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Linus Torvalds affirms expulsion of Russian maintainers
(www.theregister.com)
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this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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Russia represent Russian citizens the same way the US represent US citizens. If you're an US citizen and you think US international actions look bad on you then tough luck. Being a citizen of a specific state comes with its own responsibilities and consequences. If Russian nationals have long moved out of Russia and migrated elsewhere and don't support anything Russia does, why are they still Russian citizens? If they don't want to get sanctioned and they've long migrated from Russia they should apply for citizenship elsewhere. If they choose to stay Russian citizens that's on them.
As for nationality vs citizenship. Nationality is too vague of a term because it can mean both citizen of a state and originating from said state. I'm pretty sure in this case the discussion is about people who are Russian citizens, not people who originate from Russia but are no longer associated with them. Using nationality only muddies the discussion.
Congratulation, you are part of the problem!
So what are we supposed to do?
Not sanction Russia?
Apply sanctions on an individual basis?
EDIT: Nothing of value down below, just me and someone who only wants to be outraged. Delve deeper of your own accord.
Are you under the impression I'm some kind of strategical genius of political negotiation? I have no idea.
My point is that holding everybody responsible for what the specific form of government of the specific country they happened to be born into is a confortable truth to push back on the much more controversial take of all of us being the very same thing.
And to get slightly more practical, it's asinine to suggest that anybody that disagrees with a government has the means, or the will, or the duty to straight up move to another country (obviously to a flawless country, good luck with that).
I'll ask differently. Let's just assume there is a way to make sure there is no overreach of sanctions, but it's going to cost millions of tax dollars or euros. Would you rather have that money spent on things that are close to you (education, healthcare, infrastructure etc) or would you want that money to be spent identifying which Russians should or shouldn't be sanctioned?
I agree, somethings shit just sucks. However, the other person said:
Those people have already had the means, will or duty to move to another country. What's their excuse for keeping the Russian citizenship?
There's plenty of reason, the most likely is that they love their country, their homeland, their city, the network of friends, the memories and they hope, one day, to be able to get back.
Would you still love me if I was a giant moth?
So it's literally their decision to keep their citizenship and be sanctioned, but you're still outraged about it?
I would definitely hate you less because I really hate trolls.
I'm not a troll but it's unsurprising you are quick to hate considering your opinions toward mankind.
A country is not their government, their history is not their current posturing, the action of their military is not the expression of their local communities. The idea that since you are attached to a certain place is equivalent to sharing the broad general responsibility of its actions through history is what ultimately fuels shit like, you guessed it, the Russian invasion of Ukrain itself.
You're literally avoiding answering the hard questions and instead throw up shit like that moth thing. That is standard troll behavior. Just because you want to believe you're not a troll doesn't mean you aren't one. Go on, prove me wrong, do the non-troll thing and actually answer my questions instead of tip-toeing around them.
Technically they are. The country is the governing body set up by the people that make up said country. In the case of Russia that government is corrupted and that government is to the detriment to its own people and now also a detriment to the surrounding countries. I am sympathetic to the struggles of the average Russian, but unlike you I don't live in la-la land where everyone gets to have and eat their cake. They've let their country slip into corruption and ultimately that is on them because we can't fix that without an even greater conflict. They've let their government get corrupted and the actions of that corrupt government has brought sanctions upon them.
And I get that not all of them are to blame, but we get back to the questions you deliberately avoided. Are we not supposed to sanction Russia and let them have their way with Ukraine? If we should sanction Russia and there is a costly way to make sure those sanctions wouldn't overreach, do you want your tax money to be spent essentially on the well-being of Russians. Even if you know you're likely to gain little to no benefit from that spending?
I was making what I thought was an obvious equivalence between your realistically impossible to answer question to the impossible question an insecure partner blurts out.
Are you asking what value I give money? What price I put on human lives? If I would give up everything to keep the innocents out of harm?
You see your question is way too broad.
But of fucking course I'd be willing to spend more not to impart sufference in innocent strangers, that's the point of most things people do daily when it comes to being an ethical being. Would you enjoy saving money if Police would simply arrest everybody in a 2Km range from any murder location and call it a day?
Then give those maintainers your money to get them out of Russia and help them get a different citizenship so they wouldn't be affected by the sanctions. If you don't have that money start a go-fund-me. After-all you said you'd give up everything to keep the innocent out of harm.
