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.

  • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    314·
    2 months ago

    Does everyone here just not understand how international sanctions work?

    As someone with a STEM degree in a STEM field, I’m consistently bummed out by how clearly silo’d my colleagues’ educations were. It is so plainly obvious as soon as you try to have a conversation with them about anything outside of their area of expertise.

    And don’t bother trying to correct or teach them anything, because in their minds, they’re smarter than you, and you have nothing worthwhile to teach them.

    This thread is full of software engineers with just no concept of how society functions, or even a basic understanding of the geopolitical context of any of this.

    • winterayars@sh.itjust.works
      10·
      2 months ago

      I mean, if you’re in a STEM field you really should understand how sanctions work because they matter to your work and, thus, to you.

    • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubOPEnglish
      110·
      2 months ago

      This thread is full of software engineers with just no concept of how society functions, or even a basic understanding of the geopolitical context of any of this.

      The whole idea of open source is that you can contribute without restrictions and regardless where you live.

      • Auli@lemmy.caEnglish
        8·
        2 months ago

        That is not the whole idea. The whole idea is you can see the source code. There are plenty of Open source projects that are only one person and they don’t except help from anyone.

      • JackbyDev@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        2 months ago

        I don’t think free software/open source has ever guaranteed the ability to maintain a specific project. Only the freedom to modify the software. They haven’t been stripped of that core freedom from the GPL which is the closest thing there to what I think you’re talking about.

        • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubOPEnglish
          11·
          2 months ago

          They have been stripped of a role because of a thing that has nothing to do with their competence to contribute to the project. Quality of code is all that matters in open source, not who you are or who you work for.

            • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubOPEnglish
              1·
              2 months ago

              The reality is that there are many other wars around the world, yet the Russians are the only ones getting sanctioned. They should set an example by sanctioning everyone that currently works for a company that enables any military. Maybe then the world will see how stupid this whole thing is.