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

[Pawlosek]

Surprising seeing North Korea and Russia lovers, both of those countries are in the place where are now for a reason. Countries that threat everyone with nuclear weapon, countries that have regularly confirmed cyberattacks on the world, countries that are responsible for genocide nowadays are not part of modern civilization. It's unbelievable that it's something that needs to be told.

[DumbFsck]

People seem to not understand what's happening, either on purpose or because they already chose a narrative.

Are Linus and/or Greg in the wrong and "russophobes"? Most likely not. They didn't "kick" all Russians.

This is, I'm absolutely certain, some legal compliance bullshit they have to deal with because of residing in the US or due to where the Linux Foundation is or because of some sponsor or another.

Yes this is absolute bullshit. Hopefully the hoops those maintainers have to jump through to be "accepted back" aren't too strenuous.


So, is it politically motivated as people here are saying? Yes, insofar as the law they have to abide is derived from politics.
Is it virtue signaling? Maybe, but again, and in conclusion:

It is not Greg or Linus trying to signal their virtues or them being motivated by their politics. Some law somewhere put up some hoops the kernel and those Russian maintainers will have to jump through in order to keep working as usual.

[abott]

No one should be trusted a priori.

Key word was more.

And because no other country has technological bad actors than Russia? That's kind of a completely stupid question. Everyone else can suck too, Russia sucks more. Delete them. Don't wanna be thrown in with their war crimes, leave the country.

[Danny3]

Good!
Now do the same with contributors from China, North Korea, Iran, Serbia, Hungary and other asshole countries!

To the people who think that this is discrimination, based on the country / nationality, do you understand that nobody, meaning no human and no AI is able to read all the code, commit by commit of all the developers from these countries to catch when one of them is putting in some back-door, spyware or any other kind of malware?
Do you also understand that many people that are informing people, like journalists and many people that are actively fighting or are just against these regimes will die if their privacy and security of their devices (desktops, laptops, Android phones / tables) is compromised or weakened?

I rather have less developers and maintainers to Linux than to have people from these asshole / anti-democratic countries, with total disrespect of human rights and environment, implement back-doors and malware that is discovered years later and after many people are dead!

[avis]

Key word was more.

And because no other country has technological bad actors than Russia? That's kind of a completely stupid question. Everyone else can suck too, Russia sucks more. Delete them. Don't wanna be thrown in with their war crimes, leave the country.

Tens if not hundreds of thousands of people who sympathize with, and may actually pursue the interests of, North Korea, Iran, and Russia live outside those countries and often use standard email domain names, including, but not limited to, gmail.com.

Such people may even work for well known "trusted" companies such as Alphabet, Meta, IBM, etc.

Good luck with your ideals.

[shmerl]

because you say so. Moron.

Go read 1984 and get lost, Putinist troll. Scum like that should be banned here on the forum.

[alexenv]

People seem to not understand what's happening, either on purpose or because they already chose a narrative.

What do you expect from the average Phoronix reader...they usually stop reading at the title and can't wait to share their brain farts with the rest of the world.

[hf_139]

Now do it with Israel

[phoron]

Well, maybe there's a reason, but hard to know without more explanation. It could be that due to sanctions some contracts get cancelled and some Russian companies have to or want to stop paying linux developers. Maybe the companies didn't get sanctioned but their customers did, and they're short of money... So if the developers don't want to contribute as volunteers, because it was their job and now they need their time for some other job, then they may have just quit mantainership. But they may not want to say they quit, or that they were relocated or fired, because they may feel it's not their free choice or their fault, they're just victims of some events. Not that I really believe what I just wrote, just grasping for some explanation with more imagination than logic...

In fact the lack of explanation might be just worse than the decision itself.

BTW. I think I saw a post that I don't find now, but in case there's any confusion... The patch is modifying the MANTAINERS file, not the CREDITS file. There is no apparent intention to hide authorship or remove rights, just to remove future responsibility and indicate that future changes to some areas should not be sent to certain persons any more, and that the roles in the workflow change from now on. The MAINTAINERS file is read by humans and some tools to ease workflow. So the patch doesn't seem illegal in any way. Just possibly politically and governance-wise risky, and, if it was the case that the cause is nationality discrimination, then it might be against the code of conduct. But I don't know. Somebody says other Russians are still maintainers ? I haven't checked. From a first quick look all the removed maintainers, they seem Russian or with .ru addresses, except one, which I don't know, I think. But the reason may be something else, not their passport.

[hf_139]

If they would kick out every single maintainer that has connections to the NSA or a company working for the NSA (Red Hat), i would understand that. It would be totally reasonable and even expected ever since Snowden, it's directly affecting their work for the kernel.
But removing maintainers cause they are from a country that your country doesn't like? That is on a totally different level.