Submitted 4 weeks ago by moe90@feddit.nl to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/23/linus_torvalds_affirms_expulsion_of/
I think given the current political situation this is the right call. No one knows what the Russian government might compel otherwise innocent devs to do.
That said, we (and I mean society, not any particular individual) should be mindful that we don’t slip into bigotry.
I’ve worked side by side with RU devs who were both personable and damned competent. Never were their tech skills in doubt, and I retain quite a bit of respect for those individuals.
I’d not do the same today explicitly because of the political and compliance implications. It’s unfortunate, but necessary.
Again, with open software that is not necessary… If we get to believe that argument, those potential “FSB” coders would be the ones who would notice if the CIA was trying to place a back door in the kernel too. Open Software is OPEN!!
i wish there was more we could do to help russians topple their dictatorship
Necessary for what?
Linux Fundarion is based in America. It needs to follow its rules and politics. I guess a lot of things will happen after this. As something so important for open technology like It , should be based in a more open, mor asvanced in laws and neutral territory.
Linus is from Finland. Not hard to remember reasons for aversion to Russian propaganda for anyone raised near it.
Blanketing the Linux Foundation as American based kind of sounds like you’re a Russian troll.
This is hardly the first time the core Linux code stack has been forked and independently developed. Seems like this is going to invite a Russia-specific development environment that just pulls in updates from the main branch and adds in Russia-internal development (which will likely then be copied by non-Russians and backloaded into the core Linux stack under someone else’s name, because why waste good dev work?)
But the argument appears to be anyone with a Russian-sounding name is getting removed from the core development team, until they can prove to the American team that they aren’t… spooks, I guess? Also
The driver code to which the dropped maintainers contributed remains in place.
So this isn’t such a high security risk that the code is being pulled (presumably because its been vetted and appears beyond repute). This is purely a CYA move to eliminate veterans on the team because they were forthright about their identities.
should be based in a more open, mor asvanced in laws and neutral territory.
Its not clear how a policy of booting people based on their surnames accomplishes this.
With that logic, the US contributes should be expelled too. We have more examples of US folks being served NSLs than Russians.
Its an American-based company, owned and operated by American businessmen. They’re not going to burn their own guys, even if some of them are spooks (no evidence that anyone on the core dev team is a spook, but crazy to think the FSB would have people in and the Five-Eyes guys wouldn’t).
But I do wonder how long until we start seeing mainstream code-forks that span geopolitical regions. Will we have a Digital Iron Curtain, with BRICS countries doing their own FOSS branches independently of NATO block?
Looking at the downvotes, signals some true on you comment!
Lol because russian is so open about who they give nsl to. Or they just poison/defenestrate them
What current situation?
Is so hard to believe Open Source should be open? If there were a malicious intent, others would have been able to detect it in no time… because it is ‘open’! If the open system works, it should not matter there are CIA or FSB, commies or libertarians “infiltrated” making the code.
If those Russians had been in that position is because their contributions have been stellar, otherwise they would never have gotten there. Their contribution and effort has been robbed from them just because they mothers give them birth in the wrong coordinates.
Linus is a god for many of us… with human traits though… His Finland, although historically robbed by Russia, achieved its highest splendor during the decades of neutrality, not by fiercely antagonizing one or the other power… same as Switzerland, Ireland, Austria and Singapore.
All this started with a US law so he has to comply with. However, instead of those unhelpful comments, he should say that in open software it is unwarranted… not to mention countries can get sanctions for their actions, but not civilians that cannot choose where they are born.
If we are to believe that Moscow is trying to put something into the kernel “undetected”… gosh, what an organization based on the US with a so pro-establishment leader may be doing so? For real, now I am starting having my doubts on the kernel!
Linus is a god for many of us… with human traits though… His Finland, although historically robbed by Russia, achieved its highest splendor during the decades of neutrality, not by fiercely antagonizing one or the other power… same as Switzerland, Ireland, Austria and Singapore.
