Linux Foundation Makes Statement About Banning Russian Programmers (3 Months Late)

"It is disappointing that the open source community cannot operate independently of international sanctions programs," says Linux Foundation.
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[@clangerbasher]

I remember back in the day IT people saw themselves above and beyond the pettiness of governments.

[@hahahano2796]

That was before 'programming socks' were a thing. Mental unhealth being confused with health kinda is a reliable indicator of future behavior.

[@SterileNeutrino]

I remember when crypto had to be exported to Europe printed on T-Shirts. "Eventually, court rulings (like Bernstein v. United States) helped establish that cryptographic code is protected under free speech, leading to the relaxation of U.S. export restrictions in the late 1990s." Good times.

[@justanaveragebalkan]

Free software was also free in terms of funding 20 years ago, people just did free programs, for free and for a particular use case. 99% of the free software written today, are frameworks that serve corporate needs, and security updates that serve mostly corporate clients. The two most prominent free software products that came in the last 20 years were gimp and blender, everything else is just a hoax. Truth is that people use it to make money, and the ugly truth is that only those born in America can get anywhere near free software funding, so unless you're doing it for fun, you're doing it wrong.

[@SterileNeutrino]

@@justanaveragebalkan But that's okay, isn't it. "Free" as in freedom, not as in beer etc. I remember that you had to send money to GNU to get the tape with their stuff on it. I never heard that "free software" should pass some kind of purity test as to who worked on it / sponsored it.

[@Cerbyo]

I remember back in the day people had basic morals and followed the rule of law. Russia didn't break any rules of law, they've followed every single one of them since FINALLY accepting Ukraine's formal plea to enter the conflict in 2022. That's right, Ukraine asked Russia to enter in late 2021....and many times prior all the way back to 2014.

[@ababcb3005]

Can't help but notice how their message appears to have shifted from "Russian trolls" to "sanctions are a hindrance" right after a change in administration.

[@asdion]

>be russian dev >post bugreport about critical vulnerability that can be easily exploited by scriptkiddies >no one is allowed to fix it >us infrastructure collapses 10/10 would sanction again

[@edmaphis9805]

Always love a good green text.

[@shiho1481]

Well, actually Apple already didn't play 1 mil for bugs found by hunters from Kaspersky. Also some bounty hutting platform does the same... and their contributions statistics drops. So its not like "allowed to fix it"... its just they just can stop looking for it and others can start use it in a bad way.

[@rowmen]

you can't even hit them with a 'lgtm' 😢

[@VADemon]

@@shiho1481 or: Keep looking for it, because you have the expertise anyway and sell on underground markets.

[@KidoKatsuragi]

@@shiho1481 If whitehats won't pay, blackhats will.

[@Sylvan_dB]

Have a noticed how many tech companies are releasing details about their interactions with the previous administration? There is a reason why they are talking now and not "3 months ago."

[@AntiCookieMonster]

Spot on!

[@horusfalcon]

Yup. Yup, yup, yup. It's a terrible thing to live in fear. Like having an itch you can't scratch until _after the election._

[@Oliver-d1t]

The best time to make this statement would have been at the time. The second best time would have been before Linus called us all ignorant morons with no awareness of the world and regaled us with tales of his grandpappy.

[@ferrumignis]

Mr Torvalds keeps proving himself an absolute dick.

[@danp2306]

Linus has a 'computer brain' - that's it! He's an idiot for anything else - he called ppl who didn't want to get a covid vaxx, 'morons' too - and then lots of ppl had all kinds of health problems afterwards - including heart attacks and strokes. These Linux tech ppl aren't pushing that, now, are they?!? They should just code and keep their damn mouths shut.

[@makarklyuev1317]

He is sort of becoming like Richard Stallman...

[@viacheslavprokopev8192]

Linus going on a rant about how bad those Russians are "because history" while his country literally fought on a Nazi side against USSR is just different level of russophobia.

[@danp2306]

@@viacheslavprokopev8192 You think they should have allowed the USSR to just take over their country and subjugate over them? Wow, that's a different level, itself. Edit: I just noticed your nick - yeah, commie neo-soviet take. Not surprising.

[@anthonywalker6268]

Land of the free everyone, land of the free.

