Several Linux Kernel Driver Maintainers Removed Due To Their Association To Russia

[DumbFsck]

when Russia is pretty much cornered and forced to reluctantly engage.

You are so funny, the whole post is laughable but this was the best part!

[moonwalker]

I don't want to stir any more troublesome arguments in this thread, but would add a last point, since you said you are from Ukraine.

I have no associations with Putin, or Zelensky or anyone from their country.

I feel really sorry about all lives lost in this horrible war, and the consequences of it the Ukrainians will have to endure on coming years. I'm atheist, and believe that for all lives, there is a one time, one existence, one opportunity, and it is really sad that throughout human history, we keep making things miserable to others.

There are two lines from movies that capture my feelings about wars and death:
- line from Unforgiven - "It's a hell of a thing, killing a man; You take away all he's got and all he's ever gonna have." ~ William Munny;
- line from Troy - "I've killed men, and I've heard them dying, and I've watched them dying, and there's nothing glorious about it." ~ Hector.

Wish you well.

I wholeheartedly agree with the above sentiment, and I appreciate what you said, thank you.

The only other thing I will say is that there is no way to stop this war except to make it too costly for the aggressor - if Russia stops fighting, the war will end; if Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine will end. That's it, I don't want to further talk politics on this forum.

[oiaohm]

You can only control your actions, not those of others, I don't know their life's situation. But I feel like if it was an option at all, they should have stood up for what they believed in. Told the linux foundation to shove it, and started a new linux foundation somewhere more neutral, or better yet, found a way to de-couple the project from any sort of foundation at all so this couldn't happen again. Of course if that option existed they should have taken that I believe.

https://www.dlapiper.com/en/insights/publications/2024/03/us-government-reminds-non-us-companies-to-comply-with-sanctions-and-export-controls

Violations of US sanctions and export controls are subject to strict liability – which means a company or individual may face penalties even if the violation was unintentional or unknown at the time.

rabcor reality foundation or not US requirements if you are going to travel or live in the USA..

Setting up a foundation out side the USA to attempt to avoid USA sanction does not work either. On top of that you have the EU sanctions.

Yes Linus telling the Linux foundation to shove it would mean he would have to find some other legal team willing to protect him from US treasury sanctions enforcement.

Without the Linux foundation Linus would not have his wage that puts a roof over his head.

https://iclg.com/practice-areas/sanctions/usa

The maximum criminal fine for violations of most U.S. sanctions programmes is $1 million or 20 years in prison for each violation.

rabcor just to get though you head this is not some simple toy game. Yes every maintainer that was removed would be counted as individual violation. That 20 years per violation can be ruled to be having to be severed sequentially.

This is the problem attempt to not obey USA sanctions win a really stupid prize of being made totally broke and in jail until the day you die never seeing freedom again they use criminal.

Now if they use civil $368,136 per violation with the number of people that still enough to totally bankrupt the Linux kernel developers.

rabcor the reality the Linux kernel developers and the Linux foundation does not have enough money to safely argue with the USA government over sanctions. Requirement would be around 1trillion dollars. This value is so huge due to the number of developers work on the Linux kernel who would be effected.

Smaller open source project with less people may be able to get way with 1 billion dollars to be able to argue in court over the wording of the sanction without totally risking their hides.

Arguing with the UK, USA, EU, Australia over Sanctions has a huge money requirement to prevent people end up stuck in jail due to arguing against the Sanction.

Yes with the UK, USA, EU and Australia if you don't want huge fine problem you have to obey the Sanction at first and the processed to do a legal/political dispute of the Sanction to attempt to get it changed.

[rabcor]

Agreed, but then you can't take a paycheck from your employer if complying with the circus is part of your job. If you are saying that Linus and Greg should have quit in protest at the direction from the lawyers that's fair but you generally can't just "refuse to participate" without consequences.

Honestly, I can't really give a straight answer to that, the correct answer to a major decision like that varies based on the priorities of the person making it.

You can only control your actions, not those of others, I don't know their life's situation. But I feel like if it was an option at all, they should have stood up for what they believed in. Told the linux foundation to shove it, and started a new linux foundation somewhere more neutral, or better yet, found a way to de-couple the project from any sort of foundation at all so this couldn't happen again. Of course if that option existed they should have taken that I believe.