Ukraine was neutral before 2014, that didn’t help avoid an invasion. Not to mention they occupied Moldova and Georgia before that too.
They have not been able to attack the Baltic nations or Poland because they joined NATO.
Neutrality word salad is only for the ignorant or those who support russian imperialism.
you lost me at this
If there were a malicious intent, others would have been able to detect it in no time… because it is ‘open’!
not sure if troll or just really ignorant.
My very fist post on lemmy and already see the upvote downvote game… When someone votes should be demanded a public reason, no?
Not gonna lie, this is kinda a refutation of the whole open source model. I was led to believe that it shouldn’t matter who writes the code, as long the code is able to be interrogated/corrected.
Isn’t most of Linux open source?
All of it is. But its still possible to sneak backdoors into Foss software. See xz.
Removing people from CREDITS looks like someone should have been mindful before acting.
They were removed from MAINTAINERS, which is what identifies the people responsible for maintaining a piece of code, a subsystem of Linux, not the credits, which is encoded in the git commit history.
The current ceo of usa is supporting a genocide in gaza and the former ceo is a fascist. Does the same logic apply here?
I think pressure should be put on the US to divest from genocide. Sanctions from our allies would be helpful… Surely with the international court declaring Israel’s actions a war crime they could that should be to hard to make a case for it.
Our election system has fucked over anti-zionists and needs reforming, which is happening, but not by this November.
Ranked choice voting is gaining popularity, electoral college is under pressure and people are fed up with voter suppression and gerrymandering and things are moving in a positive direction on the local and state levels.
Linus is from Finland. Finns barely tolerate Russians under usual circumstances. These are not usual circumstances.
True he could have banned them long ago, it’s his project in the end, but he didn’t, he only did it after the sanctions
Linus’s dad was a Finnish communist and lived in USSR for some time, one can say a VIP person. You actually lack the context to realize how important this is. Many people of such connections (not accusing Linus, no) are usually still connected to Russia’s regime more than, ahem, me. The documents about just whom that encompasses are still secret in Russian archives. Well, technically one can get a permission, but random people are refused it.
Finns barely tolerate Russians under usual circumstances.
Yes, we know that, massacring Russian civilian population during 1917-1918 and then doing that David-n-Goliath thing in the Winter War, which is the only thing they want to remember, and then 1941-1945 with Finnish troops participating in the blockade of Lengingrad and making concentration camps for civilian population, again.
I don’t get how that should work in Linus’s favor, though.
Oh, and also during the Cold War the foreign country most integrated into USSR’s MIC was Finland. Not something of the Warsaw Pact ones, but Finland.
You’re telling me they barely tolerated building warships for USSR, right? Poor guys.
And then people in the Interwebs are asking why some average Russian doesn’t go and rebel or blow up FSB buildings or something. I wonder the fuck why.
That’s why.
Just so we’re clear, your opinion is that Russians working for sanctioned companies should remain as maintainers of the kernel because Torvalds is a Finn and that he’s obligated to Russia because “Finland bad”?
So, therefore, Putin can and should exploit access to the kernel via these Russian maintainers because Finland is somehow historically worse than the USSR?
Am I misunderstanding you?
If he did that that would have been genuine discrimination. If he has to do it now because of sanctions, then ok fine. But otherwise I don’t want to see an open source project treating people differently based on where they were born.
Come on lemmy, how is this pro-racism comment upvoted so many times? Please, think.
Oh no, the treaty-breaking, nuke-threatening, war-crime-committing invading force is being discriminated against!
Holy shit, gtfo. Maybe don’t be an actual cunt if you don’t want people to “discriminate” against you? The guy didn’t even fire all Russians, only those tied to sanctioned companies. He did less than should’ve been done. But that’s only because what should be done to Russia at this point is assassinating their leader and selling tickets to piss on his grave.
“Russian” is not a race.