[@Mavendow]

Home of the incarcerated. 5th highest in the world!

[@alexkha]

On the bright side: almost everyone can carry a gun! As long as it's never used.

[@iMetmor]

@@Mavendow 1st

[@MathUDX]

You are "free" to do as you're told!

[@GabrielTobing]

Remember that the US also has its own backdoors etc too

[@bitcode_]

It doesn't count when we do it

[@test-rj2vl]

@@bitcode_ For us europeans it counts but we are too broke and too lazy to make our own windows or android 🤣

[@jrstf]

If a bad actor wants to corrupt an open software project, they will do it with their own identity. The law is aimed at disallowing honest Russians from contributing but providing no hindrance to the bad Russians.

[@pochou8261]

@@test-rj2vl why there’s already graphene op system? And you can consider sailfishOS as Finnish android

[@pochou8261]

@@test-rj2vl ​​⁠ why there’s already Gгafепе Os. And you can consider 5а1lfi5sh Os as Fiппish android

[@deniskhafizov6827]

tldr; "Interacting with the Untermenchen defined by the US laws is a crime"

[@justanothercomment416]

Only with a proclamation of war. Not so much with a proxy war we/NATO created.

[@moetocafe]

exactly - this is the US gov in a nutshell. It explains a lot about them, esp. in the sphere of foreign politics.

[@sergeigmyria7828]

US IT industry is entering its "no Jewish physics" phase...

[@turtlefrog369]

@@sergeigmyria7828 yet the germans were ahead in weapons, rocketry and even nuclear and other sciences.

[@carlosbah4623]

Maybe I'm old fashioned but I think. Knowledge should be universal. No country or power in the world should restrict that.

[@IntellectualSpectator8899]

That's literally the philosophy of the internet.

[@HOBBS-4]

Not really, if it was invented in the USA and used in sensitive areas, it belongs to the USA. Thats just the way it is.

[@justXcallXitXtechno]

@@HOBBS-4 not a foss licensing expert. but pretty sure in terms of contributions to most accepted licenses - that's exactly NOT how afaik things work. to use your own words: "That's just not the way it is."

[@HOBBS-4]

@@justXcallXitXtechno whether you like it or not, thats the way it works with American tech. If its American its under American jurisdiction. Just like Chip technology. They are putting limits on China.

[@rosomak8244]

@@IntellectualSpectator8899 No. It is older. The ancient Greeks where exactly at that.

[@vulpo]

Can you imagine if they applied this to Kotlin, now the recommended language for Android development?! EDIT: Just for clarification, Kotlin was created, developed, and still mostly maintained by Russians. So I guess this means that Intellj, Google, and everyone using Kotlin for their Android app development are violating the sanctions?

[@iMetmor]

Also, Kotlin is an island in St. Petersburg

[@vulpo]

@ Yes, they named it after the island as a part of a brief trend at the time of JVM languages adopting islands as their names, after Gavin King named his JVML "Ceylon" (the former name of Sri Lanka),as though the Java language had been named after the island of Java, although it wasn't.

[@ri-oj1ul]

That would be excellent. Russia should do this… no English-speakers are allowed to use languages named after our islands.

[@GabrielTobing]

7:45 The open source community should just say fu and work it anyways. All the code is open to peer review and security checks.

[@seylaw]

I am afraid that you can get in a lot of trouble this way. Governments do care about control and make sure they are, not some programmers.

[@outsideworld76]

Don't take tax dollars. Simple.

[@test-rj2vl]

Code review is the only thing that helps. Because real government agents can VPN themselves to US or EU if they want and make new accounts with american or european names.

[@vulpo]

A lot of these sanctions, e.g., preventing two-way collaboration and communication on fixing a bug, appear to be vast government overreach. EDIT: Let me add that this is government overreach that cannot be allowed to stand. This is a gross violation of all of our rights.

[@monkev1199]

​@@outsideworld76 even if you didn't take tax dollars, the state could simply jail you for not licking their toes and bending over backwards

[@pluto8404]

if russians cant submit pull requests on text documents on github. I will argue they cant submit comments here. KZbin needs to be fined. Google allowing them to type in search box is questionable practices too.

