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Phoronix: Several Linux Kernel Driver Maintainers Removed Due To Their Association To Russia
(www.phoronix.com)
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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Does invading your neighbor count as international collaboration? Not that all Russian people can be held directly responsible for the actions of their government.
@theunknownmuncher The US has been involved in probably 300 regime changes throughout the world, has invaded many countries, including those that we were not affiliated with. Russia invades a neighboring country when we install a leader that is going to allow us to put missiles on their border. I really hate to see political hegemony get in the way of a good collaborative effort, we all suffer for it if we allow this.
Absolutely fair point. I agree with you on this portion of your comment.
there is simply no meaningful response to this
no matter whether you think russia is justified in invading ukraine or not, if russians get banned from the kernel bc russia invaded ukraine, yankees have to get the boot as well
You should read the article because this is not a thing that has occurred, at least not yet.
my understanding was that the kernel didn't publicly state any specific reason, but "complying to sanctions" semms like a safe bet to me
in any case, whatever the reason, this removal is unfortunate and uncalled for
@bunitor I'd agree, but on this same basis with all the conflicts in the world you'd have to expand this to about 99% of the globe.
YUP
so... maybe nobody should be banned and it sucks that this happened?
@bunitor That would be my take. My take is that as individuals we are were international cooperation needs to begin, it isn't going to happen with our governments, at least it never has historically.
You do realize that the US has invaded far more countries than Russia has, do burgerlanders have no self awareness at all?
@yogthos @theunknownmuncher I am in the US and I realize this. There was a funny meme a while back about look how aggressive Russia is, they put their country all around our military bases. Unfortunately there is a lot of truth in that. What other country has military bases throughout the world?
I'm sure removing these maintainers would be of great help to the Ukrainian war effort...
More seriously: We need to help Ukraine more. But this doesn't do that. It just hurts a bunch of people (both the maintainers, and the people using their code) for no benefit whatsoever.
The biggest help the west could've done for Ukraine was to fuck off when the Istanbul negotiations were happening two months into the war.
100% agree with you! Like I said, I don't think we can hold all Russian people directly responsible for the actions of their government.
I wish for an ideal world where politics could stay out of Linux, but this is extremely tricky and cannot be treated black and white. Labeling things as "political" and then crying to keep "politics" out of things is often used as a weapon for exclusion, for example by sexuality or race, and I think exclusion should be anathema for Linux and open source projects.
I think the general idea is to create as much drain on Russia as possible. Limit there ability to import and export good while creating brain drain and terrible moral.
How many Russians have defected at this point? Spoiler is a decent amount.
How's that working you for y'all there?
oh and spoiler, welcome to the real world https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/russia-relocation-emigration-return-reasons/
Aside from the fact that it's pretty insane to suggest to kick someone off a project for no reason other than their nationality (the article doesn't say any of these maintainers supported the invasion or had any ties with the government), even if these people actively supported the government, as far as kernel development is concerned... I don't really care? If their contributions are good then I want their patches to be merged. Tor was made by the US government, which I in no way condone, but I still use Tor.
Ehh they keep saying we are not involved we are not whatever. You can only say that so long. I mean the soldiers are coming from somewhere these are not people grown in vats.
It's a little unclear what you mean, like because more than half a million Russian soldiers have already been killed so far and yet the war keeps going, that the people must be responsible for supporting?
Russia is conscripting, so most are not there by choice but required by law. If you draft dodge and get caught, you go to prison, and still just end up on the frontline anyway, since they are emptying their prisons to use as soldiers, too. And these people will be shot and killed by their own side if they attempt a retreat, while fed propaganda and misinformation about their treatment if they surrender. There has been significant human trafficking to support their war effort. They've also depended heavily on mercenary forces outside of their military in order to have skilled soldiers, and are now even receiving soldiers from North Korea in order to continue fighting.
Besides that, there are so many factors that go into why a person would decide to join the military and in reality, they are usually economic ones or from extensive propaganda.