6 ms·

On Linux MAINTAINERS file removal of Russian developers

57 points by Tiberium 2y ago

pyeri 2y ago
[flagged]
- AndyMcConachie 2y ago
  It's not just perception. Linus assertively decided to wrap this in his own Finnish identity and history. I don't think the developers removed from the MAINTAINERS file were personally involved in Stalin's invasion of Finland.
- chikere232 2y ago
  >> complies with legal requirements relating to sanctions against a country conducting a war of conquest in europe > "xenophobia" ok.
akira2501 2y ago
You could just ask them to use an email address hosted outside of Russia for their kernel development work if visible compliance was the only issue. To not offer them a remedy and to exclude people on the basis of their first or last name is a bizarre overreaction to me. It stands no chance of damaging the Russian government and can only harm the project and open source in general, I'm not sure why a non-profit would involve themselves in this in any way.
- DiabloD3 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - atlasduo 2y ago
    You should practice your trolling skills. You are being way too obvious. At least, I hope so, because if you actually believe this, then this is something only a professional can help you with.
  - ogurechny 2y ago
    I also heard a couple of officers had a nice career boost after the CrowdStrike affair.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    Do you have any examples? Genuinely interested, because it sounds a bit too much for Russian government. Sometimes the code is bad without any malicious intent.
- Arainach 2y ago
  These people are employed by companies specifically called out on sanctions, not excluded "due to first or last name".
  - akira2501 2y ago
    > These people are employed by companies specifically called out on sanctions I don't believe you know this for a fact. Are you able to point me where a list of each developer, their association, and the problem with that association is enumerated? > not excluded "due to first or last name" https://lkml.org/lkml/2024/10/24/177 https://lkml.org/lkml/2024/10/24/177
    - Arainach 2y ago
      That post has nothing about names. Serge works for Baikal Electronics who produces electronics for the Russian military and is explicitly sanctioned.
ajdlinux 2y ago
"I was under the naive assumption that it's individual developers who work together, and their employers do not really matter." This assumption is not just naive but completely oblivious under normal circumstances, let alone in a discussion about sanctions regime compliance and risk management.
- MrHamburger 2y ago
  It looks like being oblivious from outsiders perspective, but people living in Russia have culture of being apolitical, because as long as you don't care about politics, politics (Russian Government) does not care about you. That then leads to bizarre situations when Russia is waging full scale war and Russians are doing their best not to notice.
  - ajdlinux 2y ago
    The author of this blog post is German.
ogurechny 2y ago
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41932225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41932225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41929585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41929585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41927838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41927838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41919670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41919670
JSDevOps 2y ago
What I don’t understand is there must be tonnes more Russian maintainers and contributors to this? What’s the score there?
- perihelions 2y ago
  That's because the sanctioned entities are individual Russian companies on the OFAC list, not Russian citizens generally. All of the initial media reporting (speculation, really) turned out to be wrong (because of deliberate non-transparency on the part of Torvalds, in his public statements). https://lwn.net/ml/all/7ee74c1b5b589619a13c6318c9fbd0d6ac7c334a.camel@HansenPartnership.com/ https://lwn.net/ml/all/7ee74c1b5b589619a13c6318c9fbd0d6ac7c3... - "We finally got clearance to publish the actual advice: If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list, our ability to collaborate with you will be subject to restrictions, and you cannot be in the MAINTAINERS file."
  - joric 2y ago
    I am pretty sure they just grep'd mail.ru, added a couple of other sus entries and pushed the commit. It's painfully obvious if you take a look at the file https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/MAINTAINERS https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/MAINTAINERS, there are no mail.ru addresses left (it's a public email service akin to gmail). The next day someone woke up Linus and told him to answer the public and he came up with the usual FU. That's basically all.
ivan_gammel 2y ago
Aside from numerous ethical issues with this story, it doesn’t make a lot of practical sense. They are not major threat to avoid, even taking into account xz precedent - I don’t think it’s easy or even feasible to plant any backdoors to Linux kernel this way. This will not make any impact on Russian government or military operations or impair their OS development effort (Astra Linux will be just fine). It sounds pretty much like some legalese ass-covering met the unhinged personality of Torvalds with the scandal as the only outcome.
- jpfr 2y ago
