Linus Torvalds Comments On The Russian Linux Maintainers Being Delisted
www.phoronix.com
  • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
    104·
    2 months ago

    Linus has never been the best communicator, but he usually speaks the truth. But this is just bonkers and wrong. Not everyone living in Russia has “ties with Russia” other than “they were born there”. If this is about sanctions, he could have still just told them that. But instead he just disrespected contributors completely and then double down in it by being xenophobic.

    • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      71·
      2 months ago

      Always is with Phoronix comments.

      You find everything there from “Gnome is satanist” all the way up to pro-genocide crap.

      I really don’t know what it is about the site that brings out the craziest souch.

      • SquirtleHermit@lemmy.world
        57·
        2 months ago

        For half a second there, I was like “yeah, so glad Lemmy is more rational than that site”.

        Few comments later, folks be talking about “Ukranian Nazis”…

        • Jesus_666@lemmy.world
          21·
          2 months ago

          Hoo boy, you weren’t kidding. I find it amazing how quickly this went from “the kernel team is enforcing sanctions” to an an unfriendly abstract debate about the definition of liberalism. I shouldn’t, really, but I still am.

        • Rentlar@lemmy.ca
          12·
          2 months ago

          Hahaha I saw the parent commentor of that chain notorious for getting into back and forth arguments, sometimes reasonable sometimes not, and I thought to myself, this is going to be fun. Then I recognized the username of that other .ml user as a known troll and I was like, yep now this is going to go way off the rails.

          • GeneralInterest@lemmy.worldEnglish
            5·
            2 months ago

            I would wager that every country has far-right elements, including Russia.

            What Russia claims though is that the Ukrainian government is full of Nazis, which I don’t think is true.

            • LukácsFan1917@lemmy.mlEnglish
              1·
              1 month ago

              The wager isn’t whether countries have “far-right elements”. The wager is which country has a government that openly venerates a man who slaughtered Jews and Poles for sport. Maybe someday you will understand what happened here.

      • LupertEverett@lemmy.world
        4·
        2 months ago

        The absolute disregard of having any moderation is what does that. If there was any, there wouldn’t be the cases like having someone be there by their third account, after the first two got banned.

        Not to mention that controversy = angry people and trolls = more clicks = more ad revenue. I don’t think Michael wants to miss out on it.

    • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
      47·
      2 months ago

      Yeah. Why is everyone saying this is removing their contribution credits? It’s just a list of active maintainers…

      • rtxn@lemmy.worldEnglish
        12·
        2 months ago

        That’s a fair point. I rarely read comments on news articles, but morbid curiosity overpowered my self-preservation instinct.

  • umbrella@lemmy.ml
    91·
    2 months ago

    so are we okay with banning development time donated to foss because of nationality?

    are these people found to support heinous shit or is this just wartime shenanigans?

    • half_built_pyramids@lemmy.world
      27·
      2 months ago

      Dude is Finnish, from his own mouth, it’s just normal racism against an aggressive imperial, like how people hate the us

      Edit: like how people from lemmy.ml hate Americans, if that wasn’t clear

      • umbrella@lemmy.ml
        33·
        2 months ago

        finland has pretty bad climate-change-exploitation-fucking-over-the-third-world dealings in my country, despite enforcing seemingly very good stuff inside their own borders so meh, id argue they aint close to the victims they make out to be. some would argue that as a consequence for having a strong socialist influence.

        i have mixed feelings about them as a country, but i recognize there are plenty of good (and even well known good) people on there because of the aforementioned good stuff, linus included. for different but not that dissimilar reasons i think contemporary russian citizens should not be blanket banned from helping everyone out.

        • ouch@lemmy.world
          11·
          2 months ago

          finland has pretty bad, climate-change-exploitation-fucking-over-the-third-world dealings in my country

          Which country is that, and what dealings?

          • umbrella@lemmy.ml
            6·
            2 months ago

            brazil, and they do some shady stuff in the amazon. mainly fuck you extrativism.

            • ouch@lemmy.world
              5·
              2 months ago

              Can you find any links where one can read about this?

              If Finland is wasting tax payer money to something shady, it should be brought to the local media.

              • umbrella@lemmy.ml
                5·
                2 months ago

                heres one i found with a quick google.

                this one is about southeast/northeast brazil, but the finnish are involved in aggressive extractivism in northwest brazil (amazon rainforest) too, and i think its even worse over there. you will dig up pretty horrible things if you do some research on it. about most of the western 1st world countries tbh.

