“Those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it”. Back when Pearl Harbor happened, people started to see japanese citizens as enemies. Not solely the Japanese government to that time, but even the humble japanese, even if those had despises against their government. Almost a century after, humanity is making the exact same thing, this time involving Russians and Ukrainians, as well as Israeli and Palestinians (exactly, “both sides”). Like how it happened back in Pearl Harbor, the prejudice extended all the way to STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Medical), the subject of this community and thread.
I was born a Brazilian, without my consent. Also, without my consent, there is this thing called “Brazilian politics”. I hate both the current and the former governments. I have no money nor conditions to simply leave the country but even if I did, I’d stay born as a Brazilian. Everyone who meets a Brazilian readily asks things such as “how’s carnival, how’s samba, how’s football, how’s Neymar”. Being a Brazilian necessarily mean that I have to like those things? Being a Brazilian necessarily mean that I consented to the current politics within this country? If Lula is sided with Putin, does it necessarily mean that me, a Brazilian citizen unknown to Lula or the entire government (I’m just one among 220 million people), endorse him as well? Should I blame myself for my entire life for being born Brazilian? Should a Russian do the same? An Ukrainian? An Israeli? An Palestinian?
Linus is from Finland. Finns barely tolerate Russians under usual circumstances. These are not usual circumstances.
If he did that that would have been genuine discrimination. If he has to do it now because of sanctions, then ok fine. But otherwise I don’t want to see an open source project treating people differently based on where they were born.
Come on lemmy, how is this pro-racism comment upvoted so many times? Please, think.
“Russian” is not a race.
Oh no, the treaty-breaking, nuke-threatening, war-crime-committing invading force is being discriminated against!
Holy shit, gtfo. Maybe don’t be an actual cunt if you don’t want people to “discriminate” against you? The guy didn’t even fire all Russians, only those tied to sanctioned companies. He did less than should’ve been done. But that’s only because what should be done to Russia at this point is assassinating their leader, disarming the country, executing the army, installing a puppet government that ensures economic and military inferiority, and selling tickets to piss on Putins grave for the rest of the world to blow off some steam.
Edit: here’s a view from a Russian, maybe that helps:
I feel the same way about Americans.
We’ll let you know as soon as we find a reason to respect your malformed opinion.
Look as long as your a NATO nation, we’re a perfectly peaceful and reasonable super power with a military that would scorch the earth to ash within 24 hours.
It is genuine xenophobia. I like in Poland, and its like you’re either a homophobe, or a xenophobe- with pretty limited inbetween. (And there are plenty of people who are both)
And Russians are peaceophobes? 😆
Ah yes. Russia. A paragon of moral societal standards and behavior.
Linus’s dad was a Finnish communist and lived in USSR for some time, one can say a VIP person. You actually lack the context to realize how important this is. Many people of such connections (not accusing Linus, no) are usually still connected to Russia’s regime more than, ahem, me. The documents about just whom that encompasses are still secret in Russian archives. Well, technically one can get a permission, but random people are refused it.
Finns barely tolerate Russians under usual circumstances.
Yes, we know that, massacring Russian civilian population during 1917-1918 and then doing that David-n-Goliath thing in the Winter War, which is the only thing they want to remember, and then 1941-1945 with Finnish troops participating in the blockade of Lengingrad and making concentration camps for civilian population, again.
I don’t get how that should work in Linus’s favor, though.
Oh, and also during the Cold War the foreign country most integrated into USSR’s MIC was Finland. Not something of the Warsaw Pact ones, but Finland.
You’re telling me they barely tolerated building warships for USSR, right? Poor guys.
And then people in the Interwebs are asking why some average Russian doesn’t go and rebel or blow up FSB buildings or something. I wonder the fuck why.
That’s why.
Just so we’re clear, your opinion is that Russians working for sanctioned companies should remain as maintainers of the kernel because Torvalds is a Finn and that he’s obligated to Russia because “Finland bad”?
So, therefore, Putin can and should exploit access to the kernel via these Russian maintainers because Finland is somehow historically worse than the USSR?
Am I misunderstanding you?
No, just that things said are inconsistent and partially wrong
Fool blocked.
True he could have banned them long ago, it’s his project in the end, but he didn’t, he only did it after the sanctions
Sound like they are racists to me
I mean, that’s like calling a Native American racist for disliking European (white) Americans. Like sure, technically, but aren’t there some underlying issues at play that make the feeling more justified.
