"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."
fuck yes. fuck russia. fuck russians.
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."
Man, it’s like you spend centuries brutalizing all your neighbors, if not outright conquering them and enforcing holocausts, and this is the thanks you get!
fuck russians? fuck the Russian government and the people who support it, not all the russians.
“fuck the overwhelming majority of russians” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
I have no problem with Russians, but I do have a problem with the Russian government, and that makes me suspect Russians due to the chance of the Russian government using its leverage to get them to do what they want. So I understand the move, but I’m saddened that FOSS gets sucked into international politics.
FOSS is inherently political, though, and an international collaboration like Linux is inherently internationally political. Allowing big corporations to influence the direction of the codebase? That’s political. Allowing the free usage and distribution of the software to anybody for any purpose not otherwise afforded by existing copyright law? That’s political. Collaborating with contributors from almost every country on Earth? That’s political. Being headquartered in the United States? Again political. Creating a hierarchy with Linus Torvalds at the top? The definition of politics.
It feels like people only start screaming “that’s politics though!” whenever it becomes political in a way that’s controversial to them – without recognizing how completely pervasive politics are in every single aspect of our lives. The fact we’re even talking on Lemmy right now is political – in all likelihood, we both decided that Reddit’s system of governance was unfair and thought a federated system was somehow more ideal, in this case a platform created by outspoken authcoms. That’s even disregarding the Internet which Lemmy sits on top of, including net neutrality, freedom of speech, the infrastructure connecting different jurisdictions, the way it came about through organizations like DARPA, CERN, the IEEE, and ICANN, etc.
It seems though that Linus didn’t make this decision for political reasons, but instead because he doesn’t want to get in trouble with the US government. He indicated that he was advised by lawyers to do this:
I’m not going to go into the details that I - and other maintainers - were told by lawyers.
So, basically it’s enough to say “Fuck Russia, Fuck Russians” here and it gains you massive support.
Seriously?
First, how does this fuck Russia the state?
Second, what everyday Russians have to do with it? What justifies sneaking in hate messages to a diverse ethnic group with no single ideology?
Saying “Fuck Russians” is about the same as “Fuck Jews” because Israel has done bad things. This is not okay.
Russia has said they are going to do asymetrical warfare with the west. So why should we not prepare for what they claim they will do? Russians arent owed anything by us. Not a seat at the table, not a chance to contribute to open source software, not to be listened to. Not rights beyond their borders. It doesnt matter if they are nice. Its not our job and not realistic to expend time and resources to take each individual russian’s personal measure and apply sanctions onesey twosey on the bad ones. If they dont like it they should take it up with their motherland and get it sorted. I think we should immediately shut down all visas of any kind with Russia. The fact that the US is still allowing them to vacation here is absurd.
The fact that the US is still allowing them to vacation here is absurd.
According to your logic every american is scum because of government politics.
No one’s owed anything, but it’s in the collective interest to unite - without borders.
Russia is growing reliant on Linux, and it is heavily unlikely they’ll poison their own waters. Now Russian state and companies will just fork it for their needs, leaving mainline kernel worse off.
Russians are a diverse set of people, many of whom (especially relatively young IT crowd) are super not cool with what Russia is doing and have 0 intention to do anything murky in its interest.
And I’m growing tired of people imagining Russians can just come out on the street and end this for good, but somehow don’t want to or something. Any coordination of people is broken and de facto outlawed. Protesters are jailed within about a minute of protesting. People are scared for their families.
All this also ignores the fact that other world forces can have every intention to backdoor and hurt Linux as well, yet Russia in particular is the scapegoat. Linus just made sure Linux is now part of the proclaimed “West”, even though it was never attacked or forced to pick any sides whatsoever, and even Russia the state held absolutely nothing against it.
As per visas - not only would US lose out on a lot of talented folks that could benefit it (and not Russia, mind you!), it’s also too big of a political center. There was an occasion when the US didn’t want to allow in Russian diplomats that were heading for the United Nations HQ. Is that alright in your eyes?
With respect to screwing the state, it diminishes the nation’s standing in the world. Tech companies under the government are unable to compete with other tech companies when it comes to promises of supporting Linux properly.
By itself it’s not much but add the sum total of sanctions and you hopefully inflict an obvious contrast in prosperity available through global trade for a well behaved nation versus losing access to all those markets through misbehavior.
If the world doesn’t want to step in with direct force, this is about the only sort of potentially effective measure available. Without force nor economic measures, you are left with shaking your head is disapproval.
Going too far, on the other hand, accelerates the formation of alternative alliances, BRICS being the most prominent, and growth of authoritarian axis.