My question isn't about money, it's about how far you're willing to inconvenience yourself to help those unfairly treated Russians. The tax thing is just the bare minimum anyone could do because we're paying taxes anyway. It takes no extra effort on your part, it's just a question of where your tax money gets spent. Your quality of life drops but at least you know the wrong Russian didn't get sanctioned. Is that the inconvenience you're willing to make?
I don't see you making any inconveniences. I don't see you making any effort beyond being outraged on the web. But feel free to prove me wrong.
I never said I'm willing to give up everything...
Anyway, your "arguments" boil down to a shifting grey area between, "they deserve it" and a very dispassionate "there's no alternative".
It's simplistic and dangerous. I hope you are young.
Have a day.
Like I said, you're not wiling to do anything beyond being outraged on the web. My argument is very simple. We need to do something about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and that something is supposed to be something that is as inconvenient as it can be to Russia, while being as little of an inconvenience to us. Part of that something is broad strokes sanctions. The more specific you want those sanctions to be the more inconvenient it becomes for us. And by doing nothing you're agreeing with me because you're not willing to inconvenience yourself for those Russians.
You think I'm being simplistic and dangerous, you're the one wanting to have your cake and eat it. I understand that there's a clear trade-off in what you're demanding and I understand that most people, including you, are not actually willing to take that trade-off. You're the one being childish and throwing a tantrum because you're not getting everything you want.
Let me go back to the root of your ever shifting discussion:
Yes and that is not very much.
I'm not sure where and why you started going on about my personal hypocrisy toward the application of santions as the best strategy to counter Russian expansionism or how much it is agreeable as something to apply to the whole of the population.
The way you denigrate different opinions, it seems you may be the one to think that, actually.
That's just the misanthropy leaking...
It's besides the point because with the Linux kernel should be run under a principle akin to net-neutrality where we do not let geopolitics affect it (do you really want Trump's America to have legal power over it?)
The solution here is simple, just do not kick the maintainers unless they have confirmed ties to the Russian state. It's not always practical to make sanctions precisely targeted, but in this case it actually is easily so.
Let us all love Lain 😁
Other than that, can we still trust .ru and .su domains?
Nobody could ever trust .su domains, it's always been a hive of scum and villainy. No joke, it's been notorious for scamming and various cyber crime, which is a shame since it's a great novelty domain.
Many know it from piracy 🤭
The worst cyber crime of them all, denying multi-national megacorps of the potential but unlikely revenue of several dollars! 👮
And you don't seem to understand ~~
I wouldn't, personally. It's not like Russians cannot obtain non-.ru domains and if anything those anti-war are inclined to do so to avoid scrutiny, especially with anti-putin russian news orgs like e.g. meduza.
Definitely not .su unless you know what you're doing and what you're doing is some sketchy shit.
Exactly. ACF has published a list of every single person responsible for the war. Most of them are not sanctioned because they are filthy rich and have already bought themselves passports in various EU countries. Targeting Russian passports does absolutely nothing to them as they can just use another.
Sanctions are to punish the whole country including individuals. Sanctions work because it makes lives of individuals worse so that they have reason to be unhappy and do something against the reasons the sanctions is put on them. It makes it harder for leaders to be accepted, if under their power live gets worse. And if a leader is not accepted by enough of their people, the chances of resistance is bigger. And the countries that have put sanctions on, want exactly that.
This idea ignores how Russia works. Everyone already knows it's a totalitarian shithole. They just don't have the means to fight it, so they either lay low and play along, or try to get the fuck out. Sanctions hit the second group, as well as companies that implement them because they're losing income. In fact, older folk here still grumble at USSR collapse and how effective free reign of capitalism was in the 90s at extracting wealth out of the country.
Even if that idea was to hold any water, straight up blocks are not what you'd need. For example, when I open up a site and I see a block page, the idea that pops into my head is always the same - "what a bunch of assholes...". I can bypass the block either way, but the difference is that it can say either "blocked by the ministry of truth", or "blocked because ur russian, haha get rekt". Given how easy it is to get hit by censorship for innocent things, it's rather easy to shift the blame, while keeping the business running, by just standing up to the ideas of free speech, like not removing the "celebrating the pride month" logo in that country specifically, like all of them did...
I guess the politicians of the countries having the sanctions in place have still to see and learn how the Russian people react to sanctions. I think many of them only know the Russian culture from some “schoolbooks” if even (like me 😅)
Have you ever thought about doing this yourself? Don't have to go far to figure that it takes at least 5 years of hard work in most cases, if possible at all. Citizenship unfortunately isn't something you can acquire or renounce at will. Not without being obscenely rich, that is.
