This will be a nothing burger in 6 months
Damn there are a surprising number of maintainers that are comrades and not taking this lying down from the western supremacist cohort.
Linus opened up a massive can of worms and turned this into a geopolitical conflict by acting like a baby.
This comment by Hantong Chen is great:
Hi James,
Here’s what Linus has said, and it’s more than just “sanction.”
Moreover, we have to remove any maintainers who come from the following countries or regions, as they are listed in Countries of Particular Concern and are subject to impending sanctions:
- Burma, People’s Republic of China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.
- Algeria, Azerbaijan, the Central African Republic, Comoros, and Vietnam.
For People’s Republic of China, there are about 500 entities that are on the U.S. OFAC SDN / non-SDN lists, especially HUAWEI, which is one of the most active employers from versions 5.16 through 6.1, according to statistics. This is unacceptable, and we must take immediate action to address it, with the same reason.
I mean, if Linus had given a more professional commentary, this whole drama definitely wouldn’t be so loud, but we have what we have.
What were Linus comments that precipitated this?
The rage comes from LF actions and Linus words. All they had to do was to say: Thank you people for your contribution but we have no other choice, this is the law. But they did quite the opposite and Linus showed his true ugly white western supremacy face for all to see. That is the cause of the rage.
Removed by mod
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.No clue how all this shakes out. Not real invested in this ideological/bureaucratic slap fight.
It’s always entertaining when Linus flames off.
https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linus-Torvalds-Russian-Devs
tl;dr: anyone who disagrees is a russian troll or a useful idiot, according to the linux man
Holy shit that got spicy. I was not expecting a Ukrainian and a Serb to start bickering back and forth while stacking racks over the level of support a country gave to the Nazis in WW2 on a kernel mailing list like they were in the comments here on Lemmy.
I get that tensions are high, and for many people the geopolitical reality is their homes being used as cover on an active front line, but like bro your actual fucking name is attached to these messages. At least I keep my most unhinged shit on a semi-anonymous platform. They need to lock it the fuck up.
Edit - jfc, a few messages later somebody comes in with something along the lines of “Taiwan isn’t a country, it’s part of China. When reunification comes sanctions won’t be appropriate against Chinese entities.” Is Lemmy just a front end for this mailing list and I had no idea this entire time?
At least I keep my most unhinged shit on a semi-anonymous platform.
🔥
I thought you were joking, but yup they actually started quizzing eachother on WW2.
It’s not the end of Linux by any means, but that’s gonna be hard to work together afterwards
Jeeeeez that was a lot. I get the sense that the kernel has worked as well as it has because people saw it as separate from geopolitics and so didnt discuss them…now that politics has wedged its way in I feel like it may have opened that door permanently.
I’m optimistic, since technical arguments can be pretty heated yet they end like this:
deleted by creator
If you think kernel maintainers are ‘techbros’ then you dont really understand that term
does anyone?
if you live in the bay area, youd understand who works in tech, and whose a tech bro, very easily.
Living and working in silicon valley for 20 years and then moving to Austin and then Chicago has shown me the reality of how much of a bubble that the Bay Area is.
Nothing translates and tech bro there has a VERY different meaning outside of it.
No
After Linus’ statement, I can’t be sure any more that Linux is free of NSA code… Sad times…
Dude, it’s common knowledge that NSA has contributed significant portions of (security related) code to the kernel. No tin foil hat required.
They also tried to put weak encryption in the kernel once.
I’m convinced that they did it under the radar.
You mean like SELinux or other existing contributions to the linux kernel?
Just so odd how they went about the whole thing. Such an uncalculated way to do things.
Why not wait until you have all your explanations in order backed by lawyers before doing the release? Why did they shit on the carpet first and then explained their reasons afterwards after lots of horrible attempts at justifications that completely missed the point.
It’s blatantly obvious and non-controversial what they’re doing. That’s why.
It is not good for the kernel and it’s team to suddenly have to kowtow to Usamerican politics.
Suddenly? Linux entities have always had to follow the rules of the country they exist in. A kernel isn’t a sovereign nation no matter how loud the what-about army becomes.
The reality is that the Linux Foundation is in the United States, and Linus is a naturalized US citizen who lives in Oregon (at least on Wikipedia). So they both will have to pay attention to avoid transacting business with individuals and companies on the SDN list. That is the law in the United States.
What an extremely dangerous place to domicile such an important project.
And it can cost you up to 30 years for breaking it. I’d listen to my lawyers too.
Kreg moved to Europe, last I heard. So at least the heir apparent is in a region with better potential international diplomacy and neutrality.
Inheritance wars wasn’t something on my FOSS list…
Western Europe has committed to making itself an American dependency. This same thing would eventually repeat there but with different aesthetics.
Would a fork be the solution to avoid having a system that is crucial for people worldwide cease to be a weapon at the hands of merrican politicians?
It’ll be at the hands of whatever jurisdiction the forker is in. It’s not like you can escape governments.
brazilian linux fork when?
This kind of thing is the inevitable outcome of US policy to “decouple”, which they are pushing. Take something they nominally control, kick out every designated enemy / enemy collaborator, and then watch as an alternative pops up among the " enemy" and ban its purchase or use.
I’m afraid that if the sanctions will continue to be a go-to method of dealing with geopolitical rivals, we may end up with a few divergent forks. One for US and “the west” block, one for Chinese comrades with their junior Russian partners, and maybe one for Indian code gurus who don’t like both sides and have capable engineering resources themselves.
Real question: does India contribute anything to the kernel?
Could be. Maybe not a hard fork, if this slap fight can be contained in the driver space. I’d keep an eye on OpenHarmony and OpenKylin.
Thank you for that! I was perplexed since I’ve been in the Linux space for 25 years and I was thinking that I would have to switch to bsd.
If you think BSDs are devoid of drama you’re in for a cold shower…
Switch to OpenBSD if you have to, at least the drama there is super funny
Would a fork be technically viable if Americans and American businesses can’t participate (because the fork works with SDN entities)? Maybe.
I’m guessing most IoT devices are made in China (or increasingly Southeast Asia), so yes.
Then they should try to free themselves from it.
And governments should wise up and exempt them from any kind of petty stuff.
In the balance between geopolitical conflicts and Linux, the latter is the petty stuff.
This is not something that needs balance.
And they have quite different kinds of petty:
When Linus gets petty, then there’s a proper rant, somebody gets red in the face (but you don’t get to see the pics), and some news interns can write headlines.
When politicians get petty, then people in foreign countries are killed.
Someone has forked Linux https://github.com/Cqinux/cinux
Linus Torvalds has been sold out to big tech companies like Google and Microsoft. He himself is a billionaire and no longer writes any code.
I can’t take that seriously
Yeah a dozen or so commits updating readme files isn’t exactly compelling stuff. Any of us could do this in five minutes on GitHub.
Doesn’t Linux already have a bunch of forks? I’m using the CachyOS kernel, for example
That’s true, but how much hard-forks do you know?
Relevant, maintained? Zero.
