Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

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

@LWN This sucks pretty bad. Contributors should be punished for the actions of their government. I live in a country where the government is considering selling weapons to parties committing genocide. I don’t want to be punished for that shit. I wish I could stop it.

@LWN So they can’t putin new code?

@LWN @kernellogger @jzb I'm afraid the Linux Kernel Organization as a California Public Benefit Corporation must obey US law.
So, this may be a good time to ask whether the organization should be moved and where. This question may soon become even more pressing, if GOP under Donald Trump turns the US into a fascist country.

@LWN The lack of transparency here is really disappointing. There may be good reasons for this patch -- but it looks very much like abuse of power and is destroying trust in Linux kernel leadership 😔 Hoping for an explanation soon.

@LWN The Streisand effect strikes again - this would have been far less of a controversial change if it had been communicated clearly and if the patch had followed the normal review process.

@dotstdy @LWN Quietly booting a bunch of people with no real or credible explanation? Sanctions are fine, but we need to know that that's it. Also, if something compels GregKH to not work with certain people, why can't he just not accept patches from those people? I think this sets a very dangerous precedent. Also, the "Russian bad" vibe has undertones of "Jewish bad" or "Arab bad" -- which may not be the intention here but is soooo dangerous.

@vegard @dotstdy @LWN The same thing happened with GitHub a while back: https://www.phoronix.com/news/ipmitool-GitHub-Suspended

Decision was not explained by GitHub, but could be reversed to an employer being a subsidiary of a company which had a sanctioned subsidiary.

I agree with you though — those rules should be clear, especially since those sanctions are public knowledge.

@dotstdy @LWN No, you misunderstand, I don't think this is a personal vendetta. I think it's cowardly to stuff this in a char-misc pull request and not give any reasonable explanation. It's unfair to the maintainers involved and it's unfair to everybody who now sees this and wonders if they are next. To be clear, it's the process I'm objecting to. Being forcibly removed as a maintainer is humiliating and damages people's reputations.

@dotstdy @LWN You mean the "various compliance requirements"? That's not good enough, that's a joke of an explanation.

@ptesarik Countries are political concepts, so every country where you move the organization will impose some sort of politics on that organization. Unless you propose moving to Principality of Sealand? :)
Joking aside, Linux Foundation is nowadays business with very big business behind, so change of residency might not change much.

RE: https://fosstodon.org/@ptesarik/113355467229724671

@krzk I don't know the answer, but I know the question is now valid after many years.
Yes, I also believe that there is no compelling reason to move at this time, but how are we prepared to move when/if needed? TBH even the fact that the organization cannot be easily moved looks like a risk factor to me.

@ptesarik @LWN @kernellogger @jzb riscv foundation was based in US and reincorporated in Switzerland after the US became aggressive towards companies in other countries like China https://www.eetimes.eu/risc-v-to-move-hq-to-switzerland-amid-trade-war-concerns/

@ptesarik @krzk moving LF to Switzerland could be a good idea. Riscv foundation moved from California to Switzerland in 2019 and became risc v international
https://www.eetimes.eu/risc-v-to-move-hq-to-switzerland-amid-trade-war-concerns/

@pdp7 @ptesarik Yeah, I like that idea and for many it would be considered neutral or more neutral place. It won't silence all "neutrality" voices, though. No matter how much you wish, you cannot escape politics when dealing with known, big organization.

@krzk @ptesarik yeah, and ultimately there are laws no matter what country one lives in. I do
sometimes worry about a future in which my open source activities could be constrained by laws about what entities US citizens can interact with.

@krzk @ptesarik though that's probably just my imagination running wild due to my stress and nervousness about what will happen in the next few months in the US 😬😬😬

@Aissen @vegard @dotstdy @LWN The vagueness in the commit surprised me. People are bound by the laws of the countries they live in but I think it would help everyone if this was made explicit. I do sometimes worry about a future in which my open source interactions might be gated by the fact that I'm a US citizen and I'm required to follow laws about what entities I can deal with 😬

@pdp7 @krzk I don't want to add to your anxiety, but my wife is a historian, so she drew my attention to some essays by Timothy Snyder, and no, I'm afraid things do NOT look good.
https://snyder.substack.com/p/how-to-stop-fascism

@krzk

Your post made me think how well Linux is protected against these big corpos ?

I mean, maybe one day we will wake up in a world where there is no Linux ?
Or there is a new Linux owner ?

@as400 It's protected very well. Just fork it. Or review commits. Or revert them. It's all open. There is no owner (except copyright owners but that does not matter here). You can do with it whatever you wish, as long as you keep it still open (and few other things enforced by GPL v2).