Technically America belongs to Native Americans and the occupation of their soil is still going but you don’t hear racists tantrums against europeans. Perhaps you should study Native American culture i believe you can get something from it.
I think many racists do in fact say Native Americans are throwing racist tantrums when they work towards gaining even the most basic of human rights.
I wouldn’t want to have FSB agents maintaining my open source either.
Source that any of them were?
The article we’re talking about?
Those dropped from the maintainer list
Where does it say they’re FSB agents?
Maintainers is a unnecessarily nice word for trolls.
He obviously meant the people commenting online, not the maintainers
? The maintainers are being banned
And non-maintainers are trollishly trying to circumvent or reverse the ban.
Shit-in-the-poolers
You know. I don’t like what the Russian leadership and military are doing. I feel like ultimately we’re in the cold war era. But you know, at the height of the cold war, radio operators around the world still worked Russian stations.
Yes, there was a very clear policy, neither side talked about ANYTHING beyond their signal report and working conditions (information about radio, power output and aerial basically). At the height of the actual cold war, the individuals were not cancelled like this.
Sanction the leadership, sanction the money, and sanction the military. But the normal people that are subject to the propaganda? I don’t understand the benefit in doing this. I also don’t see how the sanctions effect an open source project…
Seems a bit weird. Maybe there’s information we’re not privy to, but on the face of it, just based on what we’re seeing. Seems like a very very odd move.
I don’t understand the benefit in doing this.
Security. Torvalds did this for security.
Is it really that hard to parse?
And I’ll say the same here as I did above. If it was for security, their code is tainted too. It’s an arbitrary reaction that is not complete as a solution to anything.
They can check existing code. You have to be able to trust people who are contributing.
They can check new code by these risky people as it comes in, but it why risk it?
You can’t untaint code if the tainters (lol that sounds funny) can still edit the code.
If Torvalds is correct (he is), patching can now take place for vulnerabilities.
Good point!
Well it seems it was more to do with sanctions, if the open letter from one of the chopped developers is to be believed. In which case, I think the right thing is to move the names to contributors (they did still contribute), remove them from maintainers (some maintainers are actually paid by the foundation, I mean not a lot, but some are paid).
I still find it all a little odd. But likely there was a bit of a prod from somewhere higher as to how sanctions should be followed.
don’t understand the benefit in doing this.
FSB wants backdoor in kernel. FSB notices subsystem maintainer is Russian, lives in Chelyabinsk. Can close eyes to backdoor, can pretend to review. FSB in Moscow makes call to FSB in Chelyabinsk telling them to buy heavy wrench at hardware store.
Same could be said for any intelligence service . it is better to focus on preventing and detecting these things through analysis and code reviews.
And they could just offer boatloads of cash to someone in another country to insert something so this doesn’t really prevent anything it only isolates a certain subset of people.
So if we can’t completely 100% deal with a problem, we shouldn’t even try? I mean, you’re correct, but we can’t solve all problems at once. If we deal with at least one, then we’ve made progress. Then we can try to deal with the next one.
No but this doesn’t do anything to “deal” with the problem as anyone can built up trust like Jian tan showed. The argument that this makes us more secure is like saying closed source is more secure cause the hackers dont have access to the source.
We have evidence of the US messing with nist standards so by that same logic should we assume all us actors are bad ?
The solution is to verify the code maybe have multiple people from different locations have to review stuff. Build more checks into the process.
We have evidence of the US messing with nist standards
What… You realize that NIST is literally a government agency? It’s part of the United States Department of Commerce. It’s literally the US government. Are you saying that the government is messing with itself? What does that even mean?
If that were true, surely they’d not trust ANY of their existing work, or at least any done since the Special War Operation. Wouldn’t that make sense?
They’ve left the code, and removed the people arbitrarily. Seems a bit off to me.
I don’t think this only happens now, governments like Russia, USA, China, Israel will likely always be making these attempts.
I am on your side and don’t understand the fury of down votes in this section regarding this stance. I am from a shit hole of a country too and if my life long contribution to open science (hypothetically speaking) could be so completely disregarded because of something ultra shitty that my country did, I would be super sad and probably mad at the OS community for leaving me behind so quickly.