[@asumazilla]

Microsoft hoovering up anything on their Windows 11 computers in Russia and using the telemetry, user data is violating... they also use open source... and develop it. Microsoft could be in trouble... big trouble.

[@BozesanVlad]

I'd argue that Microsoft should be fined because russians/ chinese have repositories on github :D

[@vp7137s]

Stop giving them ideas :-D

[@laviverdos2740]

Полностью согласен)

[@justanaveragebalkan]

Wait a minute, so your stance of freedom extends to the border of your country? Why is someone not allowed to speak or express himself just because he was born on the other side of the planet, does it make him less valuable than you, are you that pretentious to even consider this a possibility. You do realize that imposing sanctions on the voice of those people regardless of the way of expression is a direct contradiction and sanctions on the very laws your country is founded one of which is the freedom to express yourself freely in any public domain? How long before the government decides that your voice is now worth as much as the guys born on the other side of this planet?

[@Necropheliac]

Linux doesn't have to comply with sanctions. They want to comply with sanctions. Software code is protected speech under the first amendment and the Linux Foundation is a US based org. Complying with sanctions is a choice they have made.

[@MrDoboz]

no. absolutely no. software code is not speech. software code is collection of instructions (even if in human readable language, it's still instructions) for a machine that can't and won't reason over those instructions and will just execute them. speech on the other hand can be considered safe, even if free, as people are presumably somewhat smarter than computers, and are going to think, reason, argue for or against any kind of speech. people are also liable and responsible for their actions, computers are not. being manipulated by "propaganda" won't cut it as a reason for your wrong doings, meanwhile computers will always just happily execute malware, delete user data, infect other computers, damage hardware and infrastructure, and are not at all worried about the consequences. all this is to say, computers can't be considered reasonable, thus, software code can't be considered speech.

[@FraggleH]

@@MrDoboz 'Bernstein v. Department of Justice' would like a word...

[@justanothercomment416]

@@MrDoboz If it's not protected, copyright wouldn't exist.

[@DudeSoWin]

It was no choice to bend the knee to French Diplomacy and Catholic Virtue among other DEI dogma from across the pond. Every day there is more fallacious nonsense as aliens prance about gaily defacing the English mother tongue. The Internet and much of our communications are being held captive. Lets play hot potato.

[@Necropheliac]

@@MrDobozthe legal precedent has been established that code is protected speech under the first amendment.

[@faiyez]

Meanwhile Russia brought an American astronaut back to Earth just a few months ago. These Linux guys are embarrassing.

[@christophschneider3260]

the us government too

[@Requiem100500]

This is the opposite of what open source is supposed to be

[@JamesSmith-ix5jd]

Isn't Open Source an already highjacked term for some time? I think it's mostly used for Source Available cases, not Open Source.

[@qunas101]

​@@JamesSmith-ix5jdnot mostly. "Open source" in AI doesn't mean anything, some software did highjack the term, but Linux is open source in every sense

[@illoominate]

This is a monstrous violation of individual freedom of association and discourse.

[@dilvastak7351]

The problem is that they have suspended not only Russian citizens or those working for companies in the Russian Federation, but also simply Russians who are citizens of other countries.

[@josephlh1690]

How the hell would one know how to ban people outside of Russia? Am I supposed to believe they just banned anyone who used the Russian language pack?

[@deth3021]

​@josephlh1690 they banned everyone who has a Russian email address. E.g. you want to ban Americans, so you ban everyone with a Gmail account.

[@joevaghn457]

@@josephlh1690data

[@xpusostomos]

Are you talking about dual citizens?

[@Cerbyo]

I fail to see how one of those wouldn't be a problem. They all sound like glaring problems.

[@SterileNeutrino]

Brandon could have preemptively pardoned the whole Open Source Ecosystem (and Snowden) instead of just the members of his local mafia, including his famila. He's one of the major reason there is such a problem with Russia after all, with his obsession over his personal grifter paradise in Eastern Europe. And handing the reins to the Blinken/Sullivan duo, a pair of such psychopathic nihilists that even Kissinger has been left in the dust.

[@joemerino3243]

It's everybody but Putin's fault, Joe Biden and Zelensky MADE the Russians run in to Ukraine and murder innocent people. Poor Russians.