    • hitwright@lemmy.world
      33·
      2 months ago

      I’m pretty sure not just the US wants Russia sanctioned to the oblivion. All of the Europe that borders Russia wants that. Now why would it be like that?

      • gigachad@sh.itjust.works
        9·
        2 months ago

        It makes no sense to discuss here.They probably follow Russia’s narrative of Europe being a puppet of the US.

    • dan@upvote.au
      17·
      2 months ago

      In the article, Linus explicitly said that it’s not just a US thing:

      And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren’t troll farm accounts - the “various compliance requirements” are not just a US thing.

      • Phoenix3875@lemmy.world
        9·
        2 months ago

        That’s more like his opinion or a post facto justification. Turns out it is a US thing.

        If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list, our ability to collaborate with you will be subject to restrictions, and you cannot be in the MAINTAINERS file.

        So to get back, you have to basically prove that you have no relations with OFAC SDN companies.

        This update is from https://lwn.net/Articles/995186/

  • communism@lemmy.ml
    80·
    2 months ago

    Everyone who disagrees with me is a paid russian troll of course. Nobody would oppose blacklisting people based on nothing but their nationality unless they were getting paid for it.

    • hitwright@lemmy.world
      22·
      2 months ago

      I guess it’s difficult to otherwise explain the position you have? It’s not like people face criminal charges in Russia just for speaking against it. It’s easy to see how the state would want to introduce backdoors to most western systems.

      It’s extremely sad that a lot of good Russians get swooped in this. But even abroad their lives are in danger to fight the state.

      • ghu@lemmy.ml
        25·
        2 months ago

        I doubt if someone wants to introduce a backdoor, they would do that with a russian mailing address. People removed were open and transparent about their nationalities which means there is even less chance them being bad actors than some random guy pretending to be American.

        • hitwright@lemmy.world
          14·
          2 months ago

          Aren’t the removed commiters with direct access to the kernel? It’s not like it’s some rando that makes pull requests.

      • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
        6·
        2 months ago

        I think you’re making up a world in your head. Who are these “lots” of “good” Russians who are abroad and whose lives are in realistically danger of state assassination? Not that it has never happened, but you’re blowing things out of proportion. Probably Russia does it at a scale roughly similar to the US.

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          15·
          2 months ago

          I think you’re making up a world in your head.

          My friend, they poisoned people in the UK with a fucking nerve agent. They are so brazen and open about people being killed for not doing that the Kremlin tells them.

          They have purposely made a meme out of the “suspiciously fell from window” thing, because they want people to know exactly what happens and why.

          • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
            4·
            2 months ago

            they poisoned people in the UK with a fucking nerve agent.

            Yes, they did. How often is that happening? Proportion.

            • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
              7·
              2 months ago

              We’re not talking about taking out former spies in foreign, sovereign nations you dolt. I used that as an example to show just how brazen and open they are about this stuff. Using such a dangerous method, on foreign soil, is basically unheard of.

              If you actually want to talk about frequency, we should be looking at the defenestration cases…

              This shit is happening so frequently that there are several wiki pages dedicated to listing them:

              https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_deaths_of_notable_Russians_in_2022

              Scroll down to “see also” for a long list of related articles about the Russian government assassinating citizens and low-level bureaucrats.

              Assuming you actually give a shit

              EDIT: apparently Lemmy markdown doesn’t like the link. For anyone who can’t figure out why it’s not working, or for some weird reason thinks I would make up a wiki page with a title that specific:

              Suspicious deaths of notable Russians in 2022–2024

              And, again, after checking out the main article, take a look at the “see also” section.

              • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
                3·
                2 months ago

                Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name.

                In any case, the defenestrations I’ve heard of have been within Russia, not outside it.

                Using such a dangerous method, on foreign soil, is basically unheard of.

                Not unheard of. US drone strikes on US citizens is a no-less dangerous a method.

                • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
                  2·
                  2 months ago

                  It’s almost as if the markdown on Lemmy changed the text of the link so it’s not valid.

                  And you couldn’t take the 3 second to fix it, and then actually learn something.

                  Well done.

                  You also seem confused about what we are even talking about. We are referring to software developers WITHIN RUSSIA. So the risk of defenestration is very real. Again, to repeat myself, I only brought up Russia using chemical warfare on foreign soil as an example to show how open and brazen they are.