But I don't know if these men still actually believe in free and open software like they used to, maybe as individuals it just wasn't worth the cost to them, in which case the choice would be easy.

Regardless of all that though, the final result is clear, they have failed the linux community, they have failed the open source community and they have failed the free software community. No matter how they were pressured into making it, they are still ultimately the ones who made the choice to go along with it instead of fight it.

[bridgman]

You can be apolitical, you can refuse to participate in the circus, even if it is all around you.

Agreed, but then you can't take a paycheck from your employer if complying with the circus is part of your job. If you are saying that Linus and Greg should have quit in protest at the direction from the lawyers that's fair but you generally can't just "refuse to participate" without consequences.

[rabcor]

But, politics is everywhere... you cannot just shut it down, or pretend that it isn't there.

You can be apolitical, you can refuse to participate in the circus, even if it is all around you.

[oiaohm]

Looking at present day Ukraine's action, it seems to excel at one thing - casually throwing its own people into the fray by the millions for a quick payout. The official Soviet story on the subject is "corrupt local officials stole and sold grain reserved for planting and covered it up by planting more sparsely hence the poor harvest" - and it doesn't sound all too implausible to be honest. What it sounds like is "typical Ukraine". If they don't cause a nuclear meltdown, they will be pushing for a thermonuclear war. One calamity after another...

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

ddriver the holodomor case we have the Ussr documents. Those documents show that Ukraine was asked for more grain that Ukraine land could produce in a peak year with the quotas. So this was not corrupt local officials. This was either intentional genocide or absolute incompetence at the highest levels in USSR. With USSR track record of total incompetence you have to go with incompetence I will point out why.

Effect of demanding too high of quotas is the quota absolutely would have taken reserve amount required for seed stock to replant with and as well caused starvation as people were eating into what should have been reserved for seed stock.

Yes the local officials might have stolen some but by the documents with the holodomor case this was only icing on the cake not the cake. The cake was asking grain quotas out of Ukraine greater than what Ukraine had ever produced in a single year even right up today with improved technology. Yes holodomor case is grain but other cases inside USSR of insane quotas being asked for also did happen resulting in other different starvation events inside the USSR. Ukraine was grain there was another one that insane quota of potato was asked for and so on.

ddriver the USSR production quota system was highly defective for calculating the correct amount to take to the point of being famine causing then the Russia system at the time classed that when these impossible quotas could not be meet that the item had to be stolen not that it could never have been produced so making the famine even worse. Yes Ukraine people who had their relatives die because of the USSR screw up with quotas is kind of understandable why they absolutely would not trust Russia to be their their rulers..

Yes the big mistake in the USSR quota system is on that Wikipedia page. USSR in Moscow saw the increased rain fall and presumed that Ukraine was going to have a massive grain crop. Now we take the data that USSR in Moscow used with yield modeling projection software for grains we have today the timing of the rain fall is going to cause bellow average grain yield. Grain yield is very dependent on the timing of rainfall. Wrong time you have disease out breaks in crops lowering yield and not having the rain at the right time to set grains after flowering. Also we know the modern software has a error because you are putting in that the field were in perfect condition due to the farms in Ukraine not doing crop rotation(yes doing this at first cases a yield spike but then you get year on year declining yields.)

Remember you have the modern software for yield projection saying that if the fields were in good condition with the weather conditions Ukraine had at the time of the holodomor event the total yield is less than the amount USSR is asking for in quota. Also we have the USSR documents that say what they thought the yield was by the way they calculated it. Also the modern software with the modern maths we know has a up to a 20% yield error rate if you calculate at end of season with complete weather data yes even allowing for this USSR was asking for more grain that Ukraine could have produced..

Holodomor starts with one person in the USSR in Moscow doing the projected yield maths of Ukraine grain yields and getting it completely wrong then the grain quotas demanded out the Ukraine being based off this major error. Yes incorrect claims that the grain had been stolen its impossible to steal item that does not exist.