[@MrChelovek68]

All of idiots from our governments-breaking unity of the world...

[@MrChelovek68]

The fact that they are idiots-it'only fact

[@HickoryDickory86]

💯🎯

[@JamesSmith-ix5jd]

I am actually from Saint-Petersburg, Russia (not kidding). Sorry you can't talk to me, wink twice in the next video if line 150 in the main.c addresses your previous concerns.

[@sohlasattelite]

breathe, if you agree that line 151 in the main.c looks suspicious

[@TheA1ester]

you're lying in Russia youtube equipment is broken, you can't write from Russia.

[@JamesSmith-ix5jd]

@TheA1ester With some local ISPs it still works, with VPN it works on most ISPs.

[@АлександраА-з5м]

@@JamesSmith-ix5jd I don't know. Everything works for me without a VPN ))

[@met0mur]

@@TheA1ester нормально

[@richardhunn9737]

In other words, they took months to make an excuse. It was a low-quality lie. So, we're now expecting even worse quality for their other writings, such as their code...

[@alexkha]

@@richardhunn9737 They had to wait and see who wins the election, obviously.

[@ajonescouk]

The odd thing is, it sounds like even if im in another country (UK), I could be in violation of US law. So unless I trust that a US open source foundation have vetted all their contributors, its safer for me to contribute to a Russian fork of the open source project rather than the original US version.

[@MarktheRude]

It's rather comical that it's safer to interact with the subjects of a nation that your nation is at proxy-war with than with subjects of a alleged ally, or with subjects of the nation you are residing in.

[@s7an10]

Public collaboration on open source projects should be treated like freedom of speech and suppression should be illegal.

[@HickoryDickory86]

Agreed. One would think the Open Source Foundation would be offering up a legal challenge on this. But, sadly, they now are also a captured institution and have other things, like cultural issues, at the forefront of their operations.

[@FrankHarwald]

YES!

[@BozesanVlad]

I'd argue that Microsoft should be fined because russians/ chinese have repositories on github

[@alexkha]

So how does the segregation work: by race or by citizenship?

[@BozesanVlad]

​@@alexkhayou should read USA definition of racism. Where you're at it, read the definition in EU. And UN. And in your country. Than talk.

[@BozesanVlad]

​@@alexkhaRacism is the incitation of discrimination , hatred or violence towards a person or a group of persons because of their origin or their belonging, or not belonging, to a specific ethnic group or race. Such discrimination, hatred and violence are directed against minority groups. More broadly, racism can be defined as a set of theories and beliefs that establishes a hierarchy of races and ethnicities, based on misconceptions and stereotypes. Racism is a form of discrimination founded on the origin, or on the ethnic/racial background of the victim. Racism can be held in several forms; including, structural (systemic/institutional), interpersonal, or individual. According to Vermont’s Act 33: An act relating to addressing disparities and promoting equity in the health care system , systemic (or structural) racism is defined as “the laws, policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other societal norms that often work together to deny equal opportunity…”. Similarly, the National Archive’s Archivist’s Taskforce on Racism Report states that institutional racism occurs within an organization and includes discriminatory treatment, unfair policies, and biased practices based on race that result in inequitable outcomes for white people over people of color and extends beyond prejudice”

[@BozesanVlad]

​@@alexkhayou seem smart as a brick

[@alexkha]

@@BozesanVlad and you should not tell other people what they should do.

[@fedorbabkin]

Is TLS handshake with a Russia based mail server a two-way communication?

[@JamesMCrutchley]

I volunteer for an open source project. I have no idea who half the ppl or organizations that contribute code are from or who they work for. The project I work on is small but is part of the dotnet foundation and we have Microsoft employees on the team. Not paid, but they help out and we need one of them to push release code as they have the keys. I have no idea if we are compliant. Half the commits are from random ppl in the community whom we have no info about beyond their code. Do we need to start vetting contributers and collecting personal infomation for a compliance check? I have no idea.

[@VADemon]

Papers, please. Did you not follow your obligations and checked if they are wearing a star?

[@RoshiGaming]

Bernstein v. Department of Justice but, I'm also not your lawyer.