                  I edited the original comment with a fixed link if you actually care

        • LeFantome@programming.dev
          6·
          2 months ago

          Very nice link that not only does not have a list of names but also fairly explicitly explains that it is not talking about Americans killing Americans.

          I am not going to spend more than 30 seconds on it but here is the first list of “lots” of Russians that are believed to have been assassinated by their own government.

          https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_deaths_of_notable_Russians_in_2022–2024

          Despite your personal attacks, the trivially discoverable facts are not on your side.

          I used Wikipedia since you apparently find it credible.

          My favourite “suicide” of a notable Russian in the last couple of years was the one that had a suicide note signed by “illegible signature” ( what it actually said ). I guess the FSB did not totally understand the instructions.

          Indeed A LOT of falling out of windows. Quite a bit of poisoning as well. These are the successful ones. How about that time they poisoned the entire Ukrainian peace team including the owner of the Chelsea Football Club?

    • Vilian@lemmy.ca
      10·
      2 months ago

      That’s true, as he said just use your brain, Russia is under sanctions he literally said that, so Russian troll is a actually very accuracy

    • mihor@lemmy.ml
      37·
      2 months ago

      No, it’s not good, it’s blatantly russophobic.

      I would get it if he would have simply stated that the Linux Foundation needs to abide by the sanctions, pretty much what GKH had said. But for Linus to go ahead with his stupid russophobic rant about Russian bot farms (LOL) is really too much.

        • coolusername@lemmy.ml
          2·
          2 months ago
          1. https://www.rt.com/russia/550493-ukraine-donbass-military-operation-prehistory/
          2. They aren’t committing war crimes at all. You may be referring to something Ukraine made up. For example their own air defense hit civilian apartments and they blamed it on Russia. There are also many many many videos and photos on telegram of Ukranian soldiers hiding in kindergartens and hospitals. They also park military vehicles near apartment blocks to the dismay of the people inside. There’s photo and video evidence of this.

          Really it’s the reverse – Ukraine is committing war crimes. Shelling civilians is a war crime. Murdering people you think that are sympathetic to the Russian gov is a war crime.

          1. Ukraine’s?? They (the gov, which we installed and control) deserve it.
          2. No evidence for this at all. In fact, if you go back to the original Russiagate claim it was debunked by the CEO of Crowdstrike.
      • Vincent@feddit.nl
        12·
        2 months ago

        I would get it if he would have simply stated that the Linux Foundation needs to abide by the sanctions

        I mean, that’s basically what he said:

        If you haven’t heard of Russian sanctions yet, you should try to read the news some day.

        Doesn’t sound like they banned Russians in general, just people employed by sanctioned companies.

  • ouch@lemmy.world
    71·
    2 months ago

    As a finn, I understand that there are probably legal reasons for doing this.

    I just wish they would be transparent and share those reasons with us. The Linux kernel is certainly not the only free software project that is impacted, if this comes straight from EU/US sanctions. Maintainers of other projects have a lot of interest in what is happening.

    Transparency is also important because if EU/US policy/sanctions are causing issues for free software projects, then that discussion needs to be public, so that there is a chance to amend the policies if necessary.

      • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
        12·
        2 months ago

        FOSS is inherently political though, but I guess you mean country vs country politics moreso than ideological politics.

      • kmaismith@lemm.ee
        6·
        2 months ago

        That is hardcore wishful thinking, the nature by which critical digital infrastructure is developed and maintained is of keen importance to political systems everywhere. This situation was inevitable with the ongoing escalation of war

        • Alsephina@lemmy.mlEnglish
          5·
          2 months ago

          That’s why the “should be” I guess, though that’s not to say there aren’t idiots (right in this thread too) actually shilling for this.

          If current open source licenses still have flaws like this, we’re gonna need new ones.

      • orcrist@lemm.ee
        4·
        2 months ago

        It has to be there, because politics is connected with lawmaking, and open source software is dependent on laws.

        A lot of people like to say that politics isn’t in their life or that they keep politics out of their life, but the reality is that’s just not true. The rules that govern society affect you, always, either with or without your input, either with or without your acknowledgment.

        You’re probably trying to say that we should keep pointless politicking out of open source software, and I agree, but that’s going to come down to personal definitions of pointlessness.

    • sudo@programming.dev
      10·
      2 months ago

      The legal reasons was because the Linux Foundation is based in the USA and the targeted devs worked for companies explicitly sanctioned by the USA. Linus said he knew and trusted the devs he was forced to delist.

