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If this was purely because of sanctions, this could have been handled much more gracefully. But it's clear from Linus' comments that he just doesn't respect these volunteers because they happen to be from a particular country.

> I'm Finnish. ... Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of history knowledge too.

If we're suddenly taking history as a criterion, half of the world should ban British developers from touching their projects in any way, for their repeated aggressions and ruinous colonialism. This sort of behaviour is slowly building a soft Great Firewall around the West, and making it seem like China had the right idea all along.

>But it's clear from Linus' comments that he just doesn't respect these volunteers because they happen to be from a particular country

If that would be the case no russian would have reached the maintainer status to anything related to the kernel.

This isn't punishment. This is negative reinforcement. This applies to an ongoing unwanted behavior.
A lot of these developers work at Russian war machine and secret police suppliers (like ALT Linux or Baikal) so no this is not just that.
Russia invaded it’s neighbor. These sanctions are one of the consequences.

It sucks for the good-faith programmers in Russia but what would you have the rest of the world do? The Russian state must be sanctioned for its blatant disregard for international norms.

Please don’t just respond with whataboutism. The whataboutism in these threads involves different people in different times. This is happening now.

Russia is unique in that they are both presently and historically a threat to the entire western world.
You missed the point, he didn't mention history in general, but specifically "Finnish history". In this respect it's not about British colonialism but more about about Russian imperialism / Stalinism (see Russo-Finnish war 1939).
The article is a snapshot of the discussion that's still happening on the mailing list.

Linus later responded with:

>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.

Ahh, old one "anyone who disagrees with me is a Russian state sponsored troll".

If he had just written - compliance, we cannot work with sanctioned entities, that would be fine and understandable.

Just to make things clear, Phoronix said they are being "delisted".

No, they have actually been banished, because if you're not a maintainer of some Linux kernel subsystem, Linus Torvalds stops accepting merge requests from you. You need to go through an actual maintainer first.

Reposting from a duplicate discussion.

Communicating clearly that you cannot currently accept contributions from people potentially associated with problematic businesses is an understandable decision. Tone of voice stated following the removal of a list of names of people you used to work with not too long makes this sound like a petty statement if anything.

Am I right to assume that they're not delisting all Russian Linux maintainers, just the ones with some connections to Russian Government?

If that is so, then this is comparable to booting people with nazi connections from western scientific projects in 1930s, i.e. perfectly fine and in fact the only reasonable thing to do.

Again, this is not being done because these people are russian. Claiming ethnicity-based oppression where none exists is a known russotroll dogwhistle, and I think the commenters on this forum should be sophisticated enough to understand that.

A complete betrayal of the spirit of open source and the Internet. It's sad that we are living in a world like this. People just pour hate and bias to others and disguise it with some high-sounding excuses. The bright future which envisioned by people in the 2000s will never come and we humanity will fxxk up eventually.
Related:

Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41919670

Part of this is not about how politics affects open source world. It's about lack of open discussion and transparency. Certainly it'd be wrong for linus to call the opponents "trolls" from Russia.
Greg puts in the article the way it is

And if anyone thinks a Finn of all people would buy any BS or sad tears from their "annoying" neighbour (to put it mildly) you need to read up on some history

Of course in the end it sucks for a lot of people that has nothing to do with it.

Linux and Wordpress are competing in the "well-managed" open source community of the year reward.

Before there were BCacheFS and "Rust for Linux" controversies this year.

Many people must realise that we are close to the ww3 and that russians really pay a lot to attack what ever is possible to attack. Linus just protect us all.
> 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.

Is this being done as a sanction against Russia or because it is feared that the Russian government would get some rogue developers to submit code to the kernel that enables attacks?

Individual Russian programmers are not responsible for the invasion of Ukraine, so I would be reluctant to punish them for Putin's crime and to deprive Linux of their contributions.

There are no words for such a stupid move. But it is consistent with the decline of Western "civilization". Volunteers in freedom projects are not passports.
Key takeovers:

1. Linux is occupied by USA

2. US praises public hatred against a nationality

so it's just these accounts can not contribute to Linux kernel, or their contributions were removed?
Just swallow a chill pill and move on. I hate to say it but writing a blog is not going to help much.
Linus Torvalds sold out and betrayed the ideals. Продажный пидор ты предал все идеалы!
Banning Russian users (IP blacklisting) is a pastime for anyone that ran any kind of service in the late 90s and early 2000s. This isn't as controversial as it's made out to be.
Linus typically excels at focusing on 'issues' rather than 'individuals'. However, this time he has chosen to do the opposite.
Open source communities are similar to communism in that they are practices of an ideal state (Utopia; Republic). It takes a philosopher king to rule behind the good. But it is hard to have a ruler with the qualities of a philosopher king.

There is a term for open source software: BDFL (benevolent dictator for life). At Wikepedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benevolent_dictator_for_life ), Linus is included. But the virtue of being benevolent is too difficult to ensure and maintain.

This shows that Linux is/ will become just as bad as Windows or some other proprietary software. Linus really needs to step down. Open Source exists so it can be available to everyone, regardless to anything let alone silly politics. Linus is clearly a very xenophobic man (evident by his posts) and has no place to decide anymore.
Just another reason not to use Linux. I've gone to bat so many times for Linus but time and time again he proves that Benevolent Dictators for Life on tech projects are a bad idea for modern times.
Linus Torvalds sold out and betrayed the ideals. Продажный уёбок!
Toivo Tuomas Savolainen - does this rings a bell?

WWII in Soumi is called "Continuation war" - does this rings a bell?

What about Israel bro?
just the tip of the iceberg. if you think about it, maybe the kernel that runs everything in the world shouldn't be controlled by a single edgy dude.
During the BRICS meeting...well done Linus, this is a good way to strengthen a multipolar world.