  Yes, this can be circumvented. But the optics are important. Imagine a backdoor planted by a Russian asset. Linux could get removed from some list of approved OS that can be used in a government context.
  - ivan_gammel 2y ago
    > Imagine a backdoor planted by a Russian asset. Email-based filtering of maintainers is not even close to what could be considered adequate security measures. In fact, when CISO or OSS starts caring about the optics, it’s a red flag.
AndyMcConachie 2y ago
If certain people cannot contribute to the Linux kernel because of a list maintained by the USG then perhaps it's time for Linux kernel development to no longer be dependent on US law. We should realize this has nothing to do with Russia or the Russian government. This could happen with any country and any group of people. The USG is constantly expanding their sanctions regime. Thus, we need to ask ourselves the obvious question; Who will be next? What I find perplexing and surprising are the people I see online cheering this on. The people who are happy that the USG is forcing Linux kernel devs to stop working with people. Why are some people so happy for Linus and crew to take orders from the USG's sanctions regime? Where did the free as in freedom go?
- sampo 2y ago
  > If certain people cannot contribute to the Linux kernel because of a list maintained by the USG then perhaps it's time for Linux kernel development to no longer be dependent on US law. It is not only US-based organizations, but also people living in the US (and US citizens even if they don't live in the US) that have to follow the US law. Even if you set up the coordinating foundation in e.g. Switzerland, many Linux kernel maintainers would still live in US, probably not wanting to move to Switzerland. Also, Switzerland is becoming less neutral and more EU-aligned. They are following most of the EU sanctions against Russia: https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releases.msg-id-102820.html https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releas... So you might have to find a different country than Switzerland. Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba? Of course, the most sure way to avoid needing to abide by sanctions against Russia, would be to set your headquarters in Russia.
- chikere232 2y ago
  Sanctioning russia for invading ukraine isn't exactly an arbitrary power trip. Complying with such sanctions is the morally right thing to do here
  - mdp2021 2y ago
    First words of the post: «If certain people cannot contribute to the Linux kernel because of a list». Issue is raised against the specifics (validity, effectiveness, sense) of possible sanctions. John parks his car blocking your gate. Sanction A: you paint his car mauve. Sanction B: John's cousin is forbidden providing voluntary work. Sanction A and B are very different and some raise debate more than others. (If you want a more "actual" example - though besides official governmental actions - there have been pressing debates whether athletes holding some passport can can compete in international games.)
chikere232 2y ago
At this point I kinda have to assume posts like these are just concern trolling and aren't really worth taking seriously If it's genuinely naive, this is a great time to wake up to the fact that russia is conducting a war of conquest against a european country, and this is why they, and a bunch of companies associated with that, are being sanctioned. Why would any reasonable project try to circumvent such sanctions?
- mdp2021 2y ago
  Also in other articles, it was not clear why those individuals were targeted, and it seemed it could be just because of the passport. (It seems, from other sources, that it is because of their employer.)
  - sam_lowry_ 2y ago
    Serge Semin who wrote the goodbye letter [1] worked for Baikal Electronics, a military contractor. However, Baikal Electronics has been bancrupt for half a year, and he says he worked on the kernel as a volunteer lately. I think Chinese COTS suppliers are more used by contemporary Russian army, but none sanctions them. I can't really judge for the others, but in his case, the exclusion was either too late or totally unjustified. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41932225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41932225
- sshine 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - sshine 2y ago
    Since I got downvoted: I'm not saying their invasion of Ukraine isn't terrible. I'm just not used to think of Ukraine and Russia as being European countries. But they sure are on the European continent. It just seems that Russians then get regarded as the outsiders when Russia is also a European country.
    - 2y ago
sligor 2y ago
People should stop to use the term "Russian developers", this attracts a lot of people complaining about Russophobia (either innocently or not...) They were removed NOT because of being Russian but because of their link to Russian state owned company (also, either legitimately or by mistake...)
- protomolecule 2y ago
  [flagged]
- comonoid 2y ago
  Some people was removed because their email domain name ends with .ru. Just in case, while mail.ru domain belongs to VK (if I'm not wrong), it's a public email service like gmail.com.
indulona 2y ago
> And no, I am of course not a friend of the Russian government at all. They are committing war crimes, no doubt about it. No reason to read. Guy complains about linux getting political while he himself is unable to not be.
- mdp2021 2y ago
  He is just declaring his doubts are about the specific action and not against the general intention.