I also don’t understand the benefit of doing this. Most people seem to claim it’s for security reasons but that does not make sense to me. Closing doors to someone without any proof if malintent is so against open source philosophy that it is perhaps more damaging in its core. And being the kind of government Russia is (or for that matter Israel, China, USA etc etc) they will always try to gain cyber war advantage by such methods. This approach is therefore clearly unsustainable. You would have to restrict dev access to only a handful of countries in the world.
It sure as hell won’t scratch a dent in the Russian government’s armor when all these sanctions did not. It is not going to achieve 1/1000th of what all those ambargoes, frozen accounts etc failed to achieve too.
Therefore there is either missing information (external pressure to take this action) or this is simply an action based on personal judgement.
Therefore there is either missing information (external pressure to take this action) or this is simply an action based on personal judgement.
Looking at the other post about NVidia drivers, I am starting to wonder if western governments (or perhaps just the US) are going after large orgs and suggesting how current sanctions should be interpreted. In which case, not sure I can then blame the Linux foundation, since you know, you don’t need government heavy breathing down your neck.
Just goes to show that even a legend can act like an idiot.
I mean he’s legally obligated to, not really a choice. He can say screw it, but then he opens himself up to legal troubles.
Like not risking his lifelyhood to fight US and EU sanctions against a genocidal regime?
I agree with the person you’re replying to in the sense that Linus’s decision is OK, but the delivery could be less “idiotic”. This could be a different message entirely. Even a cold “Yes we have some things happening. Can’t tell more for now” would’ve been fine.
I’m Finnish. Did you think I’d be supporting Russian aggression?
Where did that come from? Sir this is a kernel mailing list. Why the nationality chest beating? I’m Polish and I have a smirk all day on November 4 but it’s just so childish from Linus.
You can look at the thread. The initial one got a lot of replies from a “Vladimir Putin” saying “You should kill yourself NOW!”. The Git commit is even worse, with the a lot of insults. Not what usually happens on that kind of places, not that they are always kind and lovely.
Exactly. He obviously isn’t the one pushing for this, because if he was, he would’ve done it when the war started (or even before). That said, as a Finn, he doesn’t have any reason to stand up for Russians, so when legal push comes to shove, there’s not a good argument for him pushing back.
He makes a habit of that tbh (See tivoization, etc)
Absolutely idiotic take that endangers not only Linux but fractures the concept of open source itself.
Was worth it just to see you morons fume
I think it’s a great change. But then again I’m not a lemmy.ml user.
Thinking this endangers Linux is pretty hilarious. Linux will be fine without a handful of Russian maintainers lol.
Go look at the principles of open-source or free software as defined either by the OSI and the FSF and then come back when you find the one that says that Linus needs to violate US sanctions to keep employees of Russian companies in trusted roles within his project.
It’s really awesome to expel by nationality, even of people who’ve long moved out and immigrated. /s
Honestly fuck Russia ofc, but this goes a bit too far into the grey area between hawkish-reasonable and discriminatory, and on the latter side I’m not sure who and/or what this is meant to help, not does it seem particularly fair to those individual contributors to keep their code yet remove attribution and mailing list entries.
Why are people so fundamentally incapable of nuanced judgement. According to people in this comment section, a human is entirely defined by their country of origin. What is this witch hunt level, toddler IQ thinking. Are people really so desperate to have a “bad guy” that they can blame everything on? This dehumanization of people is wild to me.
a human is entirely defined by their country of origin
This reeks of Americanism, yanks are absurdly obsessed with race and nationality
The irony of your comment is not lost on me.
But yeah if you were to measure a country by its loudest voices then that would be accurate.
Russia: The stupidest loudest voices since The Revolution
A “funny” joke in the US is asking a non-white person where they’re from and they respond with something like “Indiana”
Americans are fuckin idiots
source: at least two high viewership TV shows
Please tell me of this enlightened place you come from where racism and discrimination do not exist. Surely they also are accepting refugees and I need but apply? No?
Everyone but my tribe are _______. Hehe I’m so clever.
It’s just another self-hating American
What does this even mean? What TV shows are you even talking about? Indiana is a US state.
a human is entirely defined by their country of origin
That’s missing a big part of the justification here. When you’re from a given country, that country frequently has a lot of influence over you. You probably have family and other ties in your home country, and those can be used as leverage to get you to do what the state wants. And when your country is in active opposition to a large portion of the free world, it makes a lot of sense for people to be extra cautious in who they deal with, because it’s never clear if that person is being manipulated by their former state.
