Official statement regarding recent Greg’ commit 6e90b675cf942e from Serge Semin
Hello Linux-kernel community,
I am sure you have already heard the news caused by the recent Greg’ commit 6e90b675cf942e (“MAINTAINERS: Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements.”). As you may have noticed the change concerned some of the Ru-related developers removal from the list of the official kernel maintainers, including me.
The community members rightly noted that the quite short commit log contained very vague terms with no explicit change justification. No matter how hard I tried to get more details about the reason, alas the senior maintainer I was discussing the matter with haven’t given an explanation to what compliance requirements that was. I won’t cite the exact emails text since it was a private messaging, but the key words are “sanctions”, “sorry”, “nothing I can do”, “talk to your (company) lawyer”… I can’t say for all the guys affected by the change, but my work for the community has been purely volunteer for more than a year now (and less than half of it had been payable before that). For that reason I have no any (company) lawyer to talk to, and honestly after the way the patch has been merged in I don’t really want to now. Silently, behind everyone’s back, bypassing the standard patch-review process, with no affected developers/subsystem notified - it’s indeed the worse way to do what has been done. No gratitude, no credits to the developers for all these years of the devoted work for the community. No matter the reason of the situation but haven’t we deserved more than that? Adding to the GREDITS file at least, no?..
I can’t believe the kernel senior maintainers didn’t consider that the patch wouldn’t go unnoticed, and the situation might get out of control with unpredictable results for the community, if not straight away then in the middle or long term perspective. I am sure there have been plenty ways to solve the problem less harmfully, but they decided to take the easiest path. Alas what’s done is done. A bifurcation point slightly initiated a year ago has just been fully implemented. The reason of the situation is obviously in the political ground which in this case surely shatters a basement the community has been built on in the first place. If so then God knows what might be next (who else might be sanctioned…), but the implemented move clearly sends a bad signal to the Linux community new comers, to the already working volunteers and hobbyists like me.
Thus even if it was still possible for me to send patches or perform some reviews, after what has been done my motivation to do that as a volunteer has simply vanished. (I might be doing a commercial upstreaming in future though). But before saying goodbye I’d like to express my gratitude to all the community members I have been lucky to work with during all these years.
Smart dude. He knows exactly why. To pretend that he doesn’t is a sham. This whole “I don’t know whyyyyyy” face he’s put on is an absolute facade.
“Russian Sanctions” due to Russia invading a peaceful nation and killing Ukrainians is not a race of people.
Russia is a country. Not a race.
Individual random people are not mentioned in the sanctions and have little to nothing to do with the state, just like the US. The foundation kicking out US maintainers during the Iraq war when the US was indiscriminately killing over a million Iraqi civilians would have been equally ridiculous.
So no, they don’t and shouldn’t have assumed this is due to sanctions. It’s free software they volunteering to help. There is no profit motive. They are not state actors. And most importantly to you,not all Russians are bad evil whatever slur you want to call them, you racist.
a peaceful nation
Let’s not go overboard.
- BBC, 2014: Ukraine underplays role of far right in conflict
- Human Rights Watch, 2014: Ukraine: Unguided Rockets Killing Civilians
- The Hill, 2017: The reality of neo-Nazis in Ukraine is far from Kremlin propaganda
- The Guardian, 2017: ‘I want to bring up a warrior’: Ukraine’s far-right children’s camp – video
- WaPo, 2018: The war in Ukraine is more devastating than you know
- Reuters, 2018: Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem
- The Nation, 2019: Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
- openDemocracy, 2019: Why Ukraine’s new language law will have long-term consequences
- Al Jazeera, 2022: Why did Ukraine suspend 11 ‘pro-Russia’ parties?
- Jacobin, 2022: A US-Backed, Far Right–Led Revolution in Ukraine Helped Bring Us to the Brink of War
- NYT, 2024: U.N. Court to Rule on Whether Ukraine Committed Genocide
What definition of race are you going by?
Oxford dictionary: “a group of people who share the same language, history, culture, etc.”
Merrian Webster dictionary: "any one of the groups that humans are often divided into based on physical traits regarded as common among people of shared ancestry
Also: a group of people sharing a common cultural, geographical, linguistic, or religious origin or background"
Are you really still using debunked race science concepts in 2024?
Just because you group people based on a different construct does not mean you aren’t racist. What’s next, islamophobia is okay too?
Of course, if you’re living in Russia, it’s dangerous to state anything other than support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t cringeworthy to watch someone awkwardly dance around it, trying to ignore it while complaining about (checks notes) losing a bit of reputation over an unnecessary war that their country started and which literally cost thousands of lives.
Any Russian who stands up against that is incredibly brave. The others, just different levels of sad. Non-Russians who support Putin are the worst.
