going to have a bad time."

@monsieuricon Do you consider it ethical for the Linux Foundation to comply with governmental orders like this that are racist in nature?

@tusooa You seem to be a troll. Explain how this is racist, or I will ban you.

@monsieuricon In this case, the apparent fact is that Russian-identified people are removed from maintainers without proper justification. The apparent conclusion is that they are removed solely because of their identity, which in this case is their ethnic identity.

Moreover, many "sanctions" by the government are racist in nature. Take for example how eager the US government is into blocking TikTok or Huawei, claiming that they "steal personal information," while Google and Apple, which are doing exactly the same things, are not into the debate, solely because the former are from China, while the latter are from the US.

@tusooa Heh, you're trying to convince a "Russian identified person" in one of the senior positions in the Linux Foundation that the Linux Foundation is being unfair towards "Russian identified people." It's pretty hilarious.

I'm not a lawyer and I don't speak for the LF, so I won't give you any kind of "official comment." But here's my view of it.

The people removed from maintainer positions were identified as employed by companies on the US and EU sanctions list. These companies are directly involved in the Russian military complex and therefore are directly complicit in war crimes being committed daily in Ukraine. If these maintainers want to think that they are "just techies helping improve the Linux kernel," or that "they are outside of politics," then they are fucking wrong. If they work for companies that develop weaponry or logistics used by the Russian military, they are complicit in Russia's war crimes, and I hold them responsible at a very personal level -- and that's my official comment on the situation.

@monsieuricon

>These companies are directly involved in the Russian military complex and therefore are directly complicit in war crimes being committed daily in Ukraine.

If this is the case, it makes some sense. However, there is only vague reasoning in the commits, so the general public do not and cannot know about this. Being untransparent about why these changes take place will only lead people to think that it is unjustified.

Moreover, if war crime is a reason to not let people be added into the maintainers list of the Linux kernel, will it apply to all war crimes? Do you think Linux Foundation SHOULD also be committed to checking the list for any potential violation because of war crimes that is happening elsewhere, for example, the ones committed by the Israel government in Gaza? Do you think that it would be unethical if the Linux Foundation does NOT do that check for other war crimes?

@tusooa I'm not having a philosophical debate today. I know very little about the extremely complex situation happening in Palestine, and I don't discuss things I don't understand.

@monsieuricon @tusooa appears to be performing sealioning and it's reasonable to block them

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

@monsieuricon @tusooa "The people removed from maintainer positions were identified as employed by companies on the US and EU sanctions list."

My only wish is that this was clearly stated as part of the removal. I think more people would be behind the change if it was clearly justified in that way. Because fuck Putin and anyone who supports him.

I think the vague statement in the commit message has made this much more controversial than it should have been. I guess there are reasons for that though.

@pbarker @monsieuricon A challenge I see right now is that I don't think other Linux Foundation projects have been given any sort of guidance (I was on a projects call today and it wasn't brought up by the LF people as I would have expected, if there was any), let alone non-binding not-legal advice that the general community of developers might find helpful.

@pbarker @monsieuricon @tusooa agreed. Much of the backlash I'm seeing from reasonable people stems from this — not saying the "obvious" thing. I guess lawyers don't want the explaining to be done so plainly — "we can't say more because lawyers but we don't have a choice", could have also helped, albeit not as much.

Edit: the obvious thing is plainly written now, maybe we can just move on https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=whNGNVnYHHSXUAsWds_MoZ-iEgRMQMxZZ0z-jY4uHT+Gg@mail.gmail.com/

@Aissen @pbarker @monsieuricon The problem lies in whether the logic is applied indiscriminatively: Is it that "we don't welcome war crimes" or that "we don't welcome war crimes made by those who the US/EU government does not like"? The former is a justified action. The latter is racism. That's a huge difference.

@trini @pbarker @monsieuricon "I don't think other Linux Foundation projects have been given any sort of guidance" - that is an incorrect statement. I know for sure due to my position that there are some internal guidance and steps taken inside the project you are referring, but those are not yet being discussed publicly, unfortunately. Everyone's waiting for the LF Legal to make a statement...

@monsieuricon

Will the LF ban any developer working for companies that develop weaponry ?

It could be a good thing, actually...

@tusooa

@epilys @monsieuricon @tusooa Israel in Gaza, France in Iêmen, USA in (a fucking long list of places around the word) but the problem is Russia. Ok, understanded.

@monsieuricon @tusooa Russia is not comitting war crimes. It is Ukraine that fires weapons indiscriminately into cities.

@monsieuricon

Someone on slashdot wrote (rightly imho) that it's also a way to protect those maintainers from their own government, as they cannot be coerced anymore to do whatever to the kernel.

@tusooa

@tusooa @monsieuricon A choice of employer != ethnic identity.