So excluding someone based on nationality can absolutely make sense as an easy rule of thumb to avoid most of the problems stemming from that state.
Should we exclude people from states actively fueling a genocide?
That’s completely unrelated to contribution to FOSS. The only way it would be relevant is for software projects that do some kind of filtering, so something like Lemmy might be an area where I’d hesitate to put someone from Israel, Gaza, Russia, or Ukraine into a maintainer/moderator/admin role because they could influence what content is viewed by users in a way that paints their country in a better light.
But someone from the US is fine?
The US also has some incentives here, but I’d say it’s far less likely to interfere than the ones I mentioned. As long as there’s enough variety (i.e. some people from the EU and other regions), it should be fine.
Would you agree it’s a good thing to avoid US software as they’ve incorporated secret surveillance into law through letters of national security to private companies?
And by extension, perhaps even shunning US citizens?
As a US citizen, I care less about where the software comes from, but who hosts that software, so I tend to use FOSS products and services, preferring to self-host where it’s not too annoying.
I don’t think anyone should shun citizens from any country, but we should be wary of trusting citizens from countries where the government has a larger influence. So we should be hesitant to trust people from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran (and a bunch of others, I’m just listing the official enemies of the US), especially if they still live in those countries. That doesn’t mean we should shun people from those countries (I have an awesome coworker from Iran), just that we should hesitate to put them into influential positions. I have no problem collaborating with people from any of those countries, I just think we should be a little extra careful when there’s a stronger incentive for their government to get involved (and manipulating Linux is attractive for pretty much every government, esp. my own).
I have no problem collaborating with people from any of those countries we should hesitate to put them into influential positions
“I’m an American, and therefore I’m better”
where the government has a larger influence
We’re literally talking about Linux Foundation making these changes to comply with requirements of your government.
We’re literally talking about Linux Foundation making these changes to comply with requirements of your government.
In leadership, not code. That’s a pretty big difference.
I also think we shouldn’t have people from the NSA, CIA, or FBI as maintainers either, because they have clear conflicts of interest. That said, I think it’s a lot less likely for the US government to extort a maintainer to let bad code through than the Russian government. It’s much more likely for the US government to try to hide bad code in the normal review process, and I’m sure that happens w/ Russian spy agencies as well, but allowing someone in a region that has demonstrated that they’re willing to strong-arm people into doing things that benefits the state (i.e. through threats or even outright force) to hold a maintainer position in a very influential piece of software isn’t a great idea, especially when their government is choosing to be an international pariah.
I have zero problem with Russians contributing code to the kernel, I just think it’s wise to remove Russian citizens from leadership positions to limit the impact of Russian interference in Linux development.
You are talking about hypothetical situations in the organization with around 2694 maintainers. What I find interesting, is that no one in this thread thought it would be good to check if these 11 already contributed something harmful. Instead, it’s just “good, we prevented a bad thing”.
Anyway, your extreme take “ban all Russians because what if” goes much further than what happened in reality (“ban Russians working for companies under sanctions”): https://social.kernel.org/objects/860ef93c-229b-4070-8ee6-cb80d1f51337
Have you even read the policy? “The people removed from maintainer positions were identified as employed by companies on the US and EU sanctions list. These companies are directly involved in the Russian military complex and therefore are directly complicit in war crimes being committed daily in Ukraine”. Racist? My ass.
This is not about the removed maintainers. Its about this comment section.
Because as long as the Russian state exists and can point to their “history” as an empire and use it as an excuse to take over their neighboring countries (like Latvia, the place where I’m from), I won’t be satisfied.
Unfortunately the nobody bombing Moscow yet, so anything that isolates and makes the population more angry and can hopefully topple the government is a good thing in my book
Yeah. Times like this I wonder whether a better world is even really possible, or whether social liberalisation was but a blip on a trajectory of bigotry, antagonism, tribalism and savagery.
Even in harmless contexts, the commodification of national identity as the first and foremost trait of a person even for the purposes of smalltalk or jest always makes me think if perhaps most are far more nationalist than they’d care to admit or even themselves think. It’s a haunting thought.
