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Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers (www.theregister.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (27 children)

The central project of open-source community closes doors to people based on nationality, and everyone is cheering...

Why? You seriously miss the implications of breaking the very basic principles of open source? You are ready to forgive literally anything if it is claimed to target Russia or Russians in any way?

For those of you who say about backdoors:

US is known to create the most complicated spy networks with myriads of backdoors. Where are the bans of the US maintainers?
Israel is a literal powerhouse of state-sanctioned spying software - Pegasus, as well as many less renowned programs, was created here. Any bans, anyone?
China is known for invasive software. Maybe ban them all too?

The only reasonable way to avoid backdoors is to meticulously check the submitted code. Threat actors can be anywhere - and Russia is not some unique threat location, nor was it banned with that justification - just "compliance requirements".

This is politics permeating the sacred place we all had. This is a giant threat to the community, and the way Linus framed it in his message is even more terrifying. This was never meant to happen.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

The only reasonable way to avoid backdoors is to meticulously check the submitted code.

Which is the job of maintainers. Which now aren't Russian, any more. To the best of my knowledge the kernel is still accepting code from Russian citizens, ultimately not having Russians in maintainer roles isn't going to stop the FSB from infiltrating the kernel but it certainly does make it harder.

This also isn't in any way a judgement on the removed people, it's just that it so happens that if you're a Russian citizen you're quite vulnerable to wrench attacks. You could even say that the kernel org is protecting them from being used like that.

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