If this was purely because of sanctions, this could have been handled much more gracefully. But it's clear from Linus' comments that he just doesn't respect these volunteers because they happen to be from a particular country.
> I'm Finnish. ... Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of history knowledge too.
If we're suddenly taking history as a criterion, half of the world should ban British developers from touching their projects in any way, for their repeated aggressions and ruinous colonialism. This sort of behaviour is slowly building a soft Great Firewall around the West, and making it seem like China had the right idea all along.
Russia invaded it’s neighbor. These sanctions are one of the consequences.
It sucks for the good-faith programmers in Russia but what would you have the rest of the world do? The Russian state must be sanctioned for its blatant disregard for international norms.
Please don’t just respond with whataboutism. The whataboutism in these threads involves different people in different times. This is happening now.
The problem with this discourse is that what you said is hardly relevant. We have a clear understanding of what is considered moral and ethical behavior and what's not. The subject matter may as well be discrimination as no valid legal reason was given for action taken against a group of people otherwise. To say that a group of people is valid to discriminate against because reasons is also discriminatory in itself. If one wants to claim moral superiority, they have to abide by what is moral, otherwise that would make them a hypocrite. To discriminate against someone who did nothing wrong for you, and in fact was working for your cause, and to do that due to the fact that you can do nothing else for a good cause is both hypocritical and petty.
You can't invoke "international norms" and then in the very next paragraph "but no talking about precedent, that would be whataboutism".
Norms are established through precedents. There are considerable precedents in the 21st century that military invasions DO NOT lead to international sanctions. So this isn't a valid argument, and it's true that that decision was emotional and politically motivated.
When the word "whataboutism" is used, you know it's the one rejection of a valid argument or analogy that helps clarify the argument. The ones that can't deal with that coined the therm "whataboutism".
Israel has invaded its neighbour. U.S. invaded lots of nations and still bombs multiple nations continually. But no consequences for the same. Whataboutism is necessary since the NATO/Western block juggernaut always raps others on the knuckles but always gets away scot-free when it concerns their own military actions. The sanctimonious hypocrisy is utterly sickening to those in the East and South.
Russia is an Empire of Evil and Murder. Even Russian rulers hold their own people in contempt and have no use for them except as slaves. 800 years of their history proves it.
You missed the point, he didn't mention history in general, but specifically "Finnish history".
In this respect it's not about British colonialism but more about about Russian imperialism / Stalinism (see Russo-Finnish war 1939).
Did he just now realized that history? For over 30 years accepting contributions from the "enemy"? Then when the history is employed, how about he as a Finn bans also Swedish contributors?
Linus is acting based on his country's historical grievances, it only makes sense that other projects make decisions based on their own maintainers' grievances - if we approve of this as a good way of making decisions in open source. That's my point.
And even with Linux, it's not Linus' personal project anymore, hasn't been for decades - it's a global project with developers from many countries with their own views and biases. Being BDFL doesn't mean that your geopolitical agenda becomes the whole project's. Or at least, it wasn't so blatantly put on display previously that that was the case.
A high profile project like Linux doing this will have long term repercussions for how open source operates globally.
The article is a snapshot of the discussion that's still happening on the mailing list.
Linus later responded with:
>No, but I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to go into the details that
I - and other maintainers - were told by lawyers.
>I'm also not going to start discussing legal issues with random
internet people who I seriously suspect are paid actors and/or have
been riled up by them.
>I'm also not going to start discussing legal issues with random internet people who I seriously suspect are paid actors and/or have been riled up by them.
Oh boy, everyone who disagrees with me works for the Kremlin.
Russia spends hundreds of millions on propaganda (paid trolls), sabotage, and espionage. There is lot of cases for Article 4 of NATO already. It's better to say sorry than to risk millions of lives.
Just to make things clear, Phoronix said they are being "delisted".
No, they have actually been banished, because if you're not a maintainer of some Linux kernel subsystem, Linus Torvalds stops accepting merge requests from you. You need to go through an actual maintainer first.
Communicating clearly that you cannot currently accept contributions from people potentially associated with problematic businesses is an understandable decision. Tone of voice stated following the removal of a list of names of people you used to work with not too long makes this sound like a petty statement if anything.
Am I right to assume that they're not delisting all Russian Linux maintainers, just the ones with some connections to Russian Government?
If that is so, then this is comparable to booting people with nazi connections from western scientific projects in 1930s, i.e. perfectly fine and in fact the only reasonable thing to do.
Again, this is not being done because these people are russian. Claiming ethnicity-based oppression where none exists is a known russotroll dogwhistle, and I think the commenters on this forum should be sophisticated enough to understand that.
> Does being a russian means "some connections to Russian Government"? What is the specific criteria used in this case?
The specific criteria is legal advice received regarding sanctions regimes.
> Does punishment by a nationality means USA is nazi itself?
No, because (1) nationality alone isn't the basis of the action, (2) Linus has specifically noted that the compliance issues were not solely US law, (3) treated people differently based on their nation of nationality and residence (not your own citizens by national ancestry) is not, even approximately, sufficient to be described as “nazi”.