axpvms 2y ago
My heart bleeds for the poor Russian military contractors
throwaway13337 2y ago
It's people that work for Russian state owned companies - not just Russians in general. A lot of the discourse wants to muddy the water to make it sound like it is against all those of Russian background - it is not. Russian people are not the Russian state. Blurring the lines only polarizes which, I imagine, is often the intent. This article's framing is disingenuous.
- joric 2y ago
  Are they though? Owning a mail.ru email doesn't mean anything, it's a public mail. Corporate email would be corp.mail.ru. They also banned a guy that lives in USA for 10+ years for netup.ru which is not even sanctioned. And a gmail guy, apparently for Baikal Electronics that went bankrupt an year ago (August 2023).
gb12ayg 2y ago
I find it sad that there are so many reductive comments here. The author of this article is very nuanced: Should U.S. developers have been sanctioned over the Iraq war that was launched under false pretenses (non-existent WMD)? Should company sanctions apply to individuals who happen to work for such a company? Should the matter have been handled more gracefully than a stealthy removal from the MAINTAINERS file? Has the culture of the Linux Kernel changed? The culture has certainly changed, almost all big OSS projects have been captured and are essentially governed by corporations. Perhaps Torvalds has been legally pressured, but 20 years ago he would have put up a fight at least. Back then everyone was proud that OSS could be used by anyone for anything. Now he attacks critics with the Russian troll meme. This is the worst of Torvalds I have seen so far. So far, he does not seem to have any issues with exporting the Linux Kernel to Russia, which should also be prohibited by sanctions.
- perihelions 2y ago
  - "exporting the Linux Kernel to Russia, which should also be prohibited by sanctions." There's no export controls of non-commercial, non-ITAR software; such a thing would quickly run into a First Amendment wall. As PGP's Phil Zimmermann observed thirty years ago, you can always just print out your source code on paper and bind it as a book. Can the US government outlaw a book? Of course not. - "In 1995, Zimmermann published the book PGP Source Code and Internals as a way to bypass limitations on exporting digital code. Zimmermann's introduction says the book contains "all of the C source code to a software package called PGP" and that the unusual publication in book form of the complete source code for a computer program was a direct response to the U.S. government's criminal investigation of Zimmermann for violations of U.S. export restrictions as a result of the international spread of PGP's use.[7]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann#Arms_Export_Control_Act_investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann#Arms_Export_Co...
- mdp2021 2y ago
  > Now he attacks critics with the Russian troll meme You should really provide more grounds for stating that.
  - 2y ago
chx 2y ago
Apparently people working on open source are just looking for an excuse to pontificate. Same as with Bitwarden, simply raising the issue and then waiting a little for an answer is enough. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/e7d548a7fc835f9f3c9cb2e5ed97dfdfa164813f.camel@HansenPartnership.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/e7d548a7fc835f9f3c9cb2e5ed97dfd... > If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list, our ability to collaborate with you will be subject to restrictions, and you cannot be in the MAINTAINERS file. That's all. Both could've been handled better but there's no need to write ten thousand open source philosophy comments on the issue itself, bad articles and HN comments.
- mdp2021 2y ago
  > simpler [...] That's all Actually it is not, because the confusion shifts to OFAC and the question becomes "why should people employed by companies under those identified by etc. be barred from contributing to the Linux Kernel".
  - chx 2y ago
    > why should people employed by companies under those identified by etc. be barred from contributing to the Linux Kernel Because the OFAC literally prohibits a US person receiving anything at all from a sanctioned person. Can't find the specific sanction but here's a typical sample from https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1102 https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1102 > All transactions by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated or blocked persons are prohibited unless authorized by a general or specific license issued by OFAC, or exempt. These prohibitions include the [...] receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person. Note: for both "U.S. persons" and "blocked person" also consider corporate personhood. It's not just individual people. And so the Linux Foundation, Linus himself and every Linux user in the U.S. can't receive anything at all from the sanctioned so it's no wonder they needed to be excluded. You are welcome to lobby the OFAC to carve out an exemption for open source contributions. Or the White House or the Congress, what do I know who has the authority to write such.
jaggs 2y ago
Please don't feed the trolls!
- protomolecule 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - jaggs 2y ago
    :)
bubblesnort 2y ago
When PGP couldn't be exported and OpenBSD had to set up camp in Canada, the same people who are upset now were silent then. The resistance back then was both clever and peaceful.