I never said it's easy. I can understand someone keeping their citizenship out of convenience because the process of obtaining a different citizenship is difficult. However, I wouldn't call it impossible. Based on my country the most time-consuming part about getting the citizenship is having to actually live here, which is at least 8 years under the residency permit. The language proficiency test and constitution (and citizenship act) examinations take an effort but are not insurmountable if you're serious about getting a different citizenship. I haven't gone through the process itself because I've never had the need, but based on what the legal requirements are I don't see how that's only for the obscenely rich. If you're permanently settled elsewhere it's a matter of time and effort.
I think my point still stands. If they have the option to choose a different citizenship and they choose not to, that's on them. And when it comes to this specific instance I'm assuming some good will on from the rest of Linux maintainers. Hartman said "They can come back in the future if sufficient documentation is provided." I assume if the Russian maintainers showed that they've passed the citizenship examinations and their different citizenship is only a matter of time, then that should be sufficient documentation to get them back on the list.
Is it any 8 years, or continious 8 years? In most places, the requirement is for continious, which is a tough ask. Imagine not being able to leave the country for almost a decade.
And you need a reason to get residence permit. In most cases there are few: living with spouse, reuniting with family, working, studying, or doing business. Of those, only work, study and business are the ones that are realistically achievable.
For work, there's usually also a requirement for employeer to prove that there are no natives available to fill the role. This is a tough process, which takes a lot of time and no guarantee it'd even get approved. So, not many employees even bother unless you have exceptional skills.
For study, you would have to actually study to avoid expulsion, while somehow earning enough on some part-time remote work to support yourself (or have enough savings to support yourself for years). And then, bachelors is not enough so you must go for PhD. Meanwhile, in both above cases you have to also learn local language. I'm sure there are people who could pull this off, but, again, it's quite exceptional.
Last is business. Usually the requirement is to invest somewhere in the ranges of $100k to $500k into local economy. That's not filthy rich, but, for context, for Russian it'd take 3 years of fighting on the frontlines to earn as much, with a wage considered good enough to risk dying for... And then the country can still deny you permit without any reason.
It's because of this, most people I know, who chose to leave the country keep their passports and either settle in Armenia and Georgia with 182/365 days renewable visa-free entry, or run circles between Serbia-Montenegro or Thailand-Vietnam.
There are also interesting opportunities with digital nomad visas, but, again, the requirements out of reach for most.
But for oligarchs, this is pennies. They can buy a few outright, then fly private jet to the US as tourists with pregnant wives, get children born there, then send them to study in London. Apply for family reunifications, bam, theyre now citizens of US and UK, in addition to all previous ones.
It's the other way around. You have to live for X years to be eligible for the test. Given a common requirement of 5 years, they would have to have started this process 2 years before the war broke out.
I maintain US citizenship as the only biological child of my parents in case I need to be there for them due to an emergency or, later, end-of-life care. I cannot move them to Japan nor would they want to.
So hypothetically let's say there's a project or a job or anything of the sorts that you personally want to do, and that something requires that you're not an US citizenship. I assume you'd stick with your parents and not get a Japanese citizenship. Would you accept that as the compromise you personally have to make (choosing the wellbeing of your parents over the thing you want to do) or would you complain that you're being treated unfairly?
I would stick with my parents. I also have other citizenship and Japan would require giving up all citizenship to become a Japanese citizen. I would complain that it is bullshit as I do today about Japan's current citizenship laws.
Okay, but that's irrelevant. I simply pointed at Japanese citizenship because your brought up Japan. The compromise was between keeping US citizenship to take care of your parents vs renouncing the US citizenship to do the thing you want to do. And you compromised to take care of your parents. That is a decision you would make.
So why are you defending the Russians abroad who have decided to keep their Russian citizenship? They also have a choice between keeping the Russian citizenship and fall under sanctions or renounce their citizenship and not fall under sanctions. It's their decision to make.
As for Russians within Russia. Sad to say but they're fucked regardless. I imagine the sanctions preventing them from working on Linux is the least of their problems. And as I pointed out in my other comment, would you be willing to spend your tax dollars to make sure the right Russians get sanctioned instead of spending those tax dollars in a way that would benefit you?
Lolwut. Russia isn't even a democracy.
