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Red Hat is discontinuing sales and services in Russia and Belarus
- BaconPackets 5y agoThat is interesting. Red Hat is a major player within the telecom industry. I do wonder how support will work for Russian Telcos running VNF on Openstack. I assume that all contracts have some force majeure actions baked in.
- gremlinsinc 5y agoThat would presuppose that a NATO sanctioned company could sue companies that no longer due business in their country due to war, which I'm sure is probably a decent reason to terminate a contract. In other words: Russian businesses are just f**ed. The only option is - build your own tools, or use only russian based tools, services, etc - or go back to doing things in excel spreadsheets and paper/pen.
- patrickaljord 5y agoThey don't need to build their own tools in this case, they can just use https://almalinux.org/ https://almalinux.org/ which is the new CentOS, the redhat equivalent of open source. As for the need for tech support, these are local Russians so they should be ok.
- brandmeyer 5y agoThey can lobby their government to stop invading their neighbors.
- int_19h 5y agoTheir government will simply call them traitors and imprison them. I mean this most literally - even calling what's going on in Ukraine right now an "invasion" is already a crime in Russia.
- agul29 5y agoSaudis, Americans etc. don't have to. Why should they?
- brandmeyer 5y agoAmericans regularly protest warfare without fear of prosecution. American companies and individuals regularly avoid selling products to US-DOD and/or ICE. Witness the controversy surrounding Panantir, or DOD's JEDI project, for two recent examples. American companies and individuals regularly sanction Israel for its behavior in Palestine despite being one of our closest allies: witness the BDS movement.
- adenner 5y agoI think Microsoft also pulled out of Russia as well so Excel is off the table as well.
- MrDisposable 5y agoLibreOffice is a decent replacement.
- tssva 5y agoCanonical self-submitted one of their blog posts the other day proclaiming that OpenStack isn't dead. One of their examples was the deployment of Canonical's OpenStack version by the Russian telco MTS. I heard a peep from them regarding their plans to continue operations in Russia.
- cyberpunk 5y agoDeutsche Telekom's public cloud is running it also...
- siskiyou 5y agoIf software vendors want to really turn the screws on Russian aggression, I have a suggestion: break license checks from Russia. Microsoft Windows, Office, Sharepoint, looking at you in particular. Delicense existing installations.
- gruez 5y ago>Delicense existing installations. "WTF I love online activation DRM now!"
- dtech 5y agoafaik piracy is already rampant. I expect if this is done the government would just officially stop respecting copyright of companies that do this.
- akulbe 5y agoNot only is it rampant, Russia is looking at making it legal, so I'm not sure how much effect breaking the license checks would have.
- rosndo 5y agoGood luck managing updates for your entirely pirated software stack.
- ChuckNorris89 5y agoOut of curiosity, will Windows and Mac users in Russia stop receiving OS updates as part of the sanctions? That would definitely expose them to hacking and malware and hurt them big time. Then again, that could probably push every user in Russia to use a VPN to get their updates.
- detaro 5y agoGiven that some countries still seem to run on XP mostly I'm not sure it hurts that much.
- imwillofficial 5y agoSomebody should make a list of companies that pull moves like this; Screwing over nongovernmental entities when governments make moves that they dislike. I understand people wanting to deter aggression, but this is not the way. What happens when it’s your country on the other end of bad choices? Not every country can shrug it off like America did when invading Iraq.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rytis 5y ago> I understand people wanting to deter aggression, but this is not the way. What is the way in this particular situation? What would you do?
- madengr 5y ago
- imwillofficial 5y agoNot be a fucking hypocrite like the west is being. There are 125 armed conflicts happening right now in the world. Hell we just started bombing Somalia again. Nobody is saying a word about that.
- diordiderot 5y agoIf it weren't for nukes Russia would be getting bombed too
- akulbe 5y agoThis concerns me, as well. I definitely want aggression deterred as well. But at what cost? It seems like there's too much power in the hands of too few. It will bite us.
- laumars 5y ago
- mrits 5y agoAn interesting possible long term consequence of this is having top tier free and open source commercial alternatives coming out of Russia. Nationalized piracy would also pour over into the West and we'd probably see people here getting software updates from Moscow.
- KptMarchewa 5y agoNo top tier code when anyone with half a brain and sufficient resources is trying to escape that totalitarian hellhole.
- dijonman2 5y ago
- not2b 5y agoYou keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
- wpasc 5y agofilibuster
- kahrl 5y agoUS and Canada have issues, yes, but these issues are not in the same ballpark as Russia. Not even in the same league. This is such an insane false equivalence.
- mc32 5y agoTrue; still we had politicians advocating jail time and seizure of assets as well as declaration of emergency powers to quell what were peaceful protests.