Please note back in the time the maths the person used in Moscow as a common simple math method to guess grain yields that was stopped being used in the west 15 years before because it was too error prone. Yes that old maths has error rate of 90% so can forecast in worst case almost double what the yield really is compared to modern method it somewhere between 70 to 90% over what the yield really was. This is why I like to think this was USSR incompetence. This was not the only time in USSR history were you see this where they are using a old broken crop yield calculation maths resulting in incorrect quotas being applied causing death and starvation and disruption to future planting by consuming next years seed stock..

[heisenbug]

Clearly this is not something related to spam.
I only know one term for this: racism.

Some questions for you.
Do such maintainers started the war, or did something for it ?
Should i hate German maintainer since they killed italians in '45, or/and the countrary ?
Is the take-off of Ucraine in 2014 from -USA an invasion ?
Should i hate USA people for this ?
Or wars in afghanistan, iraq, ex-yugoslavia, siria, libia, vietnam,
and many others driven from the same actor was not invasions of sovreign countries ?
Will sactions change the state of the war, or will bring us in a nuclear war in short ?

A part for these political questions, not for Torvalds that know well the answers,
I am disgusted from the Linux major stuff choices right now, will probably move
out.

[hansfbaier]

I did not know that Linus Torvalds is such a hypocrite. When is he going to ban all US and US based developers for 'their' countless wars of aggression?
And Israeli for an ongoing invasion of Lebanon?

[oiaohm]

However, it doesn't fully make sense as only the maintainers have been removed and not any code that they put in the kernel, for Russian specific hardware or otherwise.

The terms of the sanction as common it starts at X date and at some point it will end at Y date. Everything before X date the sanction does not apply to so any code submitted to the Linux kernel before 12 of September 2024. So yes all the code those maintainers put into the Linux kernel before that date is perfectly fine to remain there.

There is the 90 day grace window starting from the 12 of September 2024 as well. So any code they submitted before maintainer being removed in the grace before legal enforcement of sanctions in fact starts also legally can stay there by USA law.

So yes it makes full sense for their code to remain in the Linux kernel. The place to watch is how bad the sanction will be applied can they update their code any more after being removed.

This more or less confirms that Greg and Linus were forced to do this by the LF, by way of the US Government (sanctions most probably). Still doesn't explain the silence whatsoever. If I am not mistaken, you can specify to the public that you're complying with government sanctions.

There is due process to applying sanctions. So until you have confirmed that you have not incorrectly applied sanction you cannot state why you are doing it. Lets say someone has been using ru account but they are no longer a russia citizen and don't live in russia any more just they have been lazy and not update their email account they would not in fact be in breach of sanction but still need to be told to update their email account due to what the russia government has past that could result in their current email be able to be closed at any time so no longer a dependable point of contact.

kernel_titan yes can be defamation to say something breached a sanction when they did not because being documented breaking sanctions effects future employment. We may not like the Linux kernel core maintainers being very silent with general public at this stage why but this is a requirement. Now if they don't explain themselves when 90 days have past so had suitable time to do due process to make sure they removed the right people they I will have a problem. Yes and that explain should contain apology to those incorrectly removed in attempt to obey sanction. That the problem at this stage they cannot know the mistake they have made to write what they are doing right.

Yes you are right you can specify to the public that you have done something to obey government sanctions but you are not to be saying you did this to obey government sanction as reason for applying sanction wrong or to cause defamation to a person that the sanction should not have been applied to. Yes this makes doing the public announcement about applying a sanction not simple or quick todo. It commonly takes a company legal department 45-90 days to have the public release created for government sanction being applied. Yes 45 to 90 days after they first start attempting to apply the sanction finally having enough information to correctly make the press release stating what they were doing not to end up in trouble with the government for incorrectly applying the sanction or being sued for defamation by incorrectly effected parties. Yes under applying sanctions is illegal and over applying sanctions is also illegal. So there is quite a process to make sure they have dotted every i and crossed very t before being able to do the public announcement.

kernel_titan understand how this has to work makes me a little more tolerant but if we end up 6 months down the track and we don't have correct public notice about why happened I will be very annoyed in fact 90 days from 12 September 2024 will be getting little annoyed if there is not a correct public notice if it that sanction.

Its really simple to miss that there is a duty of care to making announcements around legal items like sanctions that you have what you are saying is 100 percent correct and this result in not being able to make instant public announcements..