Several Linux Kernel Driver Maintainers Removed Due To Their Association To Russia

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TEUser2K1

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Several Linux Kernel Driver Maintainers Removed Due To Their Association To Russia

This decision may have serious implications in future.
Apparently, they are removed because of USA's sanctions against Russia. Does not looks genuine and ethical.
Add Linus's comment: "As to sending me a revert patch - please use whatever mush you call brains. I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be *supporting* Russian aggression?". This is took an uncharted territory turn. Is he looking for Nobel prize or something ?
Never ever cared about his alleged toxic rants, etc., but now these are going geopolitical.
Not just Russia, but China and even India which was under USA sanctions earlier will keep an eye on this. Not giving a good feeling in the long run.
 
Sounds like the actual drivers were not removed, just the people who voluntarily signed up to maintain them.

Somewhat makes sense.

There's a lot of people acting in bad faith these days and it's difficult to validate their intentions if their nationality brings up a red flag.

It would be naive to assume a citizen of a sanctioned country would more loyal to an unpaid position in an open source project than their own country/government.

If India had a similar open source project, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't want any Chinese citizen contributing code to it. I mean, the government was petty enough to proactively ban commerce with China through apps and trade, and this is a question of volunteering.

I remember at the first sign of the mess that Russia created, many companies immediately left Russia and reregistered in eastern europe as a completely seperate entity.

For better or worse the world is divided into enemies and allies and who those are vary greatly depending on which part of the world you're in.

There will never a utopian world because greed exists as a human quality.
 
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Sigh!

Sets a very bad precedent. The code can always be reviewed.

Even a recent security issue was due to a binary blob being committed to the codebase.
 
rsaeon said:
Sounds like the actual drivers were not removed, just the people who voluntarily signed up to maintain them.

Somewhat makes sense.

There's a lot of people acting in bad faith these days and it's difficult to validate their intentions if their nationality brings up a red flag.

It would be naive to assume a citizen of a sanctioned country would more loyal to an unpaid position in an open source project than their own country/government.
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if this were the case, then chinese maintainers should have been banned from all major open-source projects, quite a few of them have been caught adding malicious code to major open source projects, I'm pretty sure I can dig them up if I looked for it.

Open source has always been about collaboration and building stuff that you feel passionate about, this is just a slap to the face to that spirit.

P.S. just read up on Torvalds response, and his whole Holier than thou attitude is just rubbing me wrong, dismissing everyone as paid russian trolls who raise even a single reasonable concern and conveniently sweeping it under lawyers told me shit, I did that shit, and **** you, I aint gonna tell you what shit the lawyers told me
 
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The Chinese have leverage, they're the ones doing the manufacturing. But then I don't know if there are any Chinese nationals that contribute to the Linux kernel. Probably worth looking into for the sake of curiosity.

Linus is a polarizing personality but the fact that remains true is that we're here today because of the way he is.

Expecting him to change or pander to his critics is hypocritical when the alternative exists — make your own. Start a movement. Get the rest of the tech world on board. Have people contribute en masse.

Someone could've taken up the responsibility but no one ever did. Just like there could've been another Bill Jates or another Steve Bobs but there weren't.

I don't care much for personalities.

One of my uncles recently advised me about the sane way to deal with business relationships — take what you need, fulfill your requirements, output a product. Forget everything else.

So what if the 500kg of rice had only 450kg in it. Buy another bag or adjust your serving accordingly. Don't stress about your supplier shorting you. Focus on progress.

Maybe this uncle of mine wants me to make the next unicorn, no idea.

But as an observer, that's what I see happening with Linux in recent years. Progress continues despite whatever Linus says and does. People care more about Linux than they do about Linus.
 
rsaeon said:
The Chinese have leverage, they're the ones doing the manufacturing. But then I don't know if there are any Chinese nationals that contribute to the Linux kernel. Probably worth looking into for the sake of curiosity.

Linus is a polarizing personality but the fact that remains true is that we're here today because of the way he is.

Expecting him to change or pander to his critics is hypocritical when the alternative exists — make your own. Start a movement. Get the rest of the tech world on board. Have people contribute en masse.
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eh, my meaning was more along the lines of how hypocritical it is, him towing the line is, specially after him flipping of Nvidia for prioritizing themselves and not open-sourcing their drivers until recently.
rsaeon said:
Someone could've taken up the responsibility but no one ever did. Just like there could've been another Bill Jates or another Steve Bobs but there weren't.

I don't care much for personalities.

One of my uncles recently advised me about the sane way to deal with business relationships — take what you need, fulfill your requirements, output a product. Forget everything else.

So what if the 500kg of rice had only 450kg in it. Buy another bag or adjust your serving accordingly. Don't stress about your supplier shorting you. Focus on progress.

Maybe this uncle of mine wants me to make the next unicorn, no idea.

But as an observer, that's what I see happening with Linux in recent years. Progress continues despite whatever Linus says and does. People care more about Linux than they do about Linus.
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yeah, and this will be the first death knell for linux or its splintering into different kernels, if US gets to decide who can do what, Open source has always been political, but never has the precedent been set that a country could force its politics in a major repo and choose who gets to do what, what do you think the response to this would be like? specially to countries who have never aligned themselves with western agenda.

