Linus Torvalds kicked the Russians out of Linux, now they're creating a sovereign Linux community in Russia — Ministry of Digital Development steps in
Linus Torvalds kicked the Russians out of Linux, now they're creating a sovereign Linux community in Russia — Ministry of Digital Development steps in
Oh noes, I bet lemmy.ml users all switch.
Da fuq?
Surely you've realised your instance has a huge pro-russian, pro-china tankie presence?
Lemmy.ml admins me for being against Russia invading Ukraine and committing genocide lmao
If you aren't a tankie, migrating your account could be something to consider.
Do you agree that the CCP was responsible for thousands of deaths during the Tiananmen Square massacre? Do you agree that China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs?
If you agree, think you might agree, or don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, you shouldn’t be on lemmy.ml
They will go down with the Russian ship.
Anything involving a ministry in Russia is not a serious plan. They'll receive funding, hire a couple of bash script writers, well, maybe a couple of people who'll write drivers for Elbrus, Baikal or something that's sort of developed and produced in Russia, but nobody really uses it even in governmental structures.
One notable software business professional interviewed by RBC thought that the West’s decision would “adversely affect the life of the developer community, mutual trust within it, and therefore the quality of the product.”
It was Russia and other autocracies etc. that diminished the trust by actually financing developers for multiple years to first earn trust and finally introduce backdoors into open source software, as demonstrated by the XZ utils backdoor.
In open source projects, maintainers need to have some initial trust into each contributor, and let this trust naturally grow with time and contributions. They cannot perform intensive background checks on everyone before accepting a patch.
While it is easier to uncover backdoors in open source software, there is no good way to defend and prevent against this kind of attack in this type of development process. All open source projects can do is trying to take away some trust from people within higher risk groups. This of course might lead to discrimination.
There is a theory that sanctions against a country with a tyrannical ruler hurt the common people more than the oligarchs / dictator. But eventually they do make life more difficult for that ruler
Where are the tankie posts now?
It's election day, so they've probably been relegated to other projects, since they won't be able to make a difference anymore.
Omg I bet lemmygrad is crying in their panties!
It was the right move, but this needs to be expanded. Assume there are state actors from all of the major countries installing backdoors.
The digital war front will be getting hit from all sides. We need extreme paranoia to protect all of the innocent bystanders. Don’t assume even your own country is trustworthy in this.
Don’t assume even your own country is trustworthy in this.
My country is one of the world leaders in mass spying software development and even gave themselves the right to basically do deep packet inspections on everything going through it a long time ago, so...
It's a shame they didn't consider moving the LF foundation to Europe or something. If the choice is kick out contributors to support sanctions or operate without political pressure, the second is far better.
I cannot stand Putin or Russia's action, but punishing individual contributors just trying to write code and build Linux isn't helpful.
Unless evidence is found of malicious commits, it is pretty harsh on those caught up with this.
Let's remember that many Russians will probably be locked up and/or killed for coming out against Putin. Punishing them achieves nothing.
They removed russian maintainers that are associated with sanctioned companies. Individual russian contributers were unaffected by this.
Moving to Europe where... there's an even greater level of sanctions against Russia, and the population is more anti-Russia?
I mean sure, I'd like that, but it wouldn't have the effect you want it to lmao
And no, maintainers for sanctioned Russian companies were removed from their positions (where they can push kernel changes with zero approval).
Now they have to wait for their changes to be approved like everybody else. Oh no the horror.
They weren’t just random Russians, they were working for companies under sanctions.
What were they supposed to do? Ignore the sanctions?
They weren’t just random Russians, they were working for companies under sanctions.
That's just false. First, nobody in the maillists claimed those specific people were working for sanctioned companies. Second, at least one of the banned maintainers, when advised to contact their company's lawyers, said he isn't working for any company at all, just freelancing and doing free work for the community.
What were they supposed to do? Ignore the sanctions?
Yes. It was(and probably still is) literally written on the Linux Foundation website that the US sanctions do not concern open source community. It goes against everything open source ideology is, that is code and contribution is all that matters.
And what's worse it raises serious concerns what other malicious actions to the Linux kernel and other projects Linus and LF had to take on demands of the government that likes to install backdoors in software.
They can just wait for someone to approve the pull request like everyone one else.
Yeah it sucks, imagine further that you are a linux user with a compromised machine due to an insistence on tolerance in thr face of intolerance.
Then you would understand. Even if you are benevolent, your account existing in russia is a threat to Linux
To my complete lack of surprise, Russia is seems to be a freer country for free software developers than the United States.
To my complete lack of surprise, Russia is seems to be a freer country for free software developers than the United States.
What does the United States have to do with this? Since when is Finland part of the United States? Linus Torvalds is Finnish.
The Linux Foundation is headquartered in San Francisco. It's a US 501c non profit. Therefore, they must abide by US sanctions.
Linus Torvalds has been a US Citizen since 2010 and lives in Portland, Oregon
Remind me again what Russia did with your country the instant it got the chance?
Free to maintain a kernel that is their own and which does not belong to "ThE wEsT".
Free at last, free at last. Thank Putin Almighty we are free at last.
They weren't kicked out, iirc. Their contributions just aren't automatically merged anymore
And they are all welcome back if they can satisfy the Linux Foundation that they're not affiliated with a sanctioned entity on the SDN list.
But that headline is provocative, it gets people going.
Does it? Russians can't do Russian stuff anymore isn't really controversial.
It is somewhat chucking the baby out with the bath water but I doubt anyone's losing sleep over it.
They were removed from the maintainer position of whatever they did. Bizarre enough.
For being employees of sanctioned companies...
Don't work for war criminals 🤷