Phoronix: Linus Torvalds Comments On The Russian Linux Maintainers Being Delisted

For half a second there, I was like "yeah, so glad Lemmy is more rational than that site".

Few comments later, folks be talking about "Ukranian Nazis"...

"Bcachefs sucks because I use ext4"

The absolute disregard of having any moderation is what does that. If there was any, there wouldn't be the cases like having someone be there by their third account, after the first two got banned.

Not to mention that controversy = angry people and trolls = more clicks = more ad revenue. I don't think Michael wants to miss out on it.

That's a fair point. I rarely read comments on news articles, but morbid curiosity overpowered my self-preservation instinct.

They would never!

ALL of them? Not at once. Usually.

It's not about punishing Russia, is admit preventing vulnerability to a country that has an ongoing effort to compromise infosec.

Not at all saying Israel doesn't suck balls right now.

I would never. The idea that any person should be disbarred from contributing to FOSS due to the actions of their government, is incredibly exclusionary. Linus is acting as much like a toddler as daddy USA is.

Switzerland is controlled by the US

And the most dangerous part here is the whole rethoric of "if you disagree, you are a Russian shill".

At this point it’s the Russians peoples fault.

Linux foundation is a US company, and he's a EU citizen and there's companies that those devs where employed that are under sanction , hot that hard to understand

Yup. If you don't want to "mysteriously fall from a window," you do what they say.

I agree 100% with Linus here

[Citation needed]

How's that Kool aid taste? You're not even worth debating, it's clear you're a lost cause. Keep believing this, and let the rage build inside you.

they’ve killed and continue to kill tens of thousands of civilians in the independent republics

Even if I assume the truth of that statement, do you not care about the deaths of Ukrainian civilians?

We couped Ukraine in 2014

My understanding is that Ukraine's parliament (Rada) removed Yanukovych from his position as president. That seems fair to me. Many countries, including the US, have legal processes for removing their leaders.

Reason: Russian bot

Reason: bot

The only bots here are the alt accounts downvoting coolusername.

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finland has pretty bad climate-change-exploitation-fucking-over-the-third-world dealings in my country, despite enforcing seemingly very good stuff inside their own borders so meh, id argue they aint close to the victims they make out to be. some would argue that as a consequence for having a strong socialist influence.

i have mixed feelings about them as a country, but i recognize there are plenty of good (and even well known good) people on there because of the aforementioned good stuff, linus included. for different but not that dissimilar reasons i think contemporary russian citizens should not be blanket banned from helping everyone out.

It makes no sense to discuss here.They probably follow Russia's narrative of Europe being a puppet of the US.

That's more like his opinion or a post facto justification. Turns out it is a US thing.

If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list, our ability to collaborate with you will be subject to restrictions, and you cannot be in the MAINTAINERS file.

So to get back, you have to basically prove that you have no relations with OFAC SDN companies.

This update is from https://lwn.net/Articles/995186/

They'll fight over fonts meanwhile WordPress is on fire and where are the forks?

Or a name

The bad precedent was starting a war

Linus said it was to prevent security backdoors.

I doubt if someone wants to introduce a backdoor, they would do that with a russian mailing address. People removed were open and transparent about their nationalities which means there is even less chance them being bad actors than some random guy pretending to be American.

good Russians

=dead ruski swine

I think you’re making up a world in your head. Who are these “lots” of “good” Russians who are abroad and whose lives are in realistically danger of state assassination? Not that it has never happened, but you’re blowing things out of proportion. Probably Russia does it at a scale roughly similar to the US.

“The imperial core is sanctioning Russia therefore you are a Russian troll.” Impeccable logic.

why the fuck are we using that word here? just read the article yourself, "auteur de war" sans nees

I'm giving an example of sanctions applying to software.

OK, that's the first reasonable explanation I've come across. I wish Greg Linus didn't reply in that kind of "angry" tone, because for some of us it's not that obvious.

Sanctions apply on OS development?

I dont know ennough on the topic, does this ecen check out?