- KptMarchewa 5y agoYeah, having to wear a mask is definitely comparable to 15 years of gulag for calling war a war. Wretched.
- rossmohax 5y agoI wonder if OSS projects start to reject PRs from Russian developers. Since it is a global effort to cancel Russia, I wont be surprised if it actually happens.
- NicoJuicy 5y agoI would be surprised. This is a protest against the Russian governement, because there is no alternative anymore at this point.
- jafoi 5y agoI've read so many people in this forum of all places that seem very content screwing over regular Russians.
- michaelmrose 5y agoThis is unsurprising. Everyone is watching mass murder live on the internet. A lot of us want our nations to step in and start shooting which is complicated by the potential for nuclear armageddon thus the Russian people are a proxy for russia soldiers they would gladly see met in battle. If you look at present day Germany redemption is certainly possible even if it takes 50 years or so.
- jafoi 5y agoThis is a very American point of view. I don't think anybody here in Europe in the last decades has looked at Germans with contempt for what Nazis did. It's absolutely ridiculous.
- michaelmrose 5y agoYes its been 77 years now. I wouldn't expect normalization after mass murder and threatening to nuke everyone next year or in the next 10.
- chizhik-pyzhik 5y agoAs more and more providers cut off Russia, we see the points of centralization in the system. For software, this is anything closed-source or licensed- open source can't be blocked. Similar story for cryptocurrency, the centralized offramps like Coinbase cut users off but smart contracts don't. In a way it's good – people in these situations will flock to more resilient systems.
- kmeisthax 5y agoOpen source can be blocked with sanctions, though that's fairly meaningless if the sanctioned entity's host country doesn't care about Berne/TRIPS anymore. Indeed, Russia is making moves to legitimize software piracy[0] because they're so cut-off from the rest of the world that you can't sanction them more for disrespecting basic copyright. For those wondering this would also mean that Russia doesn't have to care about GPL anymore, obviously. [0] Which is something I'd be actually optimistic about if this wasn't happening in, well... Russia.
- iso1210 5y ago> Open source can be blocked with sanctions How?
- avar 5y agoRead up on crypto export controls as they were implemented in the 90s, and still are today for anything that falls under e.g. ITAR. It's not a perfect way to block open source, but in practice it could be done and would mostly "work". The chilling effect and collateral damage would be massive though.
- tjr225 5y agohttps://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-countries/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-coun...
- kmeisthax 5y agoSanctions can apply to copyright or patent licenses, which means you can't grant them and any existing licenses are nullified. When Huawei got sanctioned, they were cut off from any technology invented by Americans, including things like most ARM chip designs, Google Play, and even Android itself[0]. This also meant that any remaining licensees of such technologies couldn't sublicense to Huawei. Now, you might wonder why that matters - surely, China is the one enforcing copyright and patent law, right? They could just pretend America didn't say that. Except if they do that, then they're in violation of WIPO/TRIPS, and every country in the world is going to ban their exports. FOSS relies entirely on copyright law in order to work and be legal, and Americans and Europeans write a lot of FOSS, so the US, UK, Canada, Mexico, and the EU 27 collectively pull the strings here. If you don't have those licenses in place, not only could any contributor go rogue and start suing; the US itself would have standing to sue on behalf of it's citizens (i.e. to get products banned from international trade). As a practical example of this, GitHub had to fight tooth-and-nail just to get a sanctions exemption so that Iranian software developers could rejoin the rest of the world. [0] AFAIK Huawei is shipping their own AOSP fork now, and that's currently allowed; but I still maintain that the US could have banned them from that, too.
- keewee7 5y agoI see many claims here that the sanctions don't work or that they are targeting the wrong people. Ukrainians on social media are literally begging for more sanctions on Russia. They know Russia and they lived under a Russian-dominated USSR. These sanctions work and put pressure on Russia. Putin has already walked back from his plans to put a puppet regime in Kyiv.
- oefrha 5y agoDon’t copy paste your comment on this site, that’s against the rules.
- zitterbewegung 5y agoRedHat (IBM) doesn't make money directly by contributing to open source software development (although they do this). They make money from service and support contracts. So when we see a headline like this that means that RedHat won't maintain systems in Russia and Belarus. Which means that this is a bigger step than this is being downplayed in the comments. Redhat even bought out / absorbed CentOS also.
- hnov 5y agoI think when we see a headline like this, it means RedHat is not sure how they'd take payment for the support contracts now that avenues of moving money from Russia are all but closed off. They look at how much they've been making over the past years, the trend, the potential losses from fallout in case someone decides to name and shame them as enabling a fascist state and by their estimation it's just not worth it. If a significant portion of their income was coming from those two countries, they'd quietly condemn the invasion for an internal audience and keep doing business.