57 points by Tiberium 2y ago

pyeri 2y ago

[flagged]

AndyMcConachie 2y ago
It's not just perception. Linus assertively decided to wrap this in his own Finnish identity and history. I don't think the developers removed from the MAINTAINERS file were personally involved in Stalin's invasion of Finland.
chikere232 2y ago
>> complies with legal requirements relating to sanctions against a country conducting a war of conquest in europe > "xenophobia" ok.

akira2501 2y ago

You could just ask them to use an email address hosted outside of Russia for their kernel development work if visible compliance was the only issue. To not offer them a remedy and to exclude people on the basis of their first or last name is a bizarre overreaction to me. It stands no chance of damaging the Russian government and can only harm the project and open source in general, I'm not sure why a non-profit would involve themselves in this in any way.

DiabloD3 2y ago
[flagged]
- atlasduo 2y ago
  You should practice your trolling skills. You are being way too obvious. At least, I hope so, because if you actually believe this, then this is something only a professional can help you with.
- ogurechny 2y ago
  I also heard a couple of officers had a nice career boost after the CrowdStrike affair.
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  Do you have any examples? Genuinely interested, because it sounds a bit too much for Russian government. Sometimes the code is bad without any malicious intent.
Arainach 2y ago
These people are employed by companies specifically called out on sanctions, not excluded "due to first or last name".
- akira2501 2y ago
  > These people are employed by companies specifically called out on sanctions I don't believe you know this for a fact. Are you able to point me where a list of each developer, their association, and the problem with that association is enumerated? > not excluded "due to first or last name" https://lkml.org/lkml/2024/10/24/177 https://lkml.org/lkml/2024/10/24/177
  - Arainach 2y ago
    That post has nothing about names. Serge works for Baikal Electronics who produces electronics for the Russian military and is explicitly sanctioned.

ajdlinux 2y ago

"I was under the naive assumption that it's individual developers who work together, and their employers do not really matter." This assumption is not just naive but completely oblivious under normal circumstances, let alone in a discussion about sanctions regime compliance and risk management.

MrHamburger 2y ago
It looks like being oblivious from outsiders perspective, but people living in Russia have culture of being apolitical, because as long as you don't care about politics, politics (Russian Government) does not care about you. That then leads to bizarre situations when Russia is waging full scale war and Russians are doing their best not to notice.
- ajdlinux 2y ago
  The author of this blog post is German.

ogurechny 2y ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41932225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41932225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41929585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41929585 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41927838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41927838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41919670 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41919670

JSDevOps 2y ago

What I don’t understand is there must be tonnes more Russian maintainers and contributors to this? What’s the score there?

perihelions 2y ago
That's because the sanctioned entities are individual Russian companies on the OFAC list, not Russian citizens generally. All of the initial media reporting (speculation, really) turned out to be wrong (because of deliberate non-transparency on the part of Torvalds, in his public statements). https://lwn.net/ml/all/7ee74c1b5b589619a13c6318c9fbd0d6ac7c334a.camel@HansenPartnership.com/ https://lwn.net/ml/all/7ee74c1b5b589619a13c6318c9fbd0d6ac7c3... - "We finally got clearance to publish the actual advice: If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list, our ability to collaborate with you will be subject to restrictions, and you cannot be in the MAINTAINERS file."
- joric 2y ago
  I am pretty sure they just grep'd mail.ru, added a couple of other sus entries and pushed the commit. It's painfully obvious if you take a look at the file https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/MAINTAINERS https://github.com/torvalds/linux/blob/master/MAINTAINERS, there are no mail.ru addresses left (it's a public email service akin to gmail). The next day someone woke up Linus and told him to answer the public and he came up with the usual FU. That's basically all.

ivan_gammel 2y ago

Aside from numerous ethical issues with this story, it doesn’t make a lot of practical sense. They are not major threat to avoid, even taking into account xz precedent - I don’t think it’s easy or even feasible to plant any backdoors to Linux kernel this way. This will not make any impact on Russian government or military operations or impair their OS development effort (Astra Linux will be just fine). It sounds pretty much like some legalese ass-covering met the unhinged personality of Torvalds with the scandal as the only outcome.

jpfr 2y ago
Yes, this can be circumvented. But the optics are important. Imagine a backdoor planted by a Russian asset. Linux could get removed from some list of approved OS that can be used in a government context.
- ivan_gammel 2y ago
  > Imagine a backdoor planted by a Russian asset. Email-based filtering of maintainers is not even close to what could be considered adequate security measures. In fact, when CISO or OSS starts caring about the optics, it’s a red flag.