You really think Joe Schmoe Ignoramus from Shaboygan, Wisconsin just trying to buy gas is to be held responsible for the civilian deaths in Palestine? War in Iraq? Unhinged.
No, because being a citizen of a state is not a choice. You are born where you're born.
Because they may have family (e.g. elderly parents that require care) there and prospects of being able to visit otherwise aren't great.
But that's besides the fact actually getting a citizenship in another country is very very difficult. I've been in the UK for like 15 years, since 10 or so years old, and only just barely eligible now, gonna take another 2 years if not more to go through the process.
Your entire comment is "Tell me you're a westerner without the least bit of awareness of how immigration works without telling me." basically, living happily with a golden US passport or in the Schengen, not how it works for the majority of the world, or there'd be no one left in the global south.
No it really can't.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationality
Oh boy. I'll respond only once and if you throw another wall of text I'm just fucking off.
Officially it is. I know in practice it isn't but the only ones who realistically can turn it into an actual democracy are Russian people. I don't think we should give them an exception just because their country has gone to shit.
Directly responsible? No. Indirectly? Yes. It's like people have no fucking clue what a country is. It doesn't just prop up out of nowhere. Someone somewhere defined a country and when it comes to democracies (even dysfunctional ones like Russia and the US) the people set up the country for themselves. It's their country and whether they like it or not, they are collectively responsible for what their country does. If they're not responsible then who is responsible for the US supporting Israel? The politicians? Who votes the politicians in power? The people. The Lobbyists? The lobbyists lobby to politicians and the politicians get chosen by the people. The masses being stupid and easy to manipulate is a different topic, but it doesn't change that despite collectively making bad decisions the people are making those decisions.
It literally is. If it wasn't a choice you couldn't choose to become a citizen of a different state. Your initial citizenship isn't a choice because you're born with it but you're also born with your initial sex, doesn't mean you can't choose a different sex as you grow older.
And that's their decision to keep their citizenship. Just like it would be my decision if I chose to have a diarrhea takeaway today. Or should I blame my diarrhea on you?
I can't believe I took the effort to look up how UK citizenship works but if you're only barely eligible after 15 years you are clearly leaving out some key information. The "don't be poor" part of ILR is kinda stupid so if it's that I get it, but beyond that you shouldn't be barely eligible unless you've sloppy with your visa's or have been regularly traveling in and out of the UK.
And my point is that while getting a citizenship can be difficult, it is not impossible.
It clearly was vague considering how many other comments are mixing up someone being born in Russia or having Russian heritage with someone actually being Russian. And to point to the exact same wiki page:
Cute.
Don't hold your breath. Russians are absolutely scared into submission and honestly they're not wrong to be scared. Political prisoners don't have any real human rights nor do their families. In a country where the average person can barely scrounge for a car, a well-funded, organized resistance is unlikely to accomplish anything so complex and significant as a revolution towards democracy on their own.
That said, it's not like there isn't anything at all being done:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opposition_to_Vladimir_Putin_in_Russia
Protests against Putin have been going on for a long-time, but Navalny's death has slowed things down somewhat. More openly acts of anti-government terrorism and openly fighting for Ukraine have been happening also:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belarusian_and_Russian_partisan_movement_(2022%E2%80%93present)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combat_Organization_of_Anarcho-Communists
These are far braver people than I, god bless and godspeed to them. But also, not something you can expect the average Joe Schmoe to be.
It's not an exception, it's the rule. People and governments are almost entirely separate. State is an oppressor of the people that exists to benefit the top 1% and corporations, more often than not it acts in complete opposition to the interests of the people and they have no power to change it, whether it's outright a military dictatorship, one-party rule (China), practical one-party rule (Japan), two-party system (US), practical two-party system (UK) or otherwise.
You can't choose, you can try to become one but for 99% of people it's not possible. You are in total ignorance of the realities of immigration. My parents were no oligarchs, but they were definitely really well-off, and if not for that I'd never have immigrated.
Not to mention:
Yeah, but it also is a helluva undertaking. Transitioning fully takes 10+ years easily in practice and either being very lucky and living in a country with nationalised healthcare and having the patience of a saint to not only wait the eternal waitlists but also fight through both the incompetence, the lack of understanding and outright malice or have tens of thousands of dollars burning a hole in your pocket.
It's actually why people don't actually choose to do it. It's a hassle. In practice, you need to be motivated by something very hardcore, like a disorder that causes ever-present severe mental pain for instance - like Gender Dysphoria - to be able to see it through.