Have you ever wondered if a russian can get a non .ru domain, and still collaborate? .ru and .su tlds are directly controlled by the Russian state
One of the mainrainers had a gmail.
Yeah for sure. If that’s the basis then just block those domains. Unless I misunderstood, which is totally possible, it doesn’t seem like that’s the entire extent of the block.
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.
If they don’t want to get sanctioned and they’ve long migrated from Russia they should apply for citizenship elsewhere
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 gets 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 countries, 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.
I assume if the Russian maintainers showed that they’ve passed the citizenship examinations and their different citizenship is only a matter of time
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.
Russia represent Russian citizens the same way the US represent US citizens.
Lolwut. Russia isn’t even a democracy.
If you’re an US citizen and you think US international actions look bad on you then tough luck.
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.
Being a citizen of a specific state comes with its own responsibilities and consequences.
No, because being a citizen of a state is not a choice.
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?
Because they may have family there and prospects of being able to visit otherwise aren’t great.
If they choose to stay Russian citizens that’s on them.
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.
Tell me you’re a westerner without the least bit of awareness of how immigration works without telling me.
Nationality is too vague of a term because it can mean both citizen of a state and originating from said state.
No it really doesn’t.
Nationality is the legal status of belonging to a particular nation, defined as a group of people organized in one country, under one legal jurisdiction, or as a group of people who are united on the basis of culture.
In international law, nationality is a legal identification establishing the person as a subject, a national, of a sovereign state. It affords the state jurisdiction over the person and affords the person the protection of the state against other states.
Oh boy. I’ll respond only once and if you throw another wall of text I’m just fucking off.
Lolwut. Russia isn’t even a democracy.
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.
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.
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.
No, because being a citizen of a state is not a choice.
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.
Because they may have family there and prospects of being able to visit otherwise aren’t great.
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?
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.
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.
No it really doesn’t.
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:
As such nationality in international law can be called and understood as citizenship,[35] or more generally as subject or belonging to a sovereign state, and not as ethnicity.
responds with wall of text
“if you throw another wall of text I’m just fucking off.”
Cute.
I know in practice it isn’t but the only ones who realistically can turn it into an actual democracy are Russian people.
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–present)
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.
I don’t think we should give them an exception just because their country has gone to shit.
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.
It literally is. If it wasn’t a choice you couldn’t choose to become a citizen of a different state.
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:
Your initial citizenship isn’t a choice
doesn’t mean you can’t choose a different sex as you grow older.
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.
Or should I blame my diarrhea on you?
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.
The “don’t be poor” part of ILR is kinda stupid so if it’s that I get it
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.
have been regularly traveling in and out of the UK.
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 my point is that while getting a citizenship can be difficult, it is not impossible.
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.
As such nationality in international law can be called and understood as citizenship,[35] or more generally as subject or belonging to a sovereign state, and not as ethnicity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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?
I imagine the sanctions preventing them from working on Linux is the least of their problems
It’s even more problematic for users of Linux. Less maintainers.
True, but that’s because Linux is kind of in a bind due to this war, but Linux probably benefits more from aligning with the western powers rather than fight for a handful of maintainers. Not that Linus would fight for Russian maintainers.
Congratulation, you are part of the problem!
So what are we supposed to do?
Not sanction Russia?
Apply sanctions on an individual basis?
Apply sanctions on an individual basis?
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 😅)
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).
Are you under the impression I’m some kind of strategical genius of political negotiation?
The way you denigrate different opinions, it seems you may be the one to think that, actually.
That’s just the misanthropy leaking…
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?
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 agree, somethings shit just sucks. However, the other person said:
even of people who’ve long moved out and immigrated years ago and don’t support the invasion and war waged on Ukraine
Those people have already had the means, will or duty to move to another country. What’s their excuse for keeping the Russian citizenship?
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.
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?
Would you still love me if I was a giant moth?
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.
So it’s literally their decision to keep their citizenship and be sanctioned, but you’re still outraged about it?
Would you still love me if I was a giant moth?
I would definitely hate you less because I really hate trolls.
It’s besides the point because with the Linux kernel not only should it be a net-neutrality style project 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?
And you don’t seem to understand ~~
can we still trust .ru and .su domains?
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.
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 🤭
You sound surprised. Lemmy.world is the biggest propaganda instance on Lemmy but they’ll tell you it isn’t and it’s only propaganda when the other guys do it.