AndyMcConachie 2y ago

If certain people cannot contribute to the Linux kernel because of a list maintained by the USG then perhaps it's time for Linux kernel development to no longer be dependent on US law. We should realize this has nothing to do with Russia or the Russian government. This could happen with any country and any group of people. The USG is constantly expanding their sanctions regime. Thus, we need to ask ourselves the obvious question; Who will be next? What I find perplexing and surprising are the people I see online cheering this on. The people who are happy that the USG is forcing Linux kernel devs to stop working with people. Why are some people so happy for Linus and crew to take orders from the USG's sanctions regime? Where did the free as in freedom go?

sampo 2y ago
> If certain people cannot contribute to the Linux kernel because of a list maintained by the USG then perhaps it's time for Linux kernel development to no longer be dependent on US law. It is not only US-based organizations, but also people living in the US (and US citizens even if they don't live in the US) that have to follow the US law. Even if you set up the coordinating foundation in e.g. Switzerland, many Linux kernel maintainers would still live in US, probably not wanting to move to Switzerland. Also, Switzerland is becoming less neutral and more EU-aligned. They are following most of the EU sanctions against Russia: https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releases.msg-id-102820.html https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releas... So you might have to find a different country than Switzerland. Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba? Of course, the most sure way to avoid needing to abide by sanctions against Russia, would be to set your headquarters in Russia.
chikere232 2y ago
Sanctioning russia for invading ukraine isn't exactly an arbitrary power trip. Complying with such sanctions is the morally right thing to do here
- mdp2021 2y ago
  First words of the post: «If certain people cannot contribute to the Linux kernel because of a list». Issue is raised against the specifics (validity, effectiveness, sense) of possible sanctions. John parks his car blocking your gate. Sanction A: you paint his car mauve. Sanction B: John's cousin is forbidden providing voluntary work. Sanction A and B are very different and some raise debate more than others. (If you want a more "actual" example - though besides official governmental actions - there have been pressing debates whether athletes holding some passport can can compete in international games.)

chikere232 2y ago

At this point I kinda have to assume posts like these are just concern trolling and aren't really worth taking seriously If it's genuinely naive, this is a great time to wake up to the fact that russia is conducting a war of conquest against a european country, and this is why they, and a bunch of companies associated with that, are being sanctioned. Why would any reasonable project try to circumvent such sanctions?

mdp2021 2y ago
Also in other articles, it was not clear why those individuals were targeted, and it seemed it could be just because of the passport. (It seems, from other sources, that it is because of their employer.)
- sam_lowry_ 2y ago
  Serge Semin who wrote the goodbye letter [1] worked for Baikal Electronics, a military contractor. However, Baikal Electronics has been bancrupt for half a year, and he says he worked on the kernel as a volunteer lately. I think Chinese COTS suppliers are more used by contemporary Russian army, but none sanctions them. I can't really judge for the others, but in his case, the exclusion was either too late or totally unjustified. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41932225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41932225
sshine 2y ago
[flagged]
- sshine 2y ago
  Since I got downvoted: I'm not saying their invasion of Ukraine isn't terrible. I'm just not used to think of Ukraine and Russia as being European countries. But they sure are on the European continent. It just seems that Russians then get regarded as the outsiders when Russia is also a European country.
  - 2y ago

sligor 2y ago

People should stop to use the term "Russian developers", this attracts a lot of people complaining about Russophobia (either innocently or not...) They were removed NOT because of being Russian but because of their link to Russian state owned company (also, either legitimately or by mistake...)

protomolecule 2y ago
[flagged]
comonoid 2y ago
Some people was removed because their email domain name ends with .ru. Just in case, while mail.ru domain belongs to VK (if I'm not wrong), it's a public email service like gmail.com.

indulona 2y ago

> And no, I am of course not a friend of the Russian government at all. They are committing war crimes, no doubt about it. No reason to read. Guy complains about linux getting political while he himself is unable to not be.

mdp2021 2y ago
He is just declaring his doubts are about the specific action and not against the general intention.