It is genuine xenophobia. I like in Poland, and its like you’re either a homophobe, or a xenophobe- with pretty limited inbetween. (And there are plenty of people who are both)
Sound like they are racists to me
I mean, that’s like calling a Native American racist for disliking European (white) Americans. Like sure, technically, but aren’t there some underlying issues at play that make the feeling more justified.
Absolutely based as fuck as usual.
Oookay, time to ban instance lemmy.ml.
That instance’s mods blocked me this morning lol.
The amount of people simping for Russia in that other thread is insane. Apparently calling Ukraine a country of Nazis is fine, but saying Russia is a dictatorship is not lmao.
If you see a tankie or pro Russia comment, 99% of the time it’s a lemmy.ml poster
Hexgears and of course lemmygrad.ml are of the same kind
Can we see where someone is hosting a Lemmy (domain, insnace, thing?)
yep I got banned from there for simply stating that ukraine has a right to defend themselves after Modi called for “peace”. Apparently absolute pacifism is only required from one side.
This topic has nothing to do with being “pro-Russian” instead its being pro-individualist
Some of us are actually normal
Save your sanity and do Settings -> Blocks -> Block instance -> lemmy.ml
I approve this comment.
Yesterday I accidentally commented in .ml and mentioned that voting third party in our current voting system is playing with fire to get a worse candidate in office. I was told I must therefore start a grassroots movement for ranked choice voting, because apparently I can’t have an opinion without a movement.
Normally I let a few downvotes get under my skin more than I care to admit, but in this setting it was kind of a badge of honor. Honestly it was kind of “fun” to see what people were saying.
Seriously, the hexbears just moved one over to keep getting exposure.
Please stip blocking people, please stip talking about blocking everyone
Yes, i gettit. Different opinions can be annoying but if we don’t all participate in. A similar environment.we all just disappear in our little echo chamber pillars, unable to hear or understand the others, which leads to more extremist opinions on all sides.
We NEED to hear others, if not just for the fact that others may NEED to hear our voices too.
I honestly this echo chamber crap is squarely caused by the Internet, the tool that promised to bring humanity together, and instead ended up dividing us more than ever because anyone hearing an opinion they don’t like immediately bans that voice. Can’t have anyone disagreeing now!
I get it, there are some stupid opinions out there, dangerous ones too, but the more we ban them, the more they will only be able to talk eachother into extremism and the WILL be back, with more people, and more extremist opinions.
FFS, we need to learn to start listening to each other again. An entire generation has grown up with “if you don’t like to hear that opinion, just have it banned”, and it’s not helpful.
Early Internet was a wild west crazy town for sure, loads of assholes lurking around, but it was better than what we have now, where EVERY space is curated and hawkishly guarded against those that might even look in the wrong direction.
I’ve spent quite some time on right wing subs back in the day in Reddit, discussing whatever topic with hard line conservative right wing types and when you do you find out they are human too, usually with a lot of fears, and you actually get to understand why they feel the way they feel, and you can get them to understand that yeah, maybe it’s not the best solution. You find common ground and got somebody a little closer to the light. Yes, I’m a big fan of that black guy (forgot his name) who goes out to talk to KKK members to convert them away from the KKK.
I know this isn’t for everyone, but a lot of us can and should step up and start talking, start listening. I’m not saying st all you should agree with a neo nazi, but you can listen to him or her, understand where they’re coming from, and have them do the same. Once you both see the humanity in each other you can actually make everyone be a little better.
It’s better than the alternative where the inevitable outcome is that we’ll start having civil wars everywhere and just kill those we oppose.
improved my lemmy experience ten fold just blocking that instance.
I hope people do not do that and take into account this campaign against lemmy.ml. I am aware of the accusations against the admins of this instance, but I practically never see here this kind of brigading, campaigning against whole instances like lemmy.world. Sure, I myself did make a bad comment or two about lemmy.world out of >800 comments, but that’s normal. I think the fair thing to do, is to respond in the same scale (i. e. blocking specific users) instead of going all ballistic with instance blocks.
I’d also like an option to just block/hide the instance part of user names. I don’t like what this bit of information is doing to discussions in Lemmy.
