Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers

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malaizhichun

malaizhichun

Linux creator Linus Torvalds on Wednesday affirmed the removal last week of about a dozen kernel maintainers associated with Russia.

On October 18, Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman published a message to the Linux kernel mailing list showing that a handful of Linux developers in the MAINTAINERS file had been removed.

His explanation was vague. "Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements," Kroah-Hartman wrote. "They can come back in the future if sufficient documentation is provided."

Mailing list participants pushed back, asking for further explanation about the removed names, all of which appear to be Russian and most of which are associated with a Russian (.ru) email address. Russia is currently subject to US government sanctions related to its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and other concerns.

Those dropped from the maintainer list oversee various Linux drivers that provide interoperability with hardware from vendors like Acer and Cirrus Logic.

Linux creator Linus Torvalds on Wednesday affirmed the removal last week of about a dozen kernel maintainers associated with Russia.

Torvalds responded to the mailing list challenges in the style for which he's become famous by attributing the blowback to Russian trolls.
Ok, lots of Russian trolls out and about.

It's entirely clear why the change was done, it's not getting reverted, and using multiple random anonymous accounts to try to "grass root" it by Russian troll factories isn't going to change anything.

And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren't troll farm accounts - the "various compliance requirements" are not just a US thing.If you haven't heard of Russian sanctions yet, you should try to read the news some day. And by "news", I don't mean Russian state-sponsored spam.

As to sending me a revert patch - please use whatever mush you call brains. I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be *supporting* Russian aggression? Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of history knowledge too.

The driver code to which the dropped maintainers contributed remains in place.

The Linux Foundation, a US-based non-profit, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
 
On a personal level his actions are justified. On a professional level, his actions require some facts and proof. Had he written "This isn't personal. If we don't do it we loose the tax exempt status. Go to Congress to complain." this would be clear. Or if those accounts can no longer be trusted, show proof. But like this, we keep waiting.

And while we keep waiting, let's stay professional about this. OK?
 
We still don't know who was behind the XZ backdoor (and probably never will). We do know russian government endorses and supports "independent" hacker groups attacking western infrastructure, and probably also actively carries out "cyber war" operations.

So, keeping in mind Linux is (whether you like it or not) a very relevant platform powering large parts of western infrastructure, a general mistrust can be explained trivially. That doesn't mean anything about this was fair game, and it's quite likely to only hit the "wrong" people, those interested in nothing but doing good open source work. But still you have to look at both sides.
 
From another point of view, do we care?

As mentioned above, after embracing systemd, it's really pointless to have concerns about Linux security model because that piece of shit is simply unbearable and unverifiable per se. As proven by the xz fiasco. I won't comment politics, but I do feel a patch should be either good, or bad regardless the origin of its author/maintainer.
 
Linus being right or wrong, I am disheartened to see open-source is becoming so fragile to political events. Yes, a war is a considerable and unjustifiable "political event" but even so, I hope key open-source projects manage to work out how to transcend this. Otherwise contributing to Linux is going to be like a game of whack-a-mole.

In science and space, the US and Russians are still (mostly) working together for some projects. I would like to see open-source mirror this relationship rather than just some lame blackmailing token on either side.

That said, ultimately Linux can be temporarily forked and then merged back in as things settle down so perhaps this has no real consequences.
 
kpedersen said:
ultimately Linux can be temporarily forked and then merged back in as things settle down so perhaps this has no real consequences.
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It totally should have real consequences. If random government decisions can threaten the integrity of a piece of software that’s (sadly) relevant for much infrastructure these days, e.g. by removing or replacing maintainers by “politically accepted” people, you cannot trust that software any longer.
 
Cthulhux said:
It totally should have real consequences. If random government decisions can threaten the integrity of a piece of software that’s (sadly) relevant for much infrastructure these days, e.g. by removing or replacing maintainers by “politically accepted” people, you cannot trust that software any longer.
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True, in the long run, it could undermine people's trust and respect for open-source.

But perhaps short term all of those skilled developers who were unlucky enough to be born in a certain country will now come and fix some of the shortcomings in FreeBSD ;)

Either way, if I was born Russian, I would be very angry that *my* generation now has to fight this stupid war for some rich arse and would be extremely upset that the contributions I had excitedly made to a large open-source project got removed due to my birth coordinates.
 
jb82 said:
No, they're not. When managing a project of this scale, personal considerations must be sidelined.
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That is the point. In private, as being Linus Joe Sixpack Torvalds, he can rant against Russians all he wants. Given the history, he has reason to. Hating on Ivan Ivanovich for being born there is unprofessional. And unjust. The currently ruling body there is a complete different story. Basically, he had to make the decision of being emotional about this or professional, and it seems he could have done this better.
 
jb82 said:
No, they're not. When managing a project of this scale, personal considerations must be sidelined. Moreover, excluding Russian developers officially contributes nothing to the security of Linux.
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Linus and Greg are employed by The Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation is an American company, therefore they're subject to American laws. As Linux wrote in the mailing list they're doing what they're doing because they were asked by lawyers, presumably TLF lawyers.

I don't think they have much choice, it's not about "personal considerations" IMHO.
 
fmc000 said:
Linus and Greg are employed by The Linux Foundation. The Linux Foundation is an American company, therefore they're subject to American laws. As Linux wrote in the mailing list they're doing what they're doing because they were asked by lawyers, presumably TLF lawyers.

I don't think they have much choice, it's not about "perosnal considerations" IMHO.
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But if so, it'd be IMHO even more sad... a few weeks before elections? Coincidence?
 
kpedersen said:
True but I am going to assume because the FreeBSD Foundation is less of a corporate "hoe" than the Linux alternative and doesn't appeal so much to the general mouthbreathing population, this is not going to happen any time soon.
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What's funny, at the end of the day, this decision may bring more people to the BSD world. There's a ton of such comments already. The last straw for many...
 
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