By decision of Linus Torvalds, Russian participation in the Linux kernel is restricted. There are several reasons for this decision. On the one hand, suspicious contributions were detected, and on the other, the Linux Foundation is a registered entity in the United States and must obey the laws of that country.
The news was known in a patch (Correction), Greg Kroah-Hartman (stable kernel maintainer) announced that at least 10 Russian developers have been removed from their roles as maintainers due to “various mandatory compliance requirements.”
Why Russia's participation in the Linux kernel is being restricted
And it is not a minor fact, The Linux kernel It is one of the largest open source projects in the world, with several thousand developers from various countries.
Of course it couldn't be missed the contribution by Linus Torvalds
Ok, lots of Russian trolls out there.
It's completely clear why the change was made, it's not going to be reversed, and using multiple random anonymous accounts to try to make it look like a grassroots initiative by Russian troll factories isn't going to change anything.
And FYI, for actual innocent bystanders who are not troll farm accounts: “various compliance requirements” are not just a US thing.
If you haven't heard about Russian sanctions yet, you should try reading the news sometime. And by "news," I don't mean Russian state-sponsored spam.
As for sending me a rollback patch, please use whatever you call a brain. I'm Finnish. Did you think I would be supporting Russian aggression? Apparently, it's not just a lack of real news, it's also a lack of knowledge of history.
Linus is obviously referring to the sanctions against Russia caused by the invasion of Ukraine. His reference to history is due to the fact that there is not much love between Finland and Russia since:
- In 1808 Russia, under the reign of Tsar Alexander I, invaded Finland, then part of the Kingdom of Sweden. Sweden ceded Finland to Russia which became a grand duchy.
- In 1918 a civil war broke out with Russia supporting one side and Germany supporting the other. The pro-German side won and achieved independence.
- In 1939 the Soviet Union, under Stalin, invaded Finland. which had to make territorial concessions. Finland joined Germany and resumed the war, but after Germany's defeat it had to cede more territory.
James Bottomley, another Linux kernel developer, did clarify something:
If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or is owned/controlled by a company on the list, our ability to work with you will be subject to restrictions and you cannot be on the MAINTAINERS file.
As we said, the Linux Foundation is a US-based entity and, at the suggestion of the lawyers, The decision was made to remove the Russian maintainers until they can present documentation proving that they do not work for the Russian government.
My first reaction is one of disgust. However, when one remembers the XZ Utils case where a Chinese developer inserted malicious software, I don't think the decision was so wrong.
Of course I'm not naive enough to think that the NSA or other intelligence agencies don't try to put backdoors in the software we use. But they're supposed to be on our side. Linux is a core part of many critical systems and any malicious software inserted for military purposes can cost millions of lives.
Linus, beyond his Finnish status, is a hacker (in the good sense of the word) and it must hurt him to leave out valuable developers who have a lot to contribute.
Hopefully in the coming months politics will stop getting in the way and we can focus on technology.