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.
MrMakabar@slrpnk.net 3 weeks ago
Because there are both US and EU laws preventing code from countries deemed a threat. Torvalds is paid by the Ameircan Linux Foundation, which has to work under US law and he himself is an EU citizen. Also a lot of other developers are from those countries and if they do not comply, they could get into some pretty bad legal trouble.
So it pretty much boils down to kick out the Russians or kick out all US and EU citizens and well we see Linus choice.
RobotToaster@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
risc-v saw this coming a while ago and moved to Switzerland to avoid it.
eleitl@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Switzerland is being routinely strong-armed these days.
Petter1@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
😯🤔 maybe I should look that up, where exactly 😂would be fun to work on RISC-V
Zomg@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s not that hard of a choice either ofc, given one is essentially required.
GamingChairModel@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s the start, of course. One could always play good cop, bad cop: “I have to do this to comply with the law, sorry, there’s nothing else I can do.” What Linus has done here is play bad cop, bad cop: “the law says I have to obey sanctions, and by the way I support the sanctions and this move anyway.”
Vilian@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
He didn’t banned the Russians when the war started, he could, and probably wanted, but didn’t so what’s your point?
Maiznieks@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Do you also know Finland is next to russia and it does not have to be US influence for someone like Linus to know Russian gov can pressure developers? This change removes code commit not the contribution rights.