This is about open-source being open. I’m a very non-tankie, and I think this is bad- though a bit better if its only people working for sanctioned companies.
I would encourage that, but if your instance doesn’t defederate them you may have to go a bit farther since you’ll still get replies from lemmy.ml users, as users are not blocked as part of this functionality. And that is by design, it’s not meant to act as a replacement or alternative to defederation, it’s meant to act as an alternative to blocking all communities on an instance.
The central project of open-source community closes doors to people based on nationality, and everyone is cheering…
Why? You seriously miss the implications of breaking the very basic principles of open source? You are ready to forgive literally anything if it is claimed to target Russia or Russians in any way?
For those of you who say about backdoors:
The only reasonable way to avoid backdoors is to meticulously check the submitted code. Threat actors can be anywhere - and Russia is not some unique threat location, nor was it banned with that justification - just “compliance requirements”.
This is not just politics. This is a giant threat to the community, and the way Linus framed it in his message is even more terrifying. This was never meant to happen.
The only reasonable way to avoid backdoors is to meticulously check the submitted code.
Which is the job of maintainers. Which now aren’t Russian, any more. To the best of my knowledge the kernel is still accepting code from Russian citizens, ultimately not having Russians in maintainer roles isn’t going to stop the FSB from infiltrating the kernel but it certainly does make it harder.
This also isn’t in any way a judgement on the removed people, it’s just that it so happens that if you’re a Russian citizen, you’re quite vulnerable to wrench attacks. You could even say that the kernel org is protecting them from being used like that.
Torvalds responses make clear he has spent too much time with the wrong people. Calling everyone paid actors is such an embarrassment to his own intelligence. When the linux kernel starts falling behind because of a lack of competent maintainers after banning any country that NATO isnt friends with, we will know that this is where it started and that people cheered.
I’m actually shocked by how people are acting about this.
You see, it’s actually a really bad thing to ban devs from an open source project based on nationality over all else. “Oh, but they are state actors!!!” How do you know? Because they are Russian?
breaking the very basic principles of open source?
No, the basic principles of open source are either the four freedoms (if you agree w/ Stallman) or the OSI open source definition. Here are Stallman’s four freedoms:
Russians still have these freedoms WRT the Linux kernel. They can still run, study, and redistribute modified versions of the Linux kernel. There’s no violation here.
And the OSI definition is similar (and longer, so I won’t repeat it here).
No part of the definitions of open source or free software obligate a maintainer to work with anyone else, the only obligations are to the legal freedom of the code. Russians can still use, modify, and redistribute the software, they just aren’t allowed to have maintainer positions within the Linux foundation. They can still submit code, and it’s up to the maintainers if they choose to look at that code.
That said, I’m sad that it has come to this. I hate the idea of international politics interfering w/ FOSS, but I still maintain that it’s 100% fine for Linus Torvalds (and his legal counsel) to make this call.
To directly quote Linus:
Ok, lots of Russian trolls out and about.
It’s entirely clear why the change was done, it’s not getting reverted, and using multiple random anonymous accounts to try to “grass root” it by Russian troll factories isn’t going to change anything.
And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren’t troll farm accounts - the “various compliance requirements” are not just a US thing.
If you haven’t heard of Russian sanctions yet, you should try to read the news some day. And by “news”, I don’t mean Russian state-sponsored spam.
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? Apparently it’s not just lack of real news, it’s lack of history knowledge too.
It’s really awesome to expel by nationality, even of people who’ve long moved out and immigrated. /s
Honestly fuck Russia but this goes a bit too far into the grey area between reasonable and racist, and on the latter side I’m not sure who is supposed to be helped here.
Good cleanup on the security vulnerabilities!
How is this keeping to open source philosophies in any way?
“No, you can’t work on this, you’re Russian.”
I don’t support the Russian Government or its actions in any way, but these devs are probably not part of it.
Yo this comment section is a dumpster fire 🔥
I wouldn’t want to have FSB agents maintaining my open source either.
