this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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FOSS is inherently political, though, and an international collaboration like Linux is inherently internationally political. Allowing big corporations to influence the direction of the codebase? That's political. Allowing the free usage and distribution of the software to anybody for any purpose not otherwise afforded by existing copyright law? That's political. Collaborating with contributors from almost every country on Earth? That's political. Being headquartered in the United States? Again political. Creating a hierarchy with Linus Torvalds at the top? The definition of politics.
It feels like people only start screaming "that's politics though!" whenever it becomes political in a way that's controversial to them – without recognizing how completely pervasive politics are in every single aspect of our lives. The fact we're even talking on Lemmy right now is political – in all likelihood, we both decided that Reddit's system of governance was unfair and thought a federated system was somehow more ideal, in this case a platform created by outspoken authcoms. That's even disregarding the Internet which Lemmy sits on top of, including net neutrality, freedom of speech, the infrastructure connecting different jurisdictions, the way it came about through organizations like DARPA, CERN, the IEEE, and ICANN, etc.
It seems though that Linus didn't make this decision for political reasons, but instead because he doesn't want to get in trouble with the US government. He indicated that he was advised by lawyers to do this:
I agree that that's why he made the decision, but you understand how that's political, right?
He probably isn't too bothered by the sanctions given his comments about his Finnish nationality being a reason why he opposes Russian aggression. But still, it seems at the moment he's just trying to follow the law.
I agree, and I mean to say that following the law is a political statement in the same way that him standing up and protesting by not following the law would be a political statement. We're all political actors; it's just that the amount of power we have to enact political change varies.
Fair points. I guess I happen to think Linus's action is fair since I think the sanctioned companies are thought to be supporting Russia's invasion in some way.