Nah, that honor definitely goes to lemmy.ml
Nah, pretty sure lemmygrad and hexbear are worse, but lemmy.ml is pretty terrible as well (and often more subtle).
They migrated to lemmy.ml because they kept getting blocked.
After browsing comments on this post I think there’s awful people on basically all instances.
True, but there’s a pretty big difference in terms of concentration.
It’s disappointing behavior by Linus. It’s understandable that sanctions could force the removal of people just for being Russia.
His reply however shows he personally is in favor of removing people just for being Russian.
I wonder if any of the people who pressured him to take some time off for being a “jerk” will give a shit for this response.
keep their code yet remove attribution
Isn’t that a violation of the GPL?
I thought it said expulsion of Russian Mountaineers so that was pretty confusing
It’s really such a shame that the mountaineers always take so much credit when the Linux sherpas do so much of the work.
He didn’t expel all Russians, just the ones working for sanctioned Russian companies.
russian economy after over 1k days of war is evaporized and putin now is Xis little dog. so if we all work together now nobody will remember a country called russia in 100 years. nations are just a phantasy and it wont hurt to let go of some.
Looks like it is about time for a hard fork maintained outside NATO countries.
The central project of open-source community closes doors to people based on nationality, and everyone is cheering…
Why? You seriously miss the implications of breaking the very basic principles of open source? You are ready to forgive literally anything if it is claimed to target Russia or Russians in any way?
For those of you who say about backdoors:
- US is known to create the most complicated spy networks with myriads of backdoors. Where are the bans of the US maintainers?
- Israel is a literal powerhouse of state-sanctioned spying software - Pegasus, as well as many less renowned programs, was created here. Any bans, anyone?
- China is known for invasive software. Maybe ban them all too?
The only reasonable way to avoid backdoors is to meticulously check the submitted code. Threat actors can be anywhere - and Russia is not some unique threat location, nor was it banned with that justification - just “compliance requirements”.
This is politics permeating the sacred place we all had. This is a giant threat to the community, and the way Linus framed it in his message is even more terrifying. This was never meant to happen.
I’m actually shocked by how people are acting about this.
You see, it’s actually a really bad thing to ban devs from an open source project based on nationality over all else. “Oh, but they are state actors!!!” How do you know? Because they are Russian?
OK, this is bs.
They’re not banning devs, they’re banning maintainers.
Russians can submit as many patches as they like for review, they just can’t sign off on their commits themselves.
Seems pretty fair to me.
It seems they’re not being removed because they’re Russian, but instead because they work for specific companies who are subject to US sanctions:
Exactly! Being Russian doesn’t mean having any political affiliation.
Moreover, even Russia the state is adopting Linux and is greatly disinterested in messing it up. If anything, this could really be the attack on Linux-reliant Russian infrastructure, but even then it most likely will be a reason for a fork, no more, no less.
I’m actually shocked
I’m not. Ever since the war, every single closet xenophobe of the west has been taking full advantage of finally having an acceptable group of subhumans to hate. If any of this surprises you, you haven’t been paying attention.
The comment right above you is fantasising about how America will have to disarm russia and execute the army and install a puppet government. It’s not that people don’t care about America, it’s that they cheer for it’s crimes.
Russians can still contribute code, don’t bundle those together just to have something to list. You are correct about pegasus, but this is about kernel and rights to commit without review.
Torvalds responses make clear he has spent too much time with the wrong people. Calling everyone paid actors is such an embarrassment to his own intelligence. When the linux kernel starts falling behind because of a lack of competent maintainers after banning any country that NATO isnt friends with, we will know that this is where it started and that people cheered.
Yeah, arguing that everyone disagreeing is a paid Russian troll is a cherry on top.
So you think Russian trolls wouldn’t want to spin this narrative? By virtue of what? Honor?
No, I just say that writing down any disagreement to the evil intentions of someone in power is extremely counterproductive.
There is plenty of people who are in sincere disagreement over this decision, and Linus just tries to silence them. This ain’t alright and leads to direct abuse of power.
This is literally a chapter of an authoritarian playbook.
Open source IP laws operate under the jurisdiction of the citizen’s country. What kind of principles do you think open source represents? Because if it’s about free movement of information and global collaboration, I’m pretty sure that pirates are the group that better represents those values
Arrrgh!
breaking the very basic principles of open source?
