Official statement regarding recent Greg’ commit 6e90b675cf942e from Serge Semin
Hello Linux-kernel community,
I am sure you have already heard the news caused by the recent Greg’ commit 6e90b675cf942e (“MAINTAINERS: Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements.”). As you may have noticed the change concerned some of the Ru-related developers removal from the list of the official kernel maintainers, including me.
The community members rightly noted that the quite short commit log contained very vague terms with no explicit change justification. No matter how hard I tried to get more details about the reason, alas the senior maintainer I was discussing the matter with haven’t given an explanation to what compliance requirements that was. I won’t cite the exact emails text since it was a private messaging, but the key words are “sanctions”, “sorry”, “nothing I can do”, “talk to your (company) lawyer”… I can’t say for all the guys affected by the change, but my work for the community has been purely volunteer for more than a year now (and less than half of it had been payable before that). For that reason I have no any (company) lawyer to talk to, and honestly after the way the patch has been merged in I don’t really want to now. Silently, behind everyone’s back, bypassing the standard patch-review process, with no affected developers/subsystem notified - it’s indeed the worse way to do what has been done. No gratitude, no credits to the developers for all these years of the devoted work for the community. No matter the reason of the situation but haven’t we deserved more than that? Adding to the GREDITS file at least, no?..
I can’t believe the kernel senior maintainers didn’t consider that the patch wouldn’t go unnoticed, and the situation might get out of control with unpredictable results for the community, if not straight away then in the middle or long term perspective. I am sure there have been plenty ways to solve the problem less harmfully, but they decided to take the easiest path. Alas what’s done is done. A bifurcation point slightly initiated a year ago has just been fully implemented. The reason of the situation is obviously in the political ground which in this case surely shatters a basement the community has been built on in the first place. If so then God knows what might be next (who else might be sanctioned…), but the implemented move clearly sends a bad signal to the Linux community new comers, to the already working volunteers and hobbyists like me.
Thus even if it was still possible for me to send patches or perform some reviews, after what has been done my motivation to do that as a volunteer has simply vanished. (I might be doing a commercial upstreaming in future though). But before saying goodbye I’d like to express my gratitude to all the community members I have been lucky to work with during all these years.
I understand your point.
I would highlight that part of mine was that until “you” live it, and are face to face with those consequences, it’s ignorant to just assume “you” would stand up to the regime. Given that, it’s a “rough” call to expect others to meet that very high bar of integrity and personal risk.
I think you overestimate how many people in russia do not stand against putin because they are afraid of the consequences. It’s definitely true that it happens, but it’s not really relevant in the bigger scale of things.
Unfortunately, a strong majority (at the very least) do support putin specifically, his authoritarianism and genocidal imperialism. And this is not limited to specific demographic segments. They may not openly act as rabid chauvinists (although there are tens of millions who do), but they are fundamentally aligned with the putin, his regime, his goals and his methods. For them it’s a fair price for their own comfort (both material and existential).
And what further muddies the waters is that among those who oppose putin, many actually support his imperialist agenda (e.g. Navalniy and his team who supported the annexation of Crimea until 2022 when they forced to change their position since they were kicked out of the country).
The whole framing of tens of millions of russians being stuck between a rock and a hard place is incorrect. Even those who claim they are for peace are really looking to consolidate their current occupational gains (with continued atrocities and eradication of Ukrainian identity).
Totally with you. I’m not discussing populations, only individuals. And specifically I’m discussing how it is hard for a westerner to realistically judge what is happening to the average Joe in Russia, especially with regard to their freedom to speak out without fear of harm.
I’m not apologizing for anything Russia has done, or condoning the seeming popularity you point out. It’s certainly reprehensible.
That’s a fair point. It is also something that people in democratic countries don’t fully appreciate.