Yes, but this action sounds as effective against Russian espionage as burning any clothes that has red blue and white in them.

Phobia, by definition, is uncontrollable, irrational, and lasting fear for something. In the current geopolitics situation I'd say that it's not uncontrollable and very much not irrational. Fear, as a fellow Finn, might be a bit strong word, but it's a definetly a concern.

When I first read that I thought that the response is a bit harsh, as Russian (and Soviet Union) individuals have traditionally been a big part of open source community and their achievements on computing are pretty significant, but when you dig a bit deeper on that, a majority of Soviet era things are actually built by Ukrainians in Kyiv (obviously Ukraine as a country wasn't a thing back then).

Also, based on my very limited sight on the matter, Russians are not banned from contributing, but this is more of an statement that anyone working for the government in Russia can't be a part of kernel development team. There's of course legal reasons for that, very much including the trade bans against Russia, but also the moral part of it, which Linus seems to take a stand on.

Personally I've seen individuals at Russia to do quite amazing feats with both hardware and software, but as none of us are in a void without any external infcluence nor affect, I think that, while harsh, the "sanctions" (for a lack of better word) aren't overshooting anything, but they're instead leveling the playing field. Any Joe Anynymous could write a code which compromises the kernel as a whole, but should that Joe live in Russia, it might bring a government backed team which can hide their tracks on a quite a bit different level with their resources than any individual could ever even dream about.

So, while that decision might slow down some implementations and it might include some of the most capable of developers, the fear that one of them might corrupt the whole project isn't unreasonable and, with ongoing sanctions in place (and legal requirements that follow) the core dev team might not even have a choice on this.

In current global environment we're living in, I'd rather have a bit too careful management than one which doesn't take things seriously enough. We already have Canonical and others to break stuff way too often, we don't need malicious government to expand on that with nefarious purposes which could compromise a shit on of stuff on a very fundamental level if left unattended.

I mean fuck Russia, but if these people aint regime whores for Putin I don't get the angle here...

If there is no security issue, this seems excessive.

All it takes is reading the article to see why it was done. You clearly did not do that and instead inserted your own agenda.

this comment is bait, do not interact

Fuck Russia. Pretty good reason.

He just applied Russians’ favorite soviet era saying “those who is not with us is against us”

That sounds like an advice, not something official? Also why is an open source project affected by US sanctions? It's not an US open source project, or is it?

I understand, thank you. My statement kind of assumes north korea is maintaining a fork of the kernel they patch and customize. It also implies NK is one of the few organizations that would accept russian contributions into their fork, given the somewhat limited number of linux projects operating outside of the sanctions.

This might not be super useful if you don't write code but I always found the contest submissions fun to read and try to figure out for the https://www.underhanded-c.org/ contest.

They break down and explain the runner up and finalist for each year and how the attack works. It's usually something very subtle that most people wouldn't catch.

How does this prevent the Russians from accessing sensitive technology? Oh it doesn't! It just excludes them from contributing to Linux, not from using it.

Accusing others from "arguing in bad faith" are we?

Yes. What does "liberals" mean exactly?

I don't think there's any possibility of useful discussion of linux happening here so we may as well discuss that.

The tension between the various meanings of the word "liberal" is complex, and it very much depends on the context. Historically, liberalism referred to political philosophies that featured liberty — individual autonomy and freedom — as their central ideal. It was the idea that the state and other organizing powers should be generously permissive, allowing all to do as they please to the greatest extent deemed possible. Over time the word has sometimes come to instead be more closely associated with narrow kinds of liberty, such as the freedom of the ruling classes to exploit everyone else. In an American context over the course of the 20th century it came to have particular connotations of hypocrisy as reflected for example in the lyrics of that Phil Ochs song you've probably heard. These days it is sometimes even used as shorthand for what was previously called "neoliberalism." Its meanings can range even further into the unorthodox. In this thread for example, its use is more likely to convey a message along the lines of "this affront to Glorious Mother Russia has made me all pissy."

It means supporters of the dominant ideology if capitalism, just like it has always meant.