[@LTPottenger]

No they got the gots taking out gov BDs removed so don't worry

[@terry5008]

It seems to me that "Open Source" should be first and foremost, OPEN. Source code is essentially speech. And a free society does not limit speech. I think that as long as there is no money changing hands, how can these sanctions pass constitutional muster? This whole thing sounds like a good way to destroy open source. Was this sanction written by Microsoft?

[@thecryone]

Thanks to the actions of Linus Torvalds and his foundation, the Linux kernel no longer receives major 0-day fixes, which jeopardizes the use of the operating system as a whole. Thus, not introducing critical patches directly benefits those who are interested in the presence of zero-day problems. Well done.

[@ValdikSS2]

Are you aware that some Linux subsystems are maintained by Huawei employees? RAID, ARM64 ACPI, BFQ scheduler. Check the maintainers list.

[@bloepje]

I remember ssh and crypto programming that needed to be developed outside of the USA because it was not allowed to export, but it was allowed to import it.

[@dycedargselderbrother5353]

What was allowable in the US was hilariously bad, even for the 90s, like 56-bit single DES with mandatory back doors, lol.

[@DS-pk4eh]

So what are you saying is all projects move out from USA and also developers from USA go elsewhere, so they will not do anything illegal?

[@Cybergazer-n9o]

If you actually get paid enough to move out of here, do it. This country is speedrunning its collapse

[@kmg501]

@@Cybergazer-n9o Agreed, the idiocrazy reached terminal velocity with the misbegotten and criminal Biden regime, and I have little faith for the current administration being able to get a handle on this in time enough to slow the destruction of Linux.

[@werthorne]

@@Cybergazer-n9o There is nowhere to run thoughbeit

[@xpusostomos]

The bigger projects should have a foreign manager to work with Russians with soon plausible deniability

[@korana6308]

@@werthorne There are plenty of countries. Actually Russia is a good place tbf

[@GoolagThemTube]

Linus Torvalds shouldn't have made those personal emotional statements either, because that's very unprofessional. But what can you really expect. The guy is obviously crazy.

[@outsideworld76]

He lost it.

[@justanothercomment416]

He's apparently "captured" via something by way of his daughter.

[@xpusostomos]

I don't know about crazy, but he's a loose cannon

[@heywoodjablome2767]

Torvalds lost his cojones. Just look at how his daughter turned out.

[@Wkaelx]

I wonder how will the Linux Foundation goes without Torvalds, if he always acted like this, explains a lot why Linux isn't as popular in the desktop.

[@AlexeyDyachenko]

This opens up the possibility of spam trolling the bugtrackers with uninteractable bug reports, even blocking the legit issues. (Don't reply to this comment or you will violate the sanctions)

[@MrDoboz]

I can reply I'm not from the states lol

[@user-dc9zo7ek5j]

There is always a way to ruin something with or without governments.

[@cristianstoica4544]

At this point, If I was Russian, I would tell them to keep their Linux to themselves, thank you very much for the unceremoniously kick in the but. The good thing that comes of this is that people learn to not depend on others.

[@iMetmor]

Именно!

[@TheA1ester]

If you were Russian your government would have already kick in the but

[@tngaskell]

"Unless the person [on the Sanctions list] benefits from [the merge]" If a sanctioned entity already has a fix in place in their fork, how much is having it upstreamed really going to benefit them?

[@justXcallXitXtechno]

so the layman's conclusion: foss has to move out of the US. else it's simply not foss.

[@FrankHarwald]

YES! At least until Biden's sanctions executive order is nullified.

[@KotleKettle]

I'm Russian and this buggs me. If we can't communicate anymore, why won't they just go further and sanction me from talking to my American fiance?

[@TheA1ester]

Russia may come to save you from American fiance

[@beskamir5977]

I honestly don't understand what the US government hoped to accomplish with these sanctions. It's exclusively harmful to the US both in terms of tech progress and overall reputation as a mostly neutral and stable economic power. Foreign powers can just fork these projects while US citizens and companies will now need to jump through legal hoops to make sure they don't interact with any of the listed "bad" countries. The end result of this will be companies will now think twice before basing their operations in the US.

