this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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This has nothing to do with open source. If Russians want to work on the Linux kernel, they're absolutely free to do so, because the source code is free and open source. What they are being restricted from is getting their changes submitted to the normal Linux foundation trees. FOSS doesn't mean you're entitled to have the maintainer of a project look at your patches, it means you can use the software however you want.
And yeah, it makes me sad that Russian kernel maintainers are being excluded. That doesn't mean it's a violation of open source philosophies (a maintainer can exclude anyone they want for any reason), it just means it's an unfortunate policy due to international sanctions.
Russians aren't restricted from getting their changes submitted, they just can't be maintainers. This means that they need another maintainer to approve their changes, just like if you or me were to submit a change. A lot of people seem to be misunderstanding what actually happened.
I actually just emailed RMS about this and I'm genuinely curious what he says. If anyone else is interested, I'll ask if he's fine with me sharing some of the response.
Oh yes, an update would be really interesting! (Even though I agree with @[email protected] in all points.)
My opinion on this whole topic: I don't like the decision, a Free Software project should only prevent people from contributing in very rare occasions (e.g. having actively tried to sabotage the project). I don't think this was the case, because I presume that the Linux Foundation was forced by the U.S. government to kick the maintainers out. The should've also communicated more clearly to prevent the confusion. (Russian trolls will cry out no matter how they phrased that.)
Edit: Depending on their power as a maintainer, they might be hired by intelligence and forced to just wave a backdoor through. With the Russian government waging a hybrid war against the U.S. and Europe, this poses a real problem.
Another Edit: @[email protected] mentioned that apart from Russia, the U.S., Israel and China also have a very well funded intelligence service. So banning Russian maintainers because of a potential backdoor when there are American maintainers (which could be agents) as well? I don't think it makes sense, but unfortunately the Linux Foundation won't be able to resist the "complience requirements".