And on a different angle, Linux always adhered to truly collaborative open source policy, and I’m concerned more about what this decision means to that rather than Russia. If we start excluding maintainers based on nationality, not only we’ll be left without many great people supporting essential programs, we’ll be left with a political division in a sphere where collaboration means everything. Seeing other people being kicked out of something so big (and, for all I’ve heard, even the attributions removed) is not a great motivating tool to invest your time and effort into something that can so easily be taken away from you.
Well, if your state is breaching international law, deporting children, using artillery to reduce cities to ashes, sending hundreds of thousands of its own citizens to their death and allying itself with fucking north korea to “denazify” a country while swinging its nuclear dick around…
then maybe it’s time to leave the country or accept that people with a russian mail address are persona non grata in the rest of the world. It’s not their first war of aggression, and enough is enough.
fuck russia. fuck russians.
and fuck hospital- and refugee camp bombing zionists btw. (not all jews are zionists!)
As an Armenian I want to hear what you have to say to me, directly, about Azerbaijan which is not sanctioned, is not punished and is treated as a normal country. And by extension Turkey, which has been a NATO member since 3 years after NATO inception, and has only become less genocidal and less Nazi since then!
But since you are using “international law” as something good while it has been successfully used to justify many genocides, I guess I won’t be satisfied by your answer.
At the very least, a strong majority of russians are supporters of genocidal imperialism, however a solid argument could be made that it’s more like an overwhelming majority.
This holds true across all demographic segments; income, education, age, region, rural vs urban. You may have a situation where the support for genocidal imperialism is a mere majority (e.g. younger cohorts), while others approach an almost absolute majority (older cohorts), but the majority always holds no matter how you slice and dice it.
This is backed by almost all quantitative and qualitative research conducted over past ~35 years. I can share a pretty funny anecdote about how an allegedly opposition minded russian (who gets quoted in the NYT) had to twist his own quantitative findings to present a better picture of russian society.
Even recent qualitative research run by opposition minded russian researchers shows a damning picture among of even allegedly moderate russians (in russian, I can share it).
A strong majority of everyday russian support the extermination of Ukrainian culture and sending everyone who disagrees to a torture camp. And this is not limited to Ukraine, they have a similar attitude to all nations that freed themselves from cancer that was the USSR.
Unfortunately many are ignorant of the nature of russian society or prefer to reject difficult information (it’s just social media hate).
Torvalds is a Finn and he understand these things and he doesn’t have the liberty of shying away from reality.
When compare “Fuck Russians” to “Fuck Jews”; what exactly are you referring to? Russian as in the ethnicity or Russian as in the nationality. This is actually a pretty important point.
This is backed by almost all quantitative and qualitative research conducted over past ~35 years.
I would require some data from a person who likely wouldn’t say the same about countries backing Turkey (and by extension Azerbaijan) and Israel.
I wonder what your sources are, yes.
Talking to many, many Russians on the ground, I certainly don’t see the picture you’re presenting. The absolute majority of Russian youth I know is anti-war and anti-Putin, with only a few exceptions; among older generations there is more support for Putin, but it often boils down to “who else can keep Russia from crumbling in these trying times?” - a flawed argument, but again, not coming from bloodlust or an appetite for war. Maintaining of the war is seen by them as more of a necessity, and victory as a condition to save the country from collapse.
Even the government tries to veil it into “we’re against the Nazi regime of Ukraine, not against Ukrainians”, because Ukrainians are absolutely seen as brotherly people, and the fact they die is tragic to most. The blatant “let’s kill Ukrainian pigs” position is seen as cringe at best, and is likely to call a punch in the face.
Fair point on ethnicity vs nationality, thanks, and I’d like to explore it. Whenever the matter of Russians comes up, people rarely make the distinction. For example, when I commented on ethnic Russians getting more access to their own culture in Latvia thanks to EU intervention and acceptance of Russians as an ethnic minority, people made little distinction between ethnic Russians (including kindergarten kids who just happened to be born to two Russians) and Russian soldiers on the battlefield, ready to conquer the country.
But here, really, it doesn’t alter my point. We shouldn’t say “fuck all Israelis” either, because they too are a diverse group of people with vastly different views - some of them are straight up Arabs, and among the Israeli Jews, opinions on the war vary strongly.
So what you are saying is we should nuke Russia because they are all cartoonishly evil fanatics of genocide.
Our countries welcome Ukrainian refugees.
I am friends with Russians in my country.
Russiana living here sneak benefits by saying they are Ukrainians.
The majority of Russians living here voted for Putin polls have shown.
