What happened this time?

Edit, answered elsewhere:

Recently, Linux removed several people from their organization that have Russian email addresses. Linus made a statement that confirmed this was done intentionally. I believe that there was some mention of following sanctions on Russia due to the war. I haven’t looked into the details of it all, so take my analysis with a grain of salt. From what I understand, it sounded like it was only Russian maintainers that were removed and normal users submitting code from Russia can still contribute. Maintainers have elevated permissions and can control what code gets accepted into a project, meaning that a bad actor could allow some malicious code to sneak past. This may have also contributed to the decision since this type of attack has happened before and Russia seems like a likely culprit. The reactions to this change have been varied. Some people feel it is somewhat justified or reasonable, some people think that it means it is no longer open source, and some people think it is unfairly punishing Russian civilians (it is worth noting that that is part of the point of sanctions).

Yes. There is an extremely arbitrary distinction made between the USA and Russia. Both are known for injecting spyware. China is somehow still okay? It makes no sense.

Not to mention the elephant in the room by not banning another certain country actively committing war crimes.

All software should be safety checked. Where the maintainer is from should be irrelevant.

But the most weird aspect is the timing. Why now and not a few years ago?

Well, in theory open source is immune to all that. However, the country a project is registered at, matters. That's why the RISC-V project, for example, took its headquarters from the US to Switzerland. For that exact reason: so no country could strong arm it, especially since Chinese were the major contributors to the project (Switzerland is not 100% neutral, but it's more neutral than other countries).

Nope. Politics is part of being open source.

As for US strong arming you don't have to be a US company for them to do that. RISK-V and ASML have been targeted by them in the past to prevent Chinese use.

Not really, open source projects don't necessarily have to be open to all contributors and I was aware of this already. They have to be open to anyone doing what they want with the code, by definition, which is good, but they don't have to allow everyone to contribute to upstream. I'm not sure if there's any particular defence against this being used in a discriminatory manner, but I do think this effect is significantly mitigated by the decentralised nature of open source and the fact that it's not too uncommon for forks to become preferred over the original, the fact that open source projects rise and fall in popularity, etc.

I wonder if there's some way to manage an open source project so that it's not subject to particular national laws in this way.

Those kinds of problems aren't particularly new (PGP comes to mind as an example back when you couldn't export it out of the US), but it's a reminder that a lot of open-source comes from the US and Europe and is subject to western nation's will. The US is also apparently thinks China is "stealing" RISC-V.

To me that goes against the spirit of open-source, where where you come from and who you are shouldn't matter, because the code is by the people for the people and no money is exchanged. It's already out there in the open, it's not like it will stop the enemy from using the code. What's also silly about this is if the those people were contributing anonymously under a fake or generic name, nothing would have happened.

The Internet got ruined when Facebook normalized/enforced using your real identity online.

This shows that no open-source project can really be directed from the US, or if they are then a fork should exist and be maintained by BRICS citizens who are obviously viewed as lesser, at least in the Linux project.

It wasn't a culture shock but it made something obvious that sometimes gets forgotten. The "Open" just means that one can look at the source code and copy it to make a new version. There is no obligation of the original creators to support things outside of what they want/can do.

It just shows how hypocritical and Western biased the community is. Are Israeli and US maintainers ever going to get kicked out of projects for their countries many crimes? No of course not, they would never apply their own standards to themselves, which defeats the point of them in the first place.

@Artemis_Mystique No.

It changed my view on how true to their ideas some people are.

Unfortunately no.

I remember the selinux controversy and the nsa trying to slip bad algorithms in.

Is this really Linux drama though? It seems more like political drama that ended up jizzing on Linux.

I mean, yeah, there's been drama after the decision was made based on legal issues brought about by political drama, but this part of it isn't, if you get the distinction.

The only real linux drama part, as far as I can see is the crappy way it was announced, which isn't what most of the people involved in the drama after the fact are complaining about.

I dunno, I'm not complaining about the post here, just talking about the overall issue itself using the post as a jumping point.

Anyway, I guess what I'm getting at is that foss development can't be immune from political fuckery (no matter how justified or unjustified it is). Everyone that's going to be involved in development is going to live under some nation's thumb, and is vulnerable to any legal ramifications of that nation. So there's no way to prevent a project being strongarmed; all that's possible is having enough people that can review the code do so, so that any fuckery that affects the project is known, so that everyone can decide what they want to do about it as individuals.

As long as individual people have the ability to use any foss software they want on their own devices, there's a limit to how bad the fuckery can get. Tbh, I'm more worried about corporate fuckery in foss projects than governmental

Open source means open source, I never assume anything else from open source projects.

Yes. If FOSS projects bend the knee to shitty laws just because “they are the law”, then FOSS is free labor for corporations with no gains for the people.

Just this one. The philosophy is still there, Linus and TLF have abandoned it with great hubris. I am very disappointed in them.

Linux at this point is an absolutely critical part of the information infrastructure our world is built on. It's not just a few nerds in basements cobbling together code. Safeguarding this infrastructure against bad actors is absolutely crucial for everybody's safety. Unfortunately we're going to see more of this kind of stuff in an increasingly polarised world.

I think the prestige of "maintainers" and contributions/control are what is being torn down. Anyone anywhere is still welcome to contribute, they are simply limited from direct control. They can still fork at any time, anyone can. Getting people to follow your fork is another thing entirely, and your open source code will still likely be incorporated directly or indirectly. The only thing that has changed is the misguided prestige that has grown around the project and is not a required or relevant part of the project as a whole.