      The Linux Foundation needs to relocate to some stable neutral country like Switzerland.

  • Arcturus@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    63·
    2 months ago

    We’re gonna start seeing large open source communities start to break into smaller ones because of sanctions from now aren’t we?

        • just_another_person@lemmy.world
          16·
          2 months ago

          Not at all true. If you’re referencing US ideologies of Capitalism, holy shit are you wrong and read the wrong Wikipedia.

          In fact, the Democrats since the 60’s have run campaigns WAY against the threat of late-stage Capitalism. Republicans are the pro-capitalist party in the sense they want to privatize everything and help their friends, and also “deregulate” anything and everything.

          These are anti-capitalist ideas.

          Come on back with some more Wiki links, good buddy.

          • TheOubliette@lemmy.ml
            15·
            2 months ago

            Not at all true. If you’re referencing US ideologies of Capitalism, holy shit are you wrong and read the wrong Wikipedia.

            I am quite correct, though I am referring to liberalism in the general internationa sense. This is what liberalism always has been. You must understand it as what it is and has done, not what it tells you it is meant to be. As Stafford Beer said, it makes no sense to think that the purpose of something is what it consistently fails to do. The liberalism of the enlightenment had in its right hand brutal, racist colonial exploitation and in its left a ruthless industrial revolution chaining the people to factories and removing them from all commond and property. It is a product of capitalism itself.

            In fact, the Democrats since the 60’s have run campaigns WAY against the threat of late-stage Capitalism.

            The Democrats are a capitalist party and always have been. They do not work against capitalism at all, they support it and protect it. There is really such thing as late-stage capitalism, it is just capitalism developing over time, retaining most of its qualities but taking on new angles. Buy if it does mean anything, it means neoliberalism wrought by financialization, and that is Democrats’ main political base. It’s their main thing, especially as an export.

            Republicans are the pro-capitalist party in the sense they want to privatize everything and help their friends

            Democrats also do this they just tell you it is efficiency and “public-private partnerships” and “a generous endowment to a public institution” (that they can now defund). The charter school movement is largely Democrats, for example. They simply have different factions on their chopping block, different groups to pander to.

            These are anti-capitalist ideas.

            What ideas are anti-capitalist? I didn’t see any.

            Come on back with some more Wiki links, good buddy.

            No thanks. Read the political philosophers of the enlightenment, colonialism, industrialization and proletarianizatikn, the liberal revolutions in Europe, and who emerged to identify themselves as anti-liberal once those revolutions established their ideologies as mainstream, namely monarchists, fascists, socialists, and anarchists. You cannot gain a political education through Wikipedia, it is a Cliffs Notes approach to social topics often written by often incorrect or heavily propagandized (or propagandist!) People, including literal Nazi apologists.

          • Grapho@lemmy.mlEspañol
            12·
            2 months ago

            In fact, the Democrats since the 60’s have run campaigns WAY against the threat of late-stage Capitalism.

            Bruh what world are you living in lmao. Obama reached to bankers uncaringly tanking the global economy by giving them money to do with as they wished (and, as always, they wished to give themselves a bonus).

              • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
                6·
                2 months ago

                A thought-terminating cliché (also known as a semantic stop-sign, a thought-stopper, bumper sticker logic, or cliché thinking) is a form of loaded language, often passing as folk wisdom, intended to end an argument and quell cognitive dissonance.[1][2] Its function is to stop an argument from proceeding further, ending the debate with a cliché rather than a point. Some such clichés are not inherently terminating. They only become so when used to intentionally dismiss dissent or justify fallacious logic.[3]

            • Aria@lemmygrad.ml
              3·
              2 months ago

              thought-terminating cliché

              There’s no argument, it’s the definition of the word. Why do you assume there should be argument around the normal usage of a word?

              • Aatube@kbin.melroy.org
                1·
                2 months ago

                because for some reason, torvalds is bad now because he is a capitalist while nearly everyone is a capitalist. that’s the argument made.

                • Aria@lemmygrad.ml
                  1·
                  2 months ago

                  A capitalist is someone who owns capital, not someone who supports capitalism. A liberal is someone who supports capitalism. I don’t think Linus is a liberal, given that he’s the Linux guy. But he’s obviously a capitalist, and that’s okay, that’s something you should strive towards if you live under capitalism, even if ideologically you oppose capitalism.