I started 9 years ago, and only just had SRS a few months back, and I still have all the legal shit ahead of me too. There are ways I could've optimized it, but hindsight is 20/20, and after countless nights wondering if I could've done it earlier and faster, the answer is yes, but only slightly so, or if I was simply orders of magnitude more rich, and not a semi-broke uni student for most of it.
When it comes to immigrating from somewhere like Russia to somewhere like the US or UK, even on top of the 10 years and enormous amounts of luck, talent and constant effort (education, job searching is 10x harder) the monetary figure gets up to hundreds of thousands of dollars easily.
No, but you should be a pragmatist and understand that it's not realistic to suggest people never get takeaway at all, because it's for instance - unhealthy - which is true in many cases.
People smoke, do drugs, drink alcohol and eat sugary foods despite all that, and self-control is kind of a myth, it has a lot more to do with one's circumstances than oneself. E.g. for someone who's only source of happiness in a dreary day is a bottle of a beer, it's gonna be a lot harder to stop than for someone who didn't care that much for it in the first place because they're rich and their life is not very stressful.
That part is a non-issue, because if you're smart, self-disciplined and patient enough to get a skilled worker job in the first place and your job salary qualifies for the skilled worker visa by salary requirements then you won't have any problems saving the £3k+. Compared to like 4 years of university at what, £14k a year, it's barely anything.
That was it for me. But I visited my parents for summer holidays when I was a literal child, long before I understood that Russia was not a place I wanted to be or the politics of it all, nevermind intricacies of immigration rules that would only concern me over a decade later, and it's not like I had anywhere to live in the UK outside the boarding school.
Out of all my peers from that school that wanted to stay, I'm the only one that's made it anywhere close, the others all have years to go for the same sorts of reasons.
And I disagree. For most, it's an impossibility. My childhood friends in Russia didn't want to stay in Russia either, but being working class kids, they were lucky to even have a hacked PSP. Studying at some international boarding school is the only realistic route unless you're exceedingly lucky and extremely talented and it requires being very well off.
In general a lot of your rhetoric speaks to a meritocratic, individualistic and christian-work-ethic capitalist mindset, which can be a good thing, people should try their best and work hard, and I did, but ultimately I only had the opportunity to because of my environment. It's good to be conscious of such things as well.
Yeah, "belonging to a sovereign state" is just citizenship or "origin" in cases where no clear citizenship can be established.
When I tear up my Russian passport and burn it, I will no longer be subject to Russian laws, e.g. conscription, and instead be a subject of the British state in the eyes of the law.
Please tell me you're not this naive, or you're not yet 18. This is not what countries are or how they came about, and the rest of your argument falls apart as a consequence of that. Please read up on the colonialist and early industrial periods (and prior too if you can).
There are recorded stories of people living within nation-states that didn't even know they did, or what the identity of it was or where/when it started and ended.
Even today, while not a nation state, many (not all, of course) Brits voting for Brexit didn't fully understand what the EU even was really, or who it included. Heck, I couldn't name you every EU country off the top of my head, and I'm a big Europe simp.
Also, the dysfunctions of the US democracy are simply incomparable to Russian "democracy", no matter how bad gerrymandering and electron denialism is, the fact that such things even need exist at all is the very proof of that.
Okay. I give you two options:
A) Shoot yourself with a shotgun B) Shoot yourself with a pistol
But if you shoot yourself, it's a bed you made? That's absurd. States give people a voice, there is no political model in existence that would actually allow the people to become the nation-state itself, for many reasons, including the fact it would be an absolute clusterfuck.
Even anarchist communes would have to have elected representatives to interact with each other and experts to elect to leave some decisions to on for instance, medical or climate policy, which would become a pseudo-state administration, and it's inevitable that such people have their own agendas as everyone does that would become divorced from the people, the role of representation (democracy, consensus, e.g.) in such a political system is to provide a check and a balance on it.
In western nations voters are a key to power yes, but only one of many, and hardly the most important one.
You may want to run for president for instance, and given the choice, people might vote for you a 100% and you may be the best president the US ever had, but you'll never be given that opportunity, plain and simple.
There's a lot more I could go into, but I'll leave it up to you to look more deeply into civics. Do it for yourself and for me, I've already fled one undemocratic shithole, please do not turn the west into a repressive populist junta and learn more about civics and history, thanks xoxo :)