Conversation
K. Ryabitsev
monsieuricon
Here's my _personal_ view on the Baikal Elektroniks situation. This is not any kind of official statement by LF.
First of all, everyone must understand that Baikal Elektroniks is a company that produces equipment for pretty much a single client -- the Russian state. You can nominally buy a computer with a BE chip as a private citizen, but in reality you'd never do so because a) it's almost impossible to get, b) you'd buy a much slower chip and pay 4-5 times more than you would for any other chip available on the market. So, it's accurate to say that BE produces equipment pretty much exclusively for the Russian military and its state run businesses (who are mandated to buy BE equipment by law).
Second of all, and most importantly -- getting your patches accepted into mainline means receiving a lot of very expensive labour and computing resources gratis: you not only get free code reviews from maintainers, but you also benefit from a bunch of behind-the-scenes CI infrastructure that runs checks on your code -- both at the patch stage, and later as part of regular integration/CI/fuzzing runs. Any treewide changes, such as security improvements by efforts like KSPP, will also be automatically applied to any in-kernel drivers and architectures.
So, in reality, accepting code for any hardware into the Linux kernel means helping to test, maintain, and debug that code for years to come. The resources for that are pooled from many device manufacturers with the understanding that these efforts will be part of the tide that "lifts all boats," including their own. However, in the case of Baikal Elektroniks the situation becomes tricky. Yes, Linux is free software (free as in libre), but maintainers and CI infrastructure require funding. BE is placed under strict sanctions in many countries due to its direct affiliation with the Russian military, so companies funding CI and maintainer efforts have to consider if their money is directly benefiting a sanctioned company (and, indirectly, the Russian military).
So, it may be true that the rising tide lifts all boats, but if that boat is a Russian military warship, you have to decide what kind of message you send them.
First of all, everyone must understand that Baikal Elektroniks is a company that produces equipment for pretty much a single client -- the Russian state. You can nominally buy a computer with a BE chip as a private citizen, but in reality you'd never do so because a) it's almost impossible to get, b) you'd buy a much slower chip and pay 4-5 times more than you would for any other chip available on the market. So, it's accurate to say that BE produces equipment pretty much exclusively for the Russian military and its state run businesses (who are mandated to buy BE equipment by law).
Second of all, and most importantly -- getting your patches accepted into mainline means receiving a lot of very expensive labour and computing resources gratis: you not only get free code reviews from maintainers, but you also benefit from a bunch of behind-the-scenes CI infrastructure that runs checks on your code -- both at the patch stage, and later as part of regular integration/CI/fuzzing runs. Any treewide changes, such as security improvements by efforts like KSPP, will also be automatically applied to any in-kernel drivers and architectures.
So, in reality, accepting code for any hardware into the Linux kernel means helping to test, maintain, and debug that code for years to come. The resources for that are pooled from many device manufacturers with the understanding that these efforts will be part of the tide that "lifts all boats," including their own. However, in the case of Baikal Elektroniks the situation becomes tricky. Yes, Linux is free software (free as in libre), but maintainers and CI infrastructure require funding. BE is placed under strict sanctions in many countries due to its direct affiliation with the Russian military, so companies funding CI and maintainer efforts have to consider if their money is directly benefiting a sanctioned company (and, indirectly, the Russian military).
So, it may be true that the rising tide lifts all boats, but if that boat is a Russian military warship, you have to decide what kind of message you send them.
6
10
35