I understand why you’d want FOSS to not care abot borders, wars and politics and that is noble. But to call this comment racism, comes across as a veiled show of support for Putin. As if critiquing his invasion is a racist act that hurts the Russian people. Putins invasion is hurting the Russian people. Not this comment.
I bet you wouldn’t have the same response if Israeli maintainers are being removed.
Wait linux community is removing maintainters because of their nationality???!!
Not nationality but alleged involvement with sanctioned organizations. There are plenty of Russian names on maintainers list remaining.
I still don’t think something so important should be beholden to the whims of one company (Linux Foundation) or their country’s laws (USA).
I would strongly prefer to use an operating system that didn’t have this problem. Do any even exist?
Not just the USA. Certainly at least the EU as well. I belong to neither.
Not sure what better world you want where we are not “beholden” to laws though.
The GPL is certainly “beholden” to laws as well, including a total lack of developer freedom which I personally disagree with.
For precisely when we disagree, there have to be laws.
I still don’t think something so important should be beholden to the whims of one company (Linux Foundation) or their country’s laws (USA).
Exactly my thoughts.
I would strongly prefer to use an operating system that didn’t have this problem. Do any even exist?
I was contemplating using FreeBSD, but then I found about the kernel switch to forbid Russian or Chinese usernames and… well, that’s not an option as well IMO.
It’s a good thing that no one is beholden to anyone then. Which is the entire point of free software.
That’s the beauty about open source: it isn’t beholden to the whims of anyone. If disagree with the Linux Foundation, you’re free to make your own independent fork. Others that agree with you can then start contributing to the fork. And this isn’t a purely theoretical scenario as it has happend with other open source projects before.
Let’s just say this properly ok so that 70 percent of the commenters here might better understand.
Association with some of the people previously on the kernel maintainers list was putting the Linux kernel at risk. The risk was that European, American, and other users may be prohibited from using it. The risk was that entities such as the Linux Foundation could be held in contempt of sanctions and sanctioned themselves. That could mean financial damage or even a full stop to operations.
If the kernel were sanctioned, every entity, individual or company, could be put at risk.
Association with sanctioned individuals put every other maintainer at risk. Being listed together in the maintainers file put many innocent people in extreme jeopardy.
So, let’s say this properly ok…
Some of the maintainers were removed to defend the Linux kernel and the many, many entities ( individual and corporate ) that use it. They were removed to protect the other maintainers and the people and companies that they associate with.
The Linux Foundation, being American, may have been particularly at risk. But “moving” the kernel does nothing. The contributors and maintainers are still wherever they are. Linux users are equally economically dependent on the US and Europe regardless. The issue are the international sanctions. My country has issued them too ( neither American or European ). And blaming the counties that issued the sanctions, instead of blaming Russia, is a very interesting morale position to take ( not getting into that here ).
My first reaction was to have a problem with how this was done. However, once you acknowledge the association, any interaction, collaboration, or communication becomes even more problematic as you KNOW that you are working with sanctioned individuals. So, doing it simply and succinctly was probably best.
It’s not about nationality. Here are the facts:
- LF is USA based (headquarters in California), as such they’re subject to USA law
- USA imposed sanctions on companies that are directly involved in supplying Russia with weapons.
- To have business, including receiving help, from those companies would open LF to legal repercussions in the country where they’re based.
- Baikal Electronic JSC is on the sanctioned list.
- Serge Sermin public GitHub profile listed Baikal as their employer
Therefore to not remove Serge from the maintainers would open LF to legal repercussions.
You might not agree with what was done, I certainly don’t, but I understand it.
How things is done 30 years ago https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy#Criminal_investigation
And this by Ken Thompson 40 years ago https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backdoor_(computing)#Compiler_backdoors
It sucks if well meaning people are caught up in this, but it also sucks if you’re living in the aggressor state of an ongoing war.
So shouldn’t this also include the US and the many countries (most of Western Europe, plus others) involved in coalitions bombing the middle east and elsewhere?
These people allegedly work for companies that work for the Russian war machine. They will regain privileges if they don’t work for them. So if they find a moral job, they’ll be treated morally.
It’s ridiculous how some see nothing wrong with delisting maintainers and are genuinely happy about such discrimination.
Not ridiculous. Majority of U.S propaganda is based on dehumanising people.
Also I read somewhere that this ban only applies to folk that work in companies that are sanctioned. So might not be straight up racism.
But I do agree with you. Who tf is U.S to sanction others while it’s formed on a genocide and still committing another one.
I hope that this will cause Russia and aligned countries to switch and invest into one of BSD variants. Probably won’t happen, but there is hope.
