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Several Linux Kernel Driver Maintainers Removed Due To Their Association To Russia (www.phoronix.com)

submitted 2 years ago by aidan@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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The title really undersells it, it seems like under a Biden Executive Order, free/open-source software will have to ban all Russian contributions. Its unclear if American developers would be allowed to contribute to Russian software like Nginx

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[-] Enkers@sh.itjust.works 38 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

From the other phoronix article:

UPDATE: When asked whether Linus Torvalds was under any sort of NDA around this, he responded:

"No, but I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to go into the details that I - and other maintainers - were told by lawyers.

I'm also not going to start discussing legal issues with random internet people who I seriously suspect are paid actors and/or have been riled up by them."

I don't love this decision, but I think if you're willing to read between the lines here, it sounds like maybe he didn't have much of a choice. Then again, Torvalds also seems pretty happy to comply.

In other areas, sanctions don't always mean a complete ban. For example, Ian Nepomniachtchi is still allowed to play chess internationally, just not under the Russian flag. This seems needlessly putative unless there are legitimate security concerns.

[-] aidan@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

Yep, my reading of the law is the ban is specifically to do with "providing software services to Russians" and somehow collaborating on open-source software would be that. But I don't entirely understand how.

[-] antihumanitarian@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago

I haven't gone through all their work, but some of the delisted maintainers were working on driver support for Baikal, a Russia based electronics company. Their work includes semiconductors, ARM processors. Given the sanctions against Russia, especially for dual use stuff like domestic semiconductors, I would expect that Linus and other maintainers were told or concluded that by signing off and merging their code they'd be personally violating sanctions.

[-] aidan@lemmy.world 1 points 2 years ago

https://lore.kernel.org/all/7ee74c1b5b589619a13c6318c9fbd0d6ac7c334a.camel@HansenPartnership.com/

Yes I would agree, but its unclear if this again means all Russians who are employed by any company. Because all Russian companies are sanctioned

[-] mlg@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

I wonder if there is any merit to this or if the government actually suspects or believes there is a large risk giving certain maintainers access.

I could actually see NSA protecting Linux with reasonable intentions, but I could also just see the whitehouse making dumbass moves because some shmuck wants credit for "securing" something.

Either way, I don't think it's large enough that it's much of an issue.

[-] aidan@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

I don't think this is about security implications, but I may be wrong. My understanding is this is related to the export sanctions, meant to hamper the Russian economy.

[-] mlg@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

That seems weird considering anyone can easily access and fork it if they want.

Reminds me of the old crypto algorithm export laws which fell apart for the same reason. Now curve25519 is even in FIPS as the default next to the NIST curve.

this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024

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