Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status [LWN.net]
lwn.net

Perhaps one of the more surprising changes in the 6.12-rc4 development kernel was the removal of several entries from the kernel’s MAINTAINERS file. The patch performing the removal was sent (by Greg Kroah-Hartman) only to the patches@lists.linux.dev mailing list; the change was included in a char-misc drivers pull request with no particular mention.

The explanation for the removal is simply ““various compliance requirements””. Given that the developers involved all appear to be of Russian origin, it is not too hard to imagine what sort of compliance is involved here. There has, however, been no public posting of the policy that required the removal of these entries.

An early comment likely pins down the prevailing institutional pressures leading to this decision

What’s the deal with an international project adhering to what is obviously a decision of the US government?

Hint: The Linux Foundation (which notably employs Greg KH and Torvalds, and provides a lot of the legal and other infrastructure for this “international project”) is based in the US, and therefore has to follow US laws.

This is pretty fucked up. Like, we might see the kernel forked in the coming months/years.

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

  • redsteel@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    44·
    3 days ago

    The entirety of Torvalds’ angry tantrum in response to the backlash, posted about 17 hours ago (emphases mine):

    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.

    So, Russia taunts this bitter man in his dreams, it would seem. Russia in his laundry. Russia in his fucking corn flakes. Nanoscale Russian worker gnomes in his CPU changing the words of news articles he reads. It couldn’t possibly be that fucktons of people out there see this political Western-influenced kernel clownshow for what it is, or that they might disagree with Western narrative on global issues. Russia Russia Russia! Dude sounds like the average reactionary USian did when China was at the forefront of COVID news.

    In a follow-up he posted:

    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.

    In asserting that his toys are his and nobody else is allowed to look at them, he sounds like someone who’s been watching way too much Alex Jones.

    • eldaviEnglish
      4·
      1 day ago

      that’s as painful to read now as it was the first time since they’re exactly the same things my septuagenarian maga father says.

      meeting torvalds and then reading this makes it clear that i should have gone w bsd instead of linux 25 years ago.

    • Mindfury [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
      23·
      3 days ago

      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.

      i-am-adolf-hitler

    • merthyr1831English
      26·
      3 days ago

      you can tell he’s bitter about his dad being in the russian communist party lmao

      • redsteel@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
        36·
        3 days ago

        Also love that reactionary bit about being Finnish, and history. One of the users in the commit comments took issue with it too, maybe you saw this one already:

        A few more good ones that resonate with me:

        edit: replaced screenshots with darkmode versions

        • merthyr1831English
          23·
          3 days ago

          I’m glad I’m not the only one considering the long term viability of Linux.

          Even if you think this is good in the short term this is going to be escalated in the future. what about when (not if, when) other BRICS countries get added to the list?

          Would you celebrate Brazil being banned from “American” technologies? India? what if a country in Europe turns on American geopolitics? What if (or, when) GPL software was leveraged against Italy to force them to restart weapons trading with Israel? Or leveraged against South Africa to drop (or neuter) its ICJ campaign?

          The US is clearly making a stand that is untenable even if it is acceptable to you (hypothetical redditors/.world user) personally for this one moment.

          • ProletarianDictator [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
            19·
            3 days ago

            Russia gave 60 bucks to Cambridge Analytica in 2016 and now expressing anything but absolute bloodlust for citizens of NATO adversary countries activates hundreds of Rachel Maddow sleeper agents accusing you of being a Selenium script.

    • ProletarianDictator [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      161·
      3 days ago

      It couldn’t possibly be that fucktons of people out there see this political Western-influenced kernel clownshow for what it is, or that they might disagree with Western narrative on global issues.

      Probably not even that.

      Knowing software devs, most of those opposing are probably doing so out of the same anti-moderation “muh censorship” brainworms that surface every time a project tries to give some Nazi the boot or adds a code of conduct.

      Libs being this overzealous convinced a good number of chuds to automatically come to Russia’s defence out of pure contrarianism.