linux: Goodbye from a Linux community volunteer
lore.kernel.org

Official statement regarding recent Greg’ commit 6e90b675cf942e from Serge Semin

Hello Linux-kernel community,

I am sure you have already heard the news caused by the recent Greg’ commit 6e90b675cf942e (“MAINTAINERS: Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements.”). As you may have noticed the change concerned some of the Ru-related developers removal from the list of the official kernel maintainers, including me.

The community members rightly noted that the quite short commit log contained very vague terms with no explicit change justification. No matter how hard I tried to get more details about the reason, alas the senior maintainer I was discussing the matter with haven’t given an explanation to what compliance requirements that was. I won’t cite the exact emails text since it was a private messaging, but the key words are “sanctions”, “sorry”, “nothing I can do”, “talk to your (company) lawyer”… I can’t say for all the guys affected by the change, but my work for the community has been purely volunteer for more than a year now (and less than half of it had been payable before that). For that reason I have no any (company) lawyer to talk to, and honestly after the way the patch has been merged in I don’t really want to now. Silently, behind everyone’s back, bypassing the standard patch-review process, with no affected developers/subsystem notified - it’s indeed the worse way to do what has been done. No gratitude, no credits to the developers for all these years of the devoted work for the community. No matter the reason of the situation but haven’t we deserved more than that? Adding to the GREDITS file at least, no?..

I can’t believe the kernel senior maintainers didn’t consider that the patch wouldn’t go unnoticed, and the situation might get out of control with unpredictable results for the community, if not straight away then in the middle or long term perspective. I am sure there have been plenty ways to solve the problem less harmfully, but they decided to take the easiest path. Alas what’s done is done. A bifurcation point slightly initiated a year ago has just been fully implemented. The reason of the situation is obviously in the political ground which in this case surely shatters a basement the community has been built on in the first place. If so then God knows what might be next (who else might be sanctioned…), but the implemented move clearly sends a bad signal to the Linux community new comers, to the already working volunteers and hobbyists like me.

Thus even if it was still possible for me to send patches or perform some reviews, after what has been done my motivation to do that as a volunteer has simply vanished. (I might be doing a commercial upstreaming in future though). But before saying goodbye I’d like to express my gratitude to all the community members I have been lucky to work with during all these years.

  • basmati@lemmus.orgEnglish
    2315·
    21 days ago

    Individual random people are not mentioned in the sanctions and have little to nothing to do with the state, just like the US. The foundation kicking out US maintainers during the Iraq war when the US was indiscriminately killing over a million Iraqi civilians would have been equally ridiculous.

    So no, they don’t and shouldn’t have assumed this is due to sanctions. It’s free software they volunteering to help. There is no profit motive. They are not state actors. And most importantly to you,not all Russians are bad evil whatever slur you want to call them, you racist.

    • kitnaht@lemmy.world
      2023·
      21 days ago

      Linux has a lot of cryptography related to it, so yeah - it’s sanctions related. And these maintainers were all people who were contributing from within Russia or have ties to Russia.

      The Russian troll tactic of calling someone racist to get them to back down from an argument is hilarious so I’m gonna just go ahead and agree with you. I’m racist against war. I’m racist against human suffering. Oh no, I’m such a racist. Oh no whatever will I do?

      Oh that’s right, I’m gonna live my life and be happy about opposing Russian aggression against the Ukrainian people! Slava Ukraini

      • davel@lemmy.mlEnglish
        146·
        20 days ago

        The Russian troll tactic of calling someone racist

        Oh, are you an expert on Russian troll tactics? No, you are not. What you are is a conspiracy theorist.

        Frankly I’m losing my patience with this lazy, bullshit, thought-terminating cliché.

      • basmati@lemmus.orgEnglish
        137·
        20 days ago

        Good for you, these people, like yourself, have nothing to do with the Russian state, assuming so because of their race and nationality is racist.

        Thanks for playing, conservative.

          • untoasted@toast.oooEnglish
            83·
            20 days ago

            Living in a place does not mean you have anything to do with the Russian state, assuming otherwise due to someone’s race is racist.

            • kitnaht@lemmy.world
              23·
              20 days ago

              Russia gets sanctioned. That means all its inhabitants as well. Too bad, so sad.

          • kitnaht@lemmy.world
            31·
            20 days ago

            Wow, good job mods! I linked the proof that he was in Russia and you guys delete it, niiiiiice.

      • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubOPEnglish
        83·
        20 days ago

        I’m racist against war. I’m racist against human suffering. Oh no, I’m such a racist. Oh no whatever will I do?

        It would be nice to also be racist against the Israel/Palestine conflict as well… or any other conflict, wouldn’t you agree?

        • kitnaht@lemmy.world
          32·
          20 days ago

          It’s weird how you somehow managed to single that one thing out, even though my comments already included it. That’s so silly. It’s almost like you have some sort of agenda or something…

          • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubOPEnglish
            42·
            20 days ago

            I may not have noticed all of your comments, I was only quoting from this one, which doesn’t mention anything else but Russia/Ukraine conflict. On the other hand, I mentioned “conflicts in general”.

            And cryptographic data has nothing to do with the sanctions, the sanctions are purely monetary investment related, which also has nothing to do with intellectual investment, but LF decided to include that anyway, just so that they be “good little soldiers” and not get in any legal problems.