Some Russians denounce our media and only watch Russian state TV.
So if they can’t adapt after beeing here for decades I tend to believe that the Russian common sense differs immensly from ours. And therefore I agree with this propaganda: Fuck Russia.
They talk about eachother on the highest level but Russian citizens - here or in Russia - do not form loud critique. If my Brother was jailed for critique I would apread the word in my circles who would spread the word… WE IN THE WEST WOULD MAKE US HEARD.
Russians benefiting from the lower prices just agree with their government and apparently do not care about their country killing innocent people.
So fuck Russians as well.
- Obviously not every Russian is stupid or bad. But if they want to get out of their war, they have to speak up. This is exactly what they demand from other countries with inner conflicts.
The advice would be relevant a bit ealier, around the Bolotnaya protests.
But now protesting in Russia is nothing short of suicidal. You won’t make yourself heard - much quicker, you’ll be jailed. Police is constantly on duty near main protest venues, and they act brutal. And this fear mentality permeates many even as they leave, afraid they’ll have to return some day.
Right now, it seems like the only thing that would help is a full-scale revolution, but people are passivized enough through decades of oppression that organizing them is near impossible. Everyone is scared as hell to be the one who comes on the street, finds out they are alone and next moment they are taken to police and jailed for years.
Even under those conditions, people did come out to anti-war protests, especially in 2022. Result? Brutal suppression and mass incarceration. So, I hope you can see where this comes from.
Because the ex-Soviet elite layer, one can say, a one big mafia corporation, after USSR’s breakup has taught its ways to Western elites, and Western elites have taught them something too.
Actually in that context Linus’ dad being a Finnish communist who lived in USSR for some time is an interesting additional fact. I even remember reading that in J4F and marveling at his rose-tinted view of USSR there.
These people want to pretend that this didn’t happen and their institutions are not already dying, and that they are very different from Russians.
So they think they can avoid something by hating more on Russians, that must help. It’s like avoiding infected people during a plague, only your crowd is already infected too, it’s too late.
Also when you are more used to something and conscious of it, you have more immunity.
In Russia we have a choice between obvious propaganda, delusions reactive to that propaganda (which are not truth, but humans want to think that the clear opposite of propaganda is the truth), various fuzzy neutral-pessimistic grassroots opinions, and 100 sorts of foreign obvious propaganda. We are also conscious of how much power we as people really have. Even those who volunteer for Ukraine are not doing that due to “lack of real news”, they are doing that due to various kinds of desperation and cynicism, some just being evil.
In any Western country you have the same choice, but due to the common delusion that your kinds of obvious propaganda are not that, you tend to avoid using it. That’s just an earlier stage.
Nah men. You play the victim card. This is still in active use to reason about misdoings by Russians.
Don’t compare yourself to Western countries in such a simplified way.
Russians have contributed too much crimes in their occupied countries in the last centuries. You guys felt and acted entitled.
There are always other choices.
You guys contributed actively to cruelty. Instead of admitting things you compare yourself to others to denounce them.
Reflect about yourself, not others.
It’s just people can’t do anything to stop Russia or at least help Ukraine. Although the latter is possible, but it’d require some effort. Writing and upvoting “fuck Russia” on social media is easy and that makes them feel better.
Hostility toward someone nationality is racism to me. If it’s not it sill equally bad.
Those were words, yes.
How the fuck you were able to mash them together like that is beyond me.
You should approach the same fuck first approach to Israel and the us with what they are doing in Gaza and Lebanon while you are at it. That would show your adherence to standard behaviour in the light of current genocides going on.
Sure Russia is bad so fuck Russia but do you have the balls or boobs to say fuck Israel ?
It’s even funnier when we realize Russia is possibly the reason there even is an Israel-Palestine conflict.
Jews fled Russia between 1880 and 1920. While a large majority emigrated to the United States, some turned to Zionism. In 1882, members of Bilu and Hovevei Zion made what came to be known the First Aliyah to Palestine, then a part of the Ottoman Empire.
The Tsarist government sporadically encouraged Jewish emigration. In 1890, it approved the establishment of “The Society for the Support of Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine”[51] (known as the “Odessa Committee” headed by Leon Pinsker) dedicated to practical aspects in establishing agricultural Jewish settlements in Palestine.
So they encouraged and supported those settlements.
If you think caring about one tragedy means ignoring another, that’s a ‘you’ problem.
People who actually care about human suffering don’t play the ‘whataboutism’ game—because it’s not a contest, it’s a crisis. Your deflection isn’t advocacy; it’s just lazy, performative outrage disguised as moral high ground.
