Nobody says to ignore the law... it is Linus comments that were bad. Instead of defending the people that was working for him all these years and he had trust on them, he decided to throw them under the bus because he is from Finland. Well, Finland prospered the most on its life under neutrality.

I can understand the desire for information to be free, but unless Open source movement becomes it’s own country the discussion should end there.

Ideally the internet would be extra-sovereign

Did they get paid?

Edit: Very likely they were paid, and that's where IP addresses end and sanctions begin.

Every worker within an organization has to be paid, somehow.

Somebody must bear the costs of the supposedly “free (gratis).” In the end, nothing is truly free cost. And, not a single person would work for free (no payment, compensation, or benefits, or in other words, gratis) full-time.

It is an absurdity to think otherwise.

Free and open-source software is handed out at zero-cost to make it possible to lower the barrier of entrance; to make it as widely available as possible. Knowledge should, indeed, be free (gratis).

https://medium.com/@uriadonayherrera/economics-in-foss-is-paying-for-free-and-open-source-software-an-investment-or-an-expense-19f187db8d5a