I think Linus has short temper and there are examples of his remarks that are borderline toxic (or cross the line), but this really isn't one of them.<p>The situation is pretty clear <i>and</i> calmly explained by Linus in the quoted messages. They removed contributors from Russia. The main reason is that they were told by a lawyer that they need to do this due to international sanctions. The secondary reason appears to be that Linus is not a fan of what Russia is doing, and is OK with sending a message.<p>They made a call and were immediately swarmed by people trying to argue geopolitics, law, personal responsibility, transparency, and so on - many of whom aren't regular kernel contributors. Linus responded that he's not going to argue, and I can't blame him: it's a software project, not a discussion club. Sometimes, maintainers make the call and you suck it up, leave, or fork it. This is just that.
> referring to the existence of said law or NDA itself seems to be the minimum for transparency<p>If it’s being done under the aegis of national security then they might not be allowed to discuss it.
"Getting called "Paid Actor" by Linus Torvalds"<p>Sounds like a resume line item to me 8-)<p>At least its more sophisticated than calling someone a "wanking walrus", or saying they should have been aborted.<p>Jokes aside though, this whole situation is very disturbing.<p>One would hope that free software developers would be more aware than to equate the identity and actions of a nation state with the identity of each and every one of it's geographic inhabitants.<p>I'm a US citizen, I massively disagree with a lot of what the US government does, especially WRT warfare which is basically mass murder. I would very much expect that many Russian people feel the same way about their government's actions.<p>From another, completely different argument, when there is conflict, cutting off communications with the conflicting party is counterproductive, e.g. barring Russians from chess tournaments, scientific conferences, etc.<p>Lastly, how effective can this removal of committers even be? If an account is truly a Russian state operative, does LF actually think that actor would be unable to establish a false account from a US location?<p>Maybe the way the whole thing played out was really Linus' personal "Scandinavian angst" about Russian aggression? There is a real history there, and Linus does cite his Finnish heritage in the email. If that's the case, we're back to calling people wanking walrus, and it's just another over emotional outburst from Linus, which would be a less concerning cause than the systematic elimination of Russian contributors by the LF organization.
So Linux is Linus's project and he is subject to Finnish/EU laws. It's not a global project owned by some global "community". When you take this into consideration, these actions are perfectly reasonable. Any open source project will work similarly.<p>Contributors from "non western" countries must realise this and be thankful for the current circumstances, as sad as they are, to bring this fact to light.
Related:<p><i>Linus Torvalds comments on the Russian Linux maintainers being delisted</i><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41927838">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41927838</a>
If I understand correctly, this blogger wasn't a maintainer or directly involved, he's just personally upset on behalf of anyone whose feelings were hurt by being accused of being a Russian bot? Or have been "riled up by them"?
Such hardworking Russian bots, wow. They wrote WHOLE 20+ emails in several hours!<p>Linus just dehumanized everyone who dares to disagree with the change and/or ask about why it was done on the 3rd year of the war (an increasingly common way of dealing with opponents, unfortunately). No one even tries to explain why this "compliance" selectively applies to ru emails (oh, look the maintainer has graduated from the Moscow State University! He is surely a Putin agent!), but not to Huawei ones. And how reverting the change became equivalent to "supporting Russian aggression" I simply can not comprehend.<p>Today he has dealt a huge damage to the Linux reputation among non-Western developers. Do not act surprised when, for example, Chinese developers and organizations will start behave accordingly.