Linus in 2012: Nvidia fuck you
Linus in 2024: Russia fuck you
You know. I don't like what the Russian leadership and military are doing. I feel like ultimately we're in the cold war era. But you know, at the height of the cold war, radio operators around the world still worked Russian stations.
Yes, there was a very clear policy, neither side talked about ANYTHING beyond their signal report and working conditions (information about radio, power output and aerial basically). At the height of the actual cold war, the individuals were not cancelled like this.
Sanction the leadership, sanction the money, and sanction the military. But the normal people that are subject to the propaganda? I don't understand the benefit in doing this. I also don't see how the sanctions effect an open source project..
Seems a bit weird. Maybe there's information we're not privy to, but on the face of it, just based on what we're seeing. Seems like a very very odd move.
Do China next
I’m surprised how many people treat GPL to ignore borders. The IP law still operates only by the rules your country decides.
I can understand the desire for information to be free, but unless Open source movement becomes it’s own country the discussion should end there.
Now do this with Israelis.
You have to be arguing in bad faith if you’re trying to say “citizens of nation shouldn’t be responsible for their nation”
The open source benefit is not that they can directly impact it, it’s that their government can’t
russian economy after over 1k days of war is evaporized and putin now is Xis little dog. so if we all work together now nobody will remember a country called russia in 100 years. nations are just a phantasy and it wont hurt to let go of some.
Just goes to show that even a legend can act like an idiot.
The whole grad is seething I’m loving it
Crimea river.
So the Rest of the world should trust CIA, NSA contributions but not Russia’s FSB ? come on , opensource should be tolerant towards all espionage agencies no matter their skin color.
Some of you in the comments aren’t just licking the boot, but full on deepthroating it.
Good
Absolutely idiotic take that endangers not only Linux but fractures the concept of open source itself.
Maintainers is a unnecessarily nice word for trolls.
Don’t know the whole story but :
If you banned them because they are promoting the Russia, it’s okay. But it’s not if you banned them ONLY because they’re Russians. But maybe you could like said to them to do like in the sports, and operate as a “no-country” people, but surely not ban them for their nationality
Looks like it is about time for a hard fork maintained outside NATO countries.
I thought it said expulsion of Russian Mountaineers so that was pretty confusing
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
He didn’t expel all Russians, just the ones working for sanctioned Russian companies.
social.kernel.org/notice/AnIv3IogdUsebImO6i
merari42@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Important context and a good decision
aidan@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That would’ve been great for them to clarify earlier XD
potustheplant@feddit.nl 3 weeks ago
That would’ve generated fewer clicks. Sensationalism is always more profitable.
buddascrayon@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Well, this is The Register. Not exactly a paragon of stellar reporting here.
BD89@lemmy.sdf.org 3 weeks ago
RIGHT?? I was so disappointed until I learned that bit of context. Even the original article I read about it didn’t mention it
polar@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Good! So why the incendiary comments Linus made on Russians. It is so hard to say something like this: "I have to expel them from the project due to a US law forced us to do it. However, I had trust on them all these years and they contributed a lot to the project (that is why they were working here). Now, I am against the law because we should not discriminate people for the origin. Moreover, the claim that they can harm the software is unwarranted because it is OPEN and many eyes are on it. Finally, this harms the entire Linux project because now makes it an “American"project rather than an global one. Sad times.”
michaelmrose@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Have you noticed exactly how many Russians are bigots who support the mass murder of their neighbors?
jas0n@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
xz attack was an open source attack and it would be silly to assume that it was unique.
polar@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I am also against Russian aggression on Ukraine! But would no ban any Russian because of that. The same I am completely against US occupying Iraq and 1/3 of Syria, yet never would occur to me not to hire an American because what their country does. I really don’t understand why is so hard to understand for Lemmy community the double standard.
endofline@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Some people would disagree with you lwn.net/Articles/995294/
TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Your own link 1) does not attest to that and 2) has a comment replying to it directly contradicting what it’s saying in the first place.