- sandworm101 5y agoSo many companies are making these decisions very quickly. So many that I don't think it has anything to do directly with the war. They are pulling out because their money people, the only people who really matter in a large corporation, are in a panic. Nobody knows whether it will even be possible let alone moral to do business in Russian. How do you get money out when the banks are delisted? How do you get money into Russia without violating sanctions? How many of your Russian "business partners" are the subject of sanctions? Is paying tax in Russia a sanctions violation? As the Russian government struggles for cash, will any of your corporate assets be seized? If they are, will insurance cover such seizures? (No.) The money people also look at the dramatic fall in the value of Russian currency. Therefor, setting aside all the moral debates about wars and violence, from a purely financial perspective these are all prudent financial decisions. The PR statements on twitter about supporting Ukraine are just window dressing.
- stingraycharles 5y agoI completely agree, and I was already wondering why this wasn’t brought before. Obviously all these corporations will have tremendous difficulty doing business in Russia at all: you simply can’t get your money out. I consider these companies backing out of Russia just pragmatic: by getting out, at the very least you’ll save yourself a lot of headaches in the near future, avoid the risk of any negative publicity “because you’re still doing business with Russia!”, and also generate some positive publicity around all this.
- pessimizer 5y agoI think that while anti-Russian sentiment was building to a frenzy in the US since the 2016 election, a lot of companies gradually untangled themselves from Russia or put it at arms length to avoid any extreme nationalistic outporing erupting into a serious PR problem. The real panic would be about China. On the surface, it seems like they're getting a break from being painted as the evil force bent on destroying our heroes, but companies that are there can't give up being there. I look forward to the furious PR wave from industry trying to separate China from Russia, and the fake insider stories about how Chinese officials are worried about Russia's latest move. Just recently, Maduro got promoted to being president again*, so there's a lot to be gained while the US PR hate cannon is fully pointed at Russia. * https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220307-us-envoys-held-energy-talks-with-venezuela-s-maduro-w-house https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220307-us-envoys-hel...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
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- gentleman11 5y agoDue to the invasion. However, Russia legalized software piracy recently. If the war and sanctions ended tomorrow, what would big tech do in response to such a law?
- jotm 5y agoSame thing as before, marketing and making purchase easier than piracy. It's not like the Russian government went after pirates much, despite having the laws in place.
- pyreal 5y agoThis is the "ice-bucket challenge" war.
- fourstar 5y ago
- EdwardDiego 5y agoNot sure how sanctioning Russia is "woke", but okay.
- fourstar 5y agoSanctions are a meme.
- EdwardDiego 5y agoOkay. Can I package them as an NFT then?
- fourstar 5y agoBy all means. Submit your idea to originality@zombo.com. Tip: a Ukrainian flag emoji in the subject will ensure a prompt reply.
- maerF0x0 5y agoI'm curious at what point do we decide to continue to serve Russians because the citizenry are still people. They still need food, energy, shelter, and security. Just thinking about how far the pendulum can swing before it becomes immoral for other reasons.
- DerArzt 5y agoIsn't the whole point of sanctions to make the citizenry upset with the current state of affairs, and put pressure (protest or even revolution) if things get to bad?
- jopsen 5y agoOr maybe the point is to make Russia poor... Or maybe just do something, because doing nothing is the alternative.
- int_19h 5y agoThe alternative is direct military aid to Ukraine. But the West is too afraid to fight. So it'll keep pushing for sanctions, which it can later point at and say, "see, we did something!"
- _djo_ 5y agoIt’s not “afraid to fight”, it’s afraid of kickstarting WWIII and an escalation that might go nuclear. Nothing cowardly about that.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> alternative is direct military aid to Ukraine We're doing that. We're letting loose "one of the largest and fastest arms transfers in history" [1]. What we're avoiding is military intervention. Because, in one part, nukes. And because, in another part, the clear red line that is NATO membership. [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/nato-members-mount-huge-operation-to-resupply-ukrainian-fighters-11646761821 https://www.wsj.com/articles/nato-members-mount-huge-operati...
- lgbrandon 5y agoI will be more impressed when they discontinue sales in china. Come on this is just patriotic fluff that will have no effect on anything. I am really dismayed that technical people are falling for this govt propaganda boogie man mentality. Russians are not the bad guys. Govts are and USA is the worst offender. But since we have all the monies. We get away with it. So lets all put on our Ukraine flags and send hopes and prayers yall!!!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 02020202 5y ago
- mediumsmart 5y agoNothing wrong with that - why should Red Hat be exempt from herd mentality? Maybe they could change their name to Blue Hat or something. It's all very complicated. https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/05/war-conflict-enemies-of-truth/ https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/05/war-conflict-enemies-o...