axpvms 2y ago

My heart bleeds for the poor Russian military contractors

throwaway13337 2y ago

It's people that work for Russian state owned companies - not just Russians in general. A lot of the discourse wants to muddy the water to make it sound like it is against all those of Russian background - it is not. Russian people are not the Russian state. Blurring the lines only polarizes which, I imagine, is often the intent. This article's framing is disingenuous.

joric 2y ago
Are they though? Owning a mail.ru email doesn't mean anything, it's a public mail. Corporate email would be corp.mail.ru. They also banned a guy that lives in USA for 10+ years for netup.ru which is not even sanctioned. And a gmail guy, apparently for Baikal Electronics that went bankrupt an year ago (August 2023).

gb12ayg 2y ago

I find it sad that there are so many reductive comments here. The author of this article is very nuanced: Should U.S. developers have been sanctioned over the Iraq war that was launched under false pretenses (non-existent WMD)? Should company sanctions apply to individuals who happen to work for such a company? Should the matter have been handled more gracefully than a stealthy removal from the MAINTAINERS file? Has the culture of the Linux Kernel changed? The culture has certainly changed, almost all big OSS projects have been captured and are essentially governed by corporations. Perhaps Torvalds has been legally pressured, but 20 years ago he would have put up a fight at least. Back then everyone was proud that OSS could be used by anyone for anything. Now he attacks critics with the Russian troll meme. This is the worst of Torvalds I have seen so far. So far, he does not seem to have any issues with exporting the Linux Kernel to Russia, which should also be prohibited by sanctions.

perihelions 2y ago
- "exporting the Linux Kernel to Russia, which should also be prohibited by sanctions." There's no export controls of non-commercial, non-ITAR software; such a thing would quickly run into a First Amendment wall. As PGP's Phil Zimmermann observed thirty years ago, you can always just print out your source code on paper and bind it as a book. Can the US government outlaw a book? Of course not. - "In 1995, Zimmermann published the book PGP Source Code and Internals as a way to bypass limitations on exporting digital code. Zimmermann's introduction says the book contains "all of the C source code to a software package called PGP" and that the unusual publication in book form of the complete source code for a computer program was a direct response to the U.S. government's criminal investigation of Zimmermann for violations of U.S. export restrictions as a result of the international spread of PGP's use.[7]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann#Arms_Export_Control_Act_investigation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann#Arms_Export_Co...
mdp2021 2y ago
> Now he attacks critics with the Russian troll meme You should really provide more grounds for stating that.
- 2y ago

chx 2y ago

Apparently people working on open source are just looking for an excuse to pontificate. Same as with Bitwarden, simply raising the issue and then waiting a little for an answer is enough. https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/e7d548a7fc835f9f3c9cb2e5ed97dfdfa164813f.camel@HansenPartnership.com/ https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/e7d548a7fc835f9f3c9cb2e5ed97dfd... > If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list, our ability to collaborate with you will be subject to restrictions, and you cannot be in the MAINTAINERS file. That's all. Both could've been handled better but there's no need to write ten thousand open source philosophy comments on the issue itself, bad articles and HN comments.

mdp2021 2y ago
> simpler [...] That's all Actually it is not, because the confusion shifts to OFAC and the question becomes "why should people employed by companies under those identified by etc. be barred from contributing to the Linux Kernel".
- chx 2y ago
  > why should people employed by companies under those identified by etc. be barred from contributing to the Linux Kernel Because the OFAC literally prohibits a US person receiving anything at all from a sanctioned person. Can't find the specific sanction but here's a typical sample from https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1102 https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy1102 > All transactions by U.S. persons or within (or transiting) the United States that involve any property or interests in property of designated or blocked persons are prohibited unless authorized by a general or specific license issued by OFAC, or exempt. These prohibitions include the [...] receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person. Note: for both "U.S. persons" and "blocked person" also consider corporate personhood. It's not just individual people. And so the Linux Foundation, Linus himself and every Linux user in the U.S. can't receive anything at all from the sanctioned so it's no wonder they needed to be excluded. You are welcome to lobby the OFAC to carve out an exemption for open source contributions. Or the White House or the Congress, what do I know who has the authority to write such.

jaggs 2y ago

Please don't feed the trolls!

protomolecule 2y ago
[flagged]
- jaggs 2y ago
  :)

bubblesnort 2y ago

When PGP couldn't be exported and OpenBSD had to set up camp in Canada, the same people who are upset now were silent then. The resistance back then was both clever and peaceful.