[@xpusostomos]

They hoped to cut off countries from technology, but didn't think it through

[@user-dc9zo7ek5j]

"harmful to the US in terms of tech progress" - do you realise that US is THE tech progress? What they did was not from N months ago, it was from a very long time. You cannot work on the most important projects if you are not an US citizen, thats that. Plus the restriction isn't bad for the individual user, so very people complain. Also, do not make assumptions that Linux and any other major project is ran equally between all countries involved. US handles large enough portion of the work being done to not worry about placing such absurd restrictions. "Mostly neutral and stable economic power" - There is no neutrality, each contry strives towards their own goals. "What the US government hoped to accomplish with these sanctions" - The US accomplishes power and security. 1. Without having the US market a lot of companies like Kaspersky will suffer, since only EU countries are used for paying for software if you get me... 2. Russian devs cannot commit changes which are beneficial to them. For example developing a high-performance web server but some bottlenecks or bugs are found which will require constant merging if you want to keep the kernel updated which is annoying and makes updating hard. 3. Somewhat limits exposure to important markets and services. For example, using chinese phone and tiktok while working for the govt is a no-no.

[@JamesSmith-ix5jd]

It doesn't work how you think it does. New Russian patches (for russian CPUs etc) are not accepted to the kernel. Yes Russia can fork the kernel, but with time the maintenance burden will exceed even maintenance of the original kernel itself, because you need to apply patches from the main and apply your own patches on top of it while fixing everything which will be broken after your patches. This is not sustainable in the long run. You also need the original kernel (you can't fork it completely without constantly merging from the upstream) because you need the drivers and support for all the western hardware. Unlike other sanctions these ones are actually smart, easy to enforce but hard to overcome.

[@HOBBS-4]

They are an enemy of the USA. Why should they have access to our technology.

[@xpusostomos]

@JamesSmith-ix5jd what Russian CPUs?

[@DxCKnew]

Does simply hosting the project on GitHub place it under these sanctions, even if none of the developers are US residents? Since GitHub is a US company.

[@RealWaffles]

we have a saying here in freedom land "you can't do that, that's illegal"

[@kmg501]

As far as I am concerned the sanctions can go to hell.

[@GabrielTobing]

7:01 So this literally just a US issue

[@cristianstoica4544]

yep, and that's why you should think twice when hosting on github

[@Wkaelx]

@@cristianstoica4544 It's not hosted on it's own weird Git thingy?

[@steveh8658]

Reminds of these instructions in a Monty Python skit...lol "Will those of you who are playing in the match this afternoon move your clothes down onto the lower peg immediately after lunch before you write your letter home if you're not getting your haircut unless you've got a younger brother who's going out this weekend as the guest of another boy in which case collect his note before lunch put it in your letter after you've had your haircut and make sure he moves your clothes down onto the lower peg for you."

[@AndrewBrownK]

Why is this possible through executive order? If a law isn’t being broken, why can people be put into trouble and punished?

[@xpusostomos]

Probably there is a law that grants the executive power to put sanctions in place

[@ringnull]

Свобода и демократия на сцене )

[@Alex-pg1gt]

Никакой свободы врагам свободы

[@alxkub]

Avoid US if you’re doing open source.

[@xpusostomos]

As if most of us can change countries just to support our little project

[@oldevilgreendog]

More like just avoid US. It's a burning pile of trash at the moment, sadly.

[@BozesanVlad]

Ethnic purge is always best vs quality of code, especially if is in US

[@irus1024]

Every day there are more and more reasons to be happy that I don't live in the US or one of it's vassal states.

[@DeianGiNet]

thanks for clarifying this! and these sanctionsa are absolutely couter productive ...

[@LTPottenger]

Going to a russian distro is making more sense, get rid of american corporate of gov back doors for starters (which is why they started their own version in the first place). Also, the previous junta did things through executive orders that would have made a medieval king blush. PS in my noncorrupt totally free america half a dozen of my responses already disappeared below this lol

[@Shonicheck]

Ah yes, its so much better with russian government backdoors now, lol. Like come on

[@RoyalProtectorate]

No, whether it was a king or president all heads of state have that authority

[@LTPottenger]

There's 100% I have them already and at least some chance there is none there (a good chance I think actually). I also don't care if CIA and KGB have them. I do care about businesses, local gov and LE who may be looking for the chance to harass me, HOA and so on. US is much more corrupt today than any other country, people who don't understand that are deluded to the extreme.

