On Linux MAINTAINERS file removal of Russian developers

&quot;I was under the naive assumption that it&#x27;s individual developers who work together, and their employers do not really matter.&quot;<p>This assumption is not just naive but completely oblivious under normal circumstances, let alone in a discussion about sanctions regime compliance and risk management.

People should stop to use the term &quot;Russian developers&quot;, this attracts a lot of people complaining about Russophobia (either innocently or not...)<p>They were removed NOT because of being Russian but because of their link to Russian state owned company (also, either legitimately or by mistake...)

I find it sad that there are so many reductive comments here. The author of this article is very nuanced:<p>Should U.S. developers have been sanctioned over the Iraq war that was launched under false pretenses (non-existent WMD)?<p>Should company sanctions apply to individuals who happen to work for such a company?<p>Should the matter have been handled more gracefully than a stealthy removal from the MAINTAINERS file?<p>Has the culture of the Linux Kernel changed?<p>The culture has certainly changed, almost all big OSS projects have been captured and are essentially governed by corporations.<p>Perhaps Torvalds has been legally pressured, but 20 years ago he would have put up a fight at least. Back then everyone was proud that OSS could be used by anyone for anything. Now he attacks critics with the Russian troll meme. This is the worst of Torvalds I have seen so far.<p>So far, he does not seem to have any issues with <i>exporting</i> the Linux Kernel to Russia, which should also be prohibited by sanctions.

Previously:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41932225">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41932225</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41929585">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41929585</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41927838">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41927838</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41919670">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=41919670</a>

At this point I kinda have to assume posts like these are just concern trolling and aren&#x27;t really worth taking seriously<p>If it&#x27;s genuinely naive, this is a great time to wake up to the fact that russia is conducting a war of conquest against a european country, and this is why they, and a bunch of companies associated with that, are being sanctioned. Why would any reasonable project try to circumvent such sanctions?

Apparently people working on open source are just looking for an excuse to pontificate. Same as with Bitwarden, simply raising the issue and then waiting a little for an answer is enough.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lore.kernel.org&#x2F;lkml&#x2F;e7d548a7fc835f9f3c9cb2e5ed97dfdfa164813f.camel@HansenPartnership.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lore.kernel.org&#x2F;lkml&#x2F;e7d548a7fc835f9f3c9cb2e5ed97dfd...</a><p>&gt; If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned&#x2F;controlled by a company on the list, our ability to collaborate with you will be subject to restrictions, and you cannot be in the MAINTAINERS file.<p>That&#x27;s all.<p>Both could&#x27;ve been handled better but there&#x27;s no need to write ten thousand open source philosophy comments on the issue itself, bad articles and HN comments.

It&#x27;s people that work for Russian state owned companies - not just Russians in general.<p>A lot of the discourse wants to muddy the water to make it sound like it is against all those of Russian background - it is not.<p>Russian people are not the Russian state. Blurring the lines only polarizes which, I imagine, is often the intent.<p>This article&#x27;s framing is disingenuous.

What I don’t understand is there must be tonnes more Russian maintainers and contributors to this? What’s the score there?

If certain people cannot contribute to the Linux kernel because of a list maintained by the USG then perhaps it&#x27;s time for Linux kernel development to no longer be dependent on US law.<p>We should realize this has nothing to do with Russia or the Russian government. This could happen with any country and any group of people. The USG is constantly expanding their sanctions regime. Thus, we need to ask ourselves the obvious question; Who will be next?<p>What I find perplexing and surprising are the people I see online cheering this on. The people who are happy that the USG is forcing Linux kernel devs to stop working with people. Why are some people so happy for Linus and crew to take orders from the USG&#x27;s sanctions regime?<p>Where did the free as in freedom go?

When PGP couldn&#x27;t be exported and OpenBSD had to set up camp in Canada, the same people who are upset now were silent then. The resistance back then was both clever and peaceful.

My heart bleeds for the poor Russian military contractors

Please don&#x27;t feed the trolls!

&gt; And no, I am of course not a friend of the Russian government at all. They are committing war crimes, no doubt about it.<p>No reason to read. Guy complains about linux getting political while he himself is unable to not be.

Aside from numerous ethical issues with this story, it doesn’t make a lot of practical sense. They are not major threat to avoid, even taking into account xz precedent - I don’t think it’s easy or even feasible to plant any backdoors to Linux kernel this way. This will not make any impact on Russian government or military operations or impair their OS development effort (Astra Linux will be just fine). It sounds pretty much like some legalese ass-covering met the unhinged personality of Torvalds with the scandal as the only outcome.

You could just ask them to use an email address hosted outside of Russia for their kernel development work if visible compliance was the only issue. To not offer them a remedy and to exclude people on the basis of their first or last name is a bizarre overreaction to me. It stands no chance of damaging the Russian government and can only harm the project and open source in general, I&#x27;m not sure why a non-profit would involve themselves in this in any way.