No, the basic principles of open source are either the four freedoms (if you agree w/ Stallman) or the OSI open source definition. Here are Stallman’s four freedoms:
- The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2).
- The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
Russians still have these freedoms WRT the Linux kernel. They can still run, study, and redistribute modified versions of the Linux kernel. There’s no violation here.
And the OSI definition is similar (and longer, so I won’t repeat it here).
No part of the definitions of open source or free software obligate a maintainer to work with anyone else, the only obligations are to the legal freedom of the code. Russians can still use, modify, and redistribute the software, they just aren’t allowed to have maintainer positions within the Linux foundation. They can still submit code, and it’s up to the maintainers if they choose to look at that code.
That said, I’m sad that it has come to this. I hate the idea of international politics interfering w/ FOSS, but I still maintain that it’s 100% fine for Linus Torvalds (and his legal counsel) to make this call. So I agree with the core of your argument, that politics interfering w/ FOSS is bad, but I disagree that it violates any part of the basic concept of FOSS, FOSS maintainers should always be able to decide who they work with, and the rest of the community gets to decide if they’re okay with that or if they’d rather follow someone else’s fork.
Fair on your part, I might’ve gone too far with my argument.
I was talking more about collaborative nature and what happens to it when the major open-surce project decides to gatekeep based on something highly arbitrary.
Linux is long past a simple hobby project, and it should be managed responsibly and with respect to the people that make this all happen.
Sure, the roots of FOSS came from collaboration, with people sharing code between universities and whatnot. But the process has always been “here are my changes, take them if you like.” So even the term “collaboration” is a bit of a stretch, since it was almost always a bunch of solo efforts and people would pull in the changes they like. The idea of any kind of structure to FOSS development was added later to help organize it, but the foundation was always someone working on a thing and then advertising those changes for others to pull, if they wanted.
A collaborative project would work something like Python where a core team decides which features to add (i.e. PEPs), and people on the dev team or the community at large would develop those features, and any development that’s not part of those approved features tend to be rejected until it goes through the review process.
Linux isn’t particularly collaborative in that sense, it’s more like the old-school FOSS development process where individual developers would build a thing, use it themselves, and then submit their changes for upstream consideration. I worked on a team where we maintained our own kernel patches separate from upstream for years before trying to submit them upstream, and every time we’d upgrade the kernel, we’d have to reapply the patches, occasionally fixing some things that had changed. The network of maintainers is largely a convenience for working in this more chaotic model, where maintainers are responsible for reviewing and passing along changes for a certain area of the kernel, they don’t actually guide development in any meaningful way.
So the main change here is that Russian contributors can still contribute, they just aren’t trusted as inner-circle reviewers. It’s still collaborative in the same sense that it has always been, there’s just a bit more scrutiny over which reviews to trust.
in today’s political landscape: genocide is acceptable and ignorable; progressives are dirty commies that you should ignore at all costs; and being russian is enough to get you kicked out of contributions to FOSS and all this comes from people who call themselves “liberal”.
A lemmy.ml user criticising others for supposedly believing genocide is acceptable. Remarkable.
Russia is committing a genocide in Ukraine.
Some sanctioned Russian companies can no longer have maintainers in the kernel. Boo fucking hoo.
And kicked out of all FOSS contributions? Why are you lying? Russians can still contribute.
The only reasonable way to avoid backdoors is to meticulously check the submitted code.
Which is the job of maintainers. Which now aren’t Russian, any more. To the best of my knowledge the kernel is still accepting code from Russian citizens, ultimately not having Russians in maintainer roles isn’t going to stop the FSB from infiltrating the kernel but it certainly does make it harder.
This also isn’t in any way a judgement on the removed people, it’s just that it so happens that if you’re a Russian citizen you’re quite vulnerable to wrench attacks. You could even say that the kernel org is protecting them from being used like that.
“Protective restrictions” is a code for discrimination. Or would you argue that not allowing, idk, women to vote is a good measure for protecting them against being violently coerced to vote one way or another?
(this is a random example, just a small mark so I wouldn’t be eaten alive)
I’m surprised how many people treat GPL to ignore borders. The IP law still operates only by the rules your country decides.
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.
The whole Grad is seething I’m loving it.