[@LTPottenger]

Oh they did? Worked out great for king george when he made a small tea tax

[@SpocksBro]

Pavel Durov mentioned in an interview that he originally sold his previous popular social media platform in Russia because the gov. there kept bothering him about giving them backdoor access to his platform. It was among the reasons he left the country for better pastures which then resulted in Telegram. I mean, that's just one case I know of but it does suggest that the Russian gov. probably has high interest in "modifying" the Russian fork of Linux as well, if not done already.

[@ARockRaider]

from what i understood, enforced anonymity may actually be the best defense against the government coming after your project for "collaboration with the unperson", requiring whatever masking of routing to the users is available or possible. sadly i don't know enough about that sort of stuff to know how to do it and i could obviously be wrong.

[@joemerino3243]

Enforced anonymity would benefit the development of the software world enormously on a lot of fronts. Not just with avoiding sanctions, but avoiding regime attempts at monopoly and suppression of certain citizens.

[@ARockRaider]

@joemerino3243 I certainly agree, I'd love to learn how to safely navigate the darkweb and whatnot, but I'd look like a fully uniformed cop with a "not a cop" postit over his badge if I actually tried to search for any instructions. the world isn't safe, no matter what the laws are now, governments absolutely will change everything overnight.

[@joemerino3243]

@ I don't know about the darkweb, I just want to access basic services under a less traceable identity. This would probably require a proxy who doesn't actually know who you are. Most of the darkweb is Tor, isn't it? That's basically a big FBI honeypot.

[@WhiteAluminium-e]

Hi google, I'm Russian and I don't like youtube interface, could you add “Hello World!” to the code?

[@aggressivefox454]

CRIMINAL! To protect my fragile mind, I stopped reading your dangerous comment after you said “I’m Russian” to make sure I wouldn’t be under Russian control. Big brother would be so proud.

[@DavidCoutinhoCG]

and bois, here we have the iron curtain of intellectual software development.

[@DavidCoutinhoCG]

and by the way that brazil (my country) is going with our BRICS centered president, we will fall in the path of the south and east block, my country is in the aims of sanctions by current president trump that is advancing what biden did with those sanctions to russia.

[@boltronics]

So if I were Russian and I wanted to submit a patch, I can just send it to my buddy who lives somewhere not on the USA sanctions list (also outside of the USA) and tell him to submit it instead. The sanctions cause self-damage and solve nothing. I can't see how it works on any meaningful level in the Internet era.

[@Animal_lives_matter]

i dont understand how the US government can say to its citizens "you're not allowed to work on any projects with people from country X". i just dont get it. let's say i want to collaborate with someone from china on making a pair of audio speakers, can the US government say I'm not allowed to do that because americans aren't allowed to work on any projects with people from china?

[@MrDoboz]

yes. your chinese collaborator will get an order from their employer to put a backdoor into your american speaker so that the chinese government can hijack your audio stream and read you chinese propaganda through it. I mean this is what you will hear in court, and then given a life sentence.

[@attilaedem101]

You dont get it, because you didnt realized it yet, but the State Apparatus now treat every single citizen as its "resources". But you might more familiar with the term "slave". This change in mentality is pretty apparent from here, Eastern Europe, this was the exact mentality our governments had back when the Iron Curtain still existed... Just wait until you are not allwoed to escape too, thats gonna be the next one.

[@vulpo]

The American government is massively overstepping its rights in this situation. I think most developers will just ignore this and keep doing what they've been doing. Some, like the Linux Foundation, may make superficial attempts to comply. Unless someone is charged with a crime by the government, and the case is appealed through the court system, however, the law stands. And even if it is appealed, there is no guarantee it would be overturned.

[@grokitall]

How it works is that America always claims the maximum it can in scope, with the intent that not all of the overreach will be corrected by the courts, and the people making the rules fundamentally do not understand how science and technology works, resulting in rules which might have mostly worked when remote working was nearly impossible, but do not work now.

[@korana6308]

That's pretty much tyranny (of a deep state) so technically they can't really do and shouldn't do it. But if you have a tyrant as the head of the government, he disregards the will of the people, and does as he pleases...

