Hacker Remix

Several Linux Kernel Driver Maintainers Removed Due to Association to Russia

19 points by voxadam 2 days ago | 16 comments

fuoqi 2 days ago

China next? And then they cry that Linux does not have enough maintainers...

AStonesThrow 2 days ago

[flagged]

josephcsible 2 days ago

Isn't this the "who's currently in charge of maintaining the code" file and not the "who originally wrote this code" file?

talldayo 2 days ago

> Don't simply erase their acknowledgements and appropriate their code.

To be fair - anyone contributing to the GPL ought to be aware of the terms of their license. They're not "appropriating" something that was consciously and deliberately licensed by the contributors for these exact terms of ownership.

These people probably did nothing wrong, but sanctions are sanctions and they apply unilaterally. Their best path of recourse is to fork Linux (which is entirely legal) and continue their work on a downstream basis with patches that can be merged into the main branch.

mokoshhydro 1 day ago

This has nothing to do with sanctions. Huawei is under same level of sanctions, but maintainers with `xxx@huawei.com` are not removed.

Linux Foundation silently run some "No Russians" campaign. That's not a problem by itself, but they should make a public statement about this.

talldayo 19 hours ago

The Linux foundation literally cannot stop people from using and modifying the Linux kernel. The only thing they've done is removed their maintainer privileges which is something they can reprise themselves in a fork. If these individuals want to keep contributing, they can do so downstream.

Huawei's contributions to Linux have always been controversial, and the moment they start war in Taiwan like Russia did in Ukraine you can bet your bottom dollar they're all getting thrown out the window. There will be no legal reparations between the Linux foundation and Russia/China because neither country respects US jurisdiction in the first place. So instead, this is going to continue until the aforementioned nations decide to grow up and stop being hermit kingdoms.

mokoshhydro 18 hours ago

Do I understand you correctly, that one nation has right to kill million civilians in Iraq, provoke revolts all around the world, etc -- and others "should grow up" and have no right to protect their own borders?

Hamuko 15 hours ago

Wait, what border enforcement are we talking about here?

talldayo 16 hours ago

I'm telling you that Russia could take them to court if any international superpowers treated them with respect in the first place. Russia violated arms reduction treaties, invoked war on multiple territories they do not own, ignores the world stage and encourages fascist-levels of dictatorship under the guise of a democracy perpetually voting in Putin. Nobody cares! Those developers can go piss and moan to a state that probably doesn't take them seriously and is more likely to arrest them than support them. The consequences of Russia's anti-globalist stance is going to be felt by their citizens, even the innocent ones. But this is what Russia claims they want, so we give it to them by the truckload. It's the same terrible fate China claimed their citizens wanted so bad when they put up the Great Firewall to "keep bad influences out".

If you seriously believe in the color revolution nonsense then you've fallen for exactly the kind of myopic paranoia that Putin wants you to believe. I don't think the United States is always correct, which is why we exercise a functioning democracy and rely on the ongoing feedback from diplomatic peers and voting citizens.

mokoshhydro 15 hours ago

Just image, that there is local disturbance in Mexico and in the middle of the crowd, russian foreign minister Lavrov provides free pancakes and kvass to everybody. Which USA newspaper won't come with headline "Russian sponsored unrest"? :)

talldayo 13 hours ago

I feel no ill will towards the Russian people - I simply pity them for what they are subjected to under Putin. This and many other sanctions are going to hurt quite badly, and the pain will not relent until the regime changes or Putin loses. It is his administration that fears global influence, if you're Russian then you are experiencing the most rapid demodernization the world has yet seen. If you somehow feel this is for the better or not the fault of Russia's political posture, then I pity you even more.

You can't reap the rewards of global cooperation in one hand while threatening it with the other. Once bitten, twice shy.

mokoshhydro 12 hours ago

Strelkov captured Slavyansk in 2014 with 50 men. The one hundred thousand city. Either he is a war genius (unlikely), or vast majority of population completely support him at that time.

Back to LinuxFoundation: the problem is not that they ban somebody. They should make a clear public statement about that, like chess.com did for example.

P.S. And it will be much better for OSS community if LF was based in some neutral country, without "world control" ambitions.

talldayo 11 hours ago

Russia suffered 10,000 confirmed casualties in the last week of combat in Ukraine. With the latest batch of North Korean troops it's expected to hit another 10,000 in the next week of combat. It will continue after that, and once the imported troops are exhausted who will be brought in next? More conscripts? Prisoners armed with a Kalashnikov?

Either Russia is facing resistance or they're tactically choosing to slaughter their own infantry. I'll leave it up to you to figure out, since you sound like such the strategic mastermind.

> And it will be much better for OSS community if LF was based in some neutral country, without "world control" ambitions.

No, it would be better for exploitative actors that don't respect the foundation of copyleft licensing in the first place. The OSS community relies on Open Source licenses to protect them - if your jurisdiction doesn't enforce those licenses, you're encouraging a legal free-for-all.

mokoshhydro 10 hours ago

The casualties numbers are fake. North-korean soldiers, are probably also fake (this is pushed as a preparation for moving other military forces to battlefield).

And since what time OSS is regulated by USA laws?

cempaka 10 hours ago

wow, I didn't know there were still "Russia is losing the war and on the brink of collapse" people still kicking around. Never underestimate the power of narrative!

cempaka 9 hours ago

Do you think we're currently carrying out a genocide in Gaza because it's what was indicated as desired through "feedback from diplomatic peers and voting citizens"?

trod123 1 day ago

> To be fair - anyone contributing to the GPL...

I agree, and also to add another point, this actually provides some protection to those authors.

If you are a maintainer with credentials that allow you to push code into the kernel/driver then you are at risk for coercion and can be leveraged by hostile entities.

If those credentials has to go through a secondary or tertiary review process (due to the increased risk), its less likely given the limited benefit that leveraging these authors might be useful. The same would obviously be true for China as well.