@monsieuricon by the way it it possible that Linus or somebody who has rights for that will make a more calm and delailed answer on that removeal like that your post.

Because the only official answer looks awful :<

https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAHk-=whNGNVnYHHSXUAsWds_MoZ-iEgRMQMxZZ0z-jY4uHT+Gg@mail.gmail.com/#t

@pbarker @monsieuricon @tusooa The only ways this makes even an ounce of sense is if Linus or KH received some kind of national security gag order OR they are massive racists.

@tusooa @monsieuricon Off-topic but international version of TikTok is banned also in mainland China... Just sayin'

@pbarker @monsieuricon @tusooa They cannot add clarity because such clarity makes their actions less defensible, not more. That is why those in control have to take action arbitrarily and without justification, and then let surrogates do the taking about "war crimes".

@pro @pbarker @monsieuricon
You can be pressured to do an unethical thing and still look good: the way is to acknowledge that you are being unethical, and say that you are reluctant but forced. The way to look bad is to do an unethical thing while claiming you are doing it ethically.

@bt444 @monsieuricon @tusooa fine example of "tell me you're a muscovite troll without actually telling me you're a muscovite troll".

@monsieuricon@social.kernel.org @tusooa@kazv.moe as a "russian identified person" not involved in kernel or LF, I don't see any problems with this either

@monsieuricon@social.kernel.org Thank you for this, I think it would help a lot if this was clarified by Linus Torvalds or Greg Kroah-Hartman. Reading the mailing list left a lot of questions and it seemed really sketchy. I think that's what most people got up in arms about. I don't see a problem with it either now that you pointed it out as people employed by sanctioned companies instead of what I originally assumed which were hobbyist contributors.

@monsieuricon@social.kernel.org It also makes a lot more sense with the context that the Linux Foundation is registered in California, and is forced to abide by US sanctions. Now I see why Torvalds was committed to it and ignored people asking for a revert.

@tusooa, the "directly complicit in war crimes" he's talking about are: making IPTV for ISPs, working on smart speakers like Amazon Echo, supporting Postmarket OS, doing university research, and the only connection you could possibly stretch is Baikal Electronics, which supplied computers to the Ministry of Interior. That's what I've been able to get with OSINT on maintainers that have been removed.

So it's made up. Not everyone on the list works for defense contractors, not all the companies people work for are sanctioned, and the sanctions aren't even specifically targeting war-related companies - their goal is to harm the economy in general.

Speaking as someone who's experienced this a lot (despite leaving Russia long ago - I recently realized I've lived more than half my adult life abroad), sanctions have become just a "polite explanation".

They can't openly say they hate you because you're Russian, so they use excuses like "because of sanctions" to, for example, not hire you.

And Russians who are in a better position, some who actually have a different citizenship, et cetera, cannot openly say that this kind of discrimination exists, otherwise, you know, they would not be in a better position anymore, lol.

@monsieuricon

@tusooa @monsieuricon the tiktok and huawei bans were not really racist (as in done over prejudice to another race), at most we could call it xenophobic, but the actual reason and driving force is socioeconomics (disguised as national security)

aka, china is a powerful country that does not align with the us, and the usa wanting to maintain it's status quo of power, goes on and does that to diminish china's incluence and capital

it's not racist because it doesn't matter that it was china specifically, if it were brazil or a middle east country or whatever, with the same threat to the usa's economical power, they would've done the same :/

and don't get me wrong, it's still bad, still imperialism at full force going on, and i don't doubt there's racist legislators there, but the nature of it is not really racist but imperialist

@puppygirlhornypost2 Nothing really to do with LF directly, because LF doesn't do commerce with sanctioned companies. However, large US corporations working on the kernel are in a legally tough situation when some maintainer is working for a sanctioned company. Any changes that touch those subsystems could be qualified as "performing actions that benefit sanctioned companies."

That's my understanding. IANAL, never been, not speaking for LF.

@monsieuricon@social.kernel.org Yeah, fair point about how IBM (parent of Redhat) would be in potential hot waters. They already make processors they can't export to certain countries. LF is a small target compared to Redhat, SUSE & Intel.

@tusooa @monsieuricon I assume this is just a troll, but I will point out that this question is fundamentally racist because it conflates a region and government with an ethnicity, it is based on a worldview of racial nationalism to even ask in this way

@monsieuricon @tusooa

See also:
https://externals.io/message/125840

What the US-based Linux Foundation can't do, is pay/hire/employ ("invest in") Russian vendors to write code, or sell (commercial Linux support to Russian companies. That's all.

Afaik people from or in Russia can still maintain and contribute code to Linux, and Linus would probably keep merging it, too.

@bt444 Oh shut up... how many russian rockets, missiles, glide bombs, drones have been fired indiscriminately into ukrainian cities on 2022-02-24 alone, the first day of that "special military operation"?

@monsieuricon @tusooa