[@xfxox]

Oh yeaahhh... fREEDOM COUNTRY

[@SterileNeutrino]

"Developers should understand other contributor's affiliations" Isn't that "they have to fill in a form where they promise that they are not part of this or that"? You know, like in the EULAs where you have to promise that you are not going to export that glorious program festooned with copyright declarations and made by a team of Indians to Iran?

[@despaul]

Move to a country free of these sanctions and orders or stand up to government. Otherwise other countries will develop their own open source operating systems and become the de facto standard world wide.

[@Ctrl_Del_0]

I am Dutch myself. From my experience when I have to deal with people from the US vs Russia vs Iraq, etc.... I would NOT choose the US people.

[@rembrandt2323]

Or you all might join OpenBSD. :)

[@xpusostomos]

Is having a patch drop into your inbox "collaboration"? What precisely is banned?

[@VADemon]

Your e-mail server two-way collaborated to establish a TCP connection LOL!

[@GLOW_IN_THE_DARK_CIA_NIBBAS]

America is going to have a great Technology future...from tariffs to sanctions...no imports, the majority of the world is excluded from working on American software and DEI devs... Your new 50 series graphics cards are going to cost $10k-$15k lol

[@koisher-k]

this sounds exactly like USSR and we all know how it ended...

[@GLOW_IN_THE_DARK_CIA_NIBBAS]

@koisher-k 💯

[@bxp_bass]

As a Russian developer and FOSS enthusiast, and a liberal (classical one, polar opposite of woke) I'm boiling of anger. By the way, here in Russia are multitude of interesting laws. We just ignore them because it would be impossible to be even a remotely decent person and follow them. For example, I personally, think intellectual property is just a thing that not exists at all - it's nonsense. You can't own the idea, the chord or the bunch of words. So, torrents are awesome. All the knowledge of the world is for everyone. I think, soon, the knowledge about how OS is loaded and low level programming with basic circuit bending will be the crucial skills to have if you want to stay free. Because you can't say things that's not compliant with woke ideology and also you can't use things because you are born in an unfortunate place. Thank you very much but I'm not coping with that

[@MrEdrftgyuji]

It may be free as in "free beer," but it certainly isn't free as in "free speech."

[@azekeprofit]

People forget that Hippocratic Oath (that was also thought of as above politics) was similarly destroyed by US.

[@AntiCookieMonster]

Please elaborate.

[@azekeprofit]

@@AntiCookieMonster Hippocratic Oath to date has been revised once after 9/11 (to make torture legal probably) and once again they tried in 2020 to add racism into it. 2500 years pledge got abused and subverted by transient schizophrenic whims of social mores.

[@zxuiji]

As a uk citizen I don't have to follow those sanctions thankfully. Frankly I think they're overreaching, it should be enough to not knowingly include sanctioned citizens from the top level of a project where patches are checked before merging. What the US is doing is shooting it's own foot just to shoot the pinky toe of their foes.

[@razumskiy]

US Gov.: "I prohibit you to do whatever you want with your OS"

[@hitriyzhuk9879]

If commits not malicious and did the job - may we call right to make that commit kind of "freedom of speech"?

[@rhaberkorn]

I guess big tech training their AI models on whatever data they can find (including material very likely written by sanctioned entities) is still fine since they don't interact with the sanctioned? I wonder how the current relatively large scale import of goods from Russia to the US does not violate these sanctions or will it be stopped now entirely? Is Github soon going to introduce mandatory passport identity checks? Are poorer third-party providers or independently hosted bug trackers supposed pay big money to identity check companies before they can accept any bug report? And is an identity check really sufficient to exclude that the person in question has any ties with sanctioned countries? What about double citizenship? Did the Linux foundation even attempt any of this or did they just remove people with Russian mail addresses? My point is, almost every law is impossible to follow if you read it pedantically enough. That doesn't mean it will actually ever be enforced that way. A lot depends on concrete court decisions and law practice.

[@nosotrosloslobosestamosreg4115]

Well, it was a funny ride, but it's coming to its end.

[@AlexGoldring]

"No pseudonyms behind an avatar of a cat" - Sir, I resent the accusation

[@SuperMixedd]

Crazy. Just crazy. Can the US lawmakers prohibit me from taking a number two