> What about that public hatred against a Russian nationality expressed by Torvalds? Is it OK to use a nazi hatred for decisions in USA?
Torvald’s expressed that it was irrational to expect him to backtrack and violate the rules on behalf of people connected to the Russian state while it is conducting aggression given the history involved, which is... well, beyond a stretch to call that a “nazi” attitude.
But nice job trolling on behalf of Russia and calling everything hostile to the interests of the Putin regime “nazi”.
> Am I right to assume that they've not delisting all Russian Linux maintainers, just the ones with some connections to Russian Government?
AFAICT, it is ones employed by sanctioned entities (which presumably is because of those entities connections to the regime, but the direct impetus for the Linux action is compliance with the sanctions regime, not an assessment of regime connections by anyone involved with Linux.)
A complete betrayal of the spirit of open source and the Internet. It's sad that we are living in a world like this. People just pour hate and bias to others and disguise it with some high-sounding excuses. The bright future which envisioned by people in the 2000s will never come and we humanity will fxxk up eventually.
Readit News
> I'm Finnish. ... Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of history knowledge too.
If we're suddenly taking history as a criterion, half of the world should ban British developers from touching their projects in any way, for their repeated aggressions and ruinous colonialism. This sort of behaviour is slowly building a soft Great Firewall around the West, and making it seem like China had the right idea all along.
If that would be the case no russian would have reached the maintainer status to anything related to the kernel.
It sucks for the good-faith programmers in Russia but what would you have the rest of the world do? The Russian state must be sanctioned for its blatant disregard for international norms.
Please don’t just respond with whataboutism. The whataboutism in these threads involves different people in different times. This is happening now.
Norms are established through precedents. There are considerable precedents in the 21st century that military invasions DO NOT lead to international sanctions. So this isn't a valid argument, and it's true that that decision was emotional and politically motivated.
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Junk away.
.... and China.
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And even with Linux, it's not Linus' personal project anymore, hasn't been for decades - it's a global project with developers from many countries with their own views and biases. Being BDFL doesn't mean that your geopolitical agenda becomes the whole project's. Or at least, it wasn't so blatantly put on display previously that that was the case.
A high profile project like Linux doing this will have long term repercussions for how open source operates globally.
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Linus later responded with:
>No, but I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to go into the details that I - and other maintainers - were told by lawyers.
>I'm also not going to start discussing legal issues with random internet people who I seriously suspect are paid actors and/or have been riled up by them.
Oh boy, everyone who disagrees with me works for the Kremlin.
Maybe don't blatantly misrepresent what he wrote, even if you still disagree with it.
If he had just written - compliance, we cannot work with sanctioned entities, that would be fine and understandable.
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/china-cold-war-2669160202/
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No, they have actually been banished, because if you're not a maintainer of some Linux kernel subsystem, Linus Torvalds stops accepting merge requests from you. You need to go through an actual maintainer first.
If you're not a maintainer you cant maintain the kernel. D'oh.
You should not be demanding charged language just because it elicits an emotional reaction.
(I've reverted the title now.)
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Communicating clearly that you cannot currently accept contributions from people potentially associated with problematic businesses is an understandable decision. Tone of voice stated following the removal of a list of names of people you used to work with not too long makes this sound like a petty statement if anything.
I really wish that you and those close to you experience the joy russians bring.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_in_the_Russian_inva...
/\ that is just from the last 2 years
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If that is so, then this is comparable to booting people with nazi connections from western scientific projects in 1930s, i.e. perfectly fine and in fact the only reasonable thing to do.
Again, this is not being done because these people are russian. Claiming ethnicity-based oppression where none exists is a known russotroll dogwhistle, and I think the commenters on this forum should be sophisticated enough to understand that.
2. Does punishment by a nationality means USA is nazi itself?
3. What about that public hatred against a Russian nationality expressed by Torvalds? Is it OK to use a nazi hatred for decisions in USA?
2. Invalid premise, since they're not punishing by nationality
3. Also invalid premise, Torvalds is not expressing hatred towards Russian nationality
The specific criteria is legal advice received regarding sanctions regimes.
> Does punishment by a nationality means USA is nazi itself?
No, because (1) nationality alone isn't the basis of the action, (2) Linus has specifically noted that the compliance issues were not solely US law, (3) treated people differently based on their nation of nationality and residence (not your own citizens by national ancestry) is not, even approximately, sufficient to be described as “nazi”.
> What about that public hatred against a Russian nationality expressed by Torvalds? Is it OK to use a nazi hatred for decisions in USA?
Torvald’s expressed that it was irrational to expect him to backtrack and violate the rules on behalf of people connected to the Russian state while it is conducting aggression given the history involved, which is... well, beyond a stretch to call that a “nazi” attitude.
But nice job trolling on behalf of Russia and calling everything hostile to the interests of the Putin regime “nazi”.
AFAICT, it is ones employed by sanctioned entities (which presumably is because of those entities connections to the regime, but the direct impetus for the Linux action is compliance with the sanctions regime, not an assessment of regime connections by anyone involved with Linux.)
Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41919670