Hm i never coded a line in my life, but i always wondered so honest question to the experts here: is it realistic that someone codes security back doors so hidden in other bad or wrong documented code, that nobody recognizes it in OSS community? I mean code is getting more complicated and specialized, dont you need more and more human resources (more than one person and hopefully not all with a bad intention) to check over that code? If im correct you shouldnt let more code into your software than the community is able to check an validate several times… Doesnt mean it has to be russians that need to be excluded idk
There will be a million security issues across all OSS. Some of it will be intentional; if so definitely don’t expect it to be a “findable” back door. It will be a set of vulnerabilities across several projects, that when combined allow the perpetrators privilege-escalations or a known path through a security system. Removing “Russians” from contribution doesn’t actually stop that, everyone can use a VPN and work as an American or whatever, but it does send a signal.
fremdscham++😬Free as in… obeys US foreign policy
Everyone who disagrees with me is a paid russian troll of course. Nobody would oppose blacklisting people based on nothing but their nationality unless they were getting paid for it.
He’s gonna ban american and “israeli” maintainers too then, I guess?
Shame to see this shit from torvalds
I’d really like to see the criteria for delisting people, though. As Russia is not the only one waging wars, there are worse countries out there. I guess it all boils down to Linus being from Finland.
Yeah the kernel might end up being forked if this shit keeps going. Sanctions affecting open source software like this was not something I expected…
Linus has never been the best communicator, but he usually speaks the truth. But this is just bonkers and wrong. Not everyone living in Russia has “ties with Russia” other than “they were born there”. If this is about sanctions, he could have still just told them that. But instead he just disrespected contributors completely and then double down in it by being xenophobic.
It’s really disappointing seeing Russian contributors being disrespected like this, the regime that rules Russia wasn’t entirely their fault, and allegiance, nationality, and ethnicity are all clearly different things
Also, wouldn’t a state sponsored Russian hacker pretend to be from the US or something anyway? No way they’d contribute code as a Russian, that’d just increase others’ suspicion
I agree with Linus a lot too but I strongly disagree here. I hope he’s just being made to say this because of government policies
And the most dangerous part here is the whole rethoric of “if you disagree, you are a Russian shill”.
I don’t understand how sanctions can impact free software, tbh, what’s free about this? This leaves a weird taste, I have to admit.
Man, I wish he’d leave the communication to someone else. He is so, so bad at it. And this isn’t the first time
The way he attacks critics puts himself in a bad light. But much more importantly, I read this and am still unsure if he has administrative/legal reason, security reasons or political reasons…
If I’d work in Russian propaganda, I’d love this so much. Hope this will not cause disruption in the community.
the comments on the article started off pretty good but pretty quickly devolved into a cancerous combination of NAFO and Hasbara.
so are we okay with banning development time donated to foss because of nationality?
are these people found to support heinous shit or is this just wartime shenanigans?
Dude is Finnish, from his own mouth, it’s just normal racism against an aggressive imperial, like how people hate the us
finland has pretty bad, climate-change-exploitation-fucking-over-the-third-world dealings in my country, despite enforcing seemingly very good stuff inside their own borders so meh, id argue they aint close to the victims they make out to be. some would argue that as a consequence for having a strong socialist influence.
i have mixed feelings about them as a country, but i recognize there are plenty of good (and even well known good) people on there because of the aforementioned good stuff, linus included. for different but not that dissimilar reasons i think contemporary russian citizens should not be blanket banned from helping everyone out.
Banning Israeli contributers too?
No, it’s not like Israel is attacking its neighbors. It doesn’t, does it?
They would never!
ALL of them? Not at once. Usually.
One of the worst news I’ve read lately.
Why aren’t Israeli maintainers removed? Oh because linux is basically owned by IBM now.
The linux kernel isn’t free anymore. It’s open source, but not free.
I was expecting an adequate response, but this… I’ll just say I’m very disappointed.
Wow, some real clown behavior from Linus.