This is what I'm saying, he should either get off his high horse and just simply say, hey, not my choice but it is what it is because of such and such issues, him acting all high and mighty just shows he's as out of touch of reality as the corpos he disdains.

I also havent really liked his handling of core Rust maintainers for the kernel and them leaving because some basement dwellers couldnt accept, that Rust can better than C in some cases.
 
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altair21 said:
Open source has always been political, but never has the precedent been set that a country could force its politics in a major repo and choose who gets to do what, what do you think the response to this would be like? specially to countries who have never aligned themselves with western agenda.
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Open source politics was actually about freedom and right to developing and understanding s/w code and nothing else.
Bringing identity politics into it definitely muddied the environment now.
I'll look for response from Richard Stallman, however unlikable he is, he tends to be right in general. (even-though my understanding is that he is anti Russia).

Security and s/w backdoor issues can be done by three letter agencies from any country, individual, political / identity groups, etc. Should be cleared with code review, this is a meek excuse.

What does this say about all s/w being produced or catered from USA, leave alone Linus and Linux, but there certainly should be unforeseen repercussions.
Wondering how other OSes like FreeBSD, GNU Hurd, etc. will see this.

Moving their foundation to Switzerland would've been a better option. But who thought free as in freedom s/w will reach this level in a country flaunting word freedom always.
 
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What is this move really achieving? There's plenty of Russian diaspora with foreign citizenship and compromisable Westerners that the KGB could pay to sneak in a patch. Look into how many purebred Americans became Soviet spies during the Cold War, for example. Banning Russian nationals is the kind of move that makes you feel safer but in effect is the same as shooting yourself in the foot. It alienates them for no reason and makes things worse.

But in an other sense, this is good. The reason we prefer open-source software and decentralization of leadership is because all humans are ultimately fallible. Even Linus lol.
 
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TEUser2K1 said:
Apparently they are doing this because of USA's legal implications related to sanctions against Russia.
But, this raises serious concerns for other countries all over the world using Linux, if they are following this path.
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I'm not sure what sanctions this would be violating because:
1) These developers are unpaid and not under any employment contract.
2) This is open source code and therefore doesn't have any proprietary or state secret technology involved.

The Finns largely, and probably rightfully so, hate Russia. They fought a brutal war against them around WWII and Russia is right on their doorstep, which considering what Putin has done in Georgia, Crimea and now the rest of Ukraine, is probably a very tense situation for them. So I wouldn't be surprised if this was a unilateral decision from Linus himself.
 
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"When asked whether Linus Torvalds was under any sort of NDA around this, he responded:
"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."

Suddenly not so open !!!
Bold side shows how there is a deflection of responsibility by blaming the questionnaires ! Allegedly all those asking clarity are paid actors !

Finnish issues with Russia, may be there is also a Russian version of that with Finnish concentration camps, etc. But all that should not make any relation to this decision. Linux is neither USA property nor Finnish, a s/w of that level should be considered a global asset.
 
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TEUser2K1 said:

"When asked whether Linus Torvalds was under any sort of NDA around this, he responded:
"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."
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this is what I mean when I said Torvalds is not handling the situation well at all. its just pure arrogance and nothing else.
 
TEUser2K1 said:
Open source politics was actually about freedom and right to developing and understanding s/w code and nothing else.
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No, open source politics have taken many different forms. The most prominent example that I recall now is the "woke" pledges taken by a huge number of open source projects: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_Covenant . As part of this, or a related movement, many projects renamed "master" git branch to something else, just because one of the meanings of "master" was associated with the culture of slavery.

The Contributor Covenant is a code of conduct for contributors to free/open source software projects, created by Coraline Ada Ehmke. Its stated purpose is to reduce harassment of minority, LGBT and otherwise underrepresented open source software developers.[1]
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kiran6680 said:
No, open source politics have taken many different forms. The most prominent example that I recall now is the "woke" pledges taken by a huge number of open source projects: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contributor_Covenant . As part of this, or a related movement, many projects renamed "master" git branch to something else, just because one of the meanings of "master" was associated with the culture of slavery.
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yeah agreed, but its the first time, a country has been able to influence such a major open source project, and that does not bode well, the examples you quoted, that was what the people pushed and their politics. this is just a country and its sanctions influencing the whole community as a whole.
 
TEUser2K1 said:
Open source politics was actually about freedom and right to developing and understanding s/w code and nothing else.
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kiran6680 said:
No, open source politics have taken many different forms.
Click to expand...
Emphasizing 'actually' on purpose.
They used woke methods to stymie FSF's propounder Richard Stallman, at an instance Linus was also under several discrediting attempts.
A good number of F/OSS supporters considered this as a move to spit and self destruct the F/OSS movement and enemies succeeded mostly.
Initial days of systemd, wayland, etc. also did a lot to slow down the progress, now have a feeling that infiltration using Rust is also similar attack.
Whatever touched by chronically acute wokeism will self-destruct by itself.

edit, added:
Some Clarity On The Linux Kernel's "Compliance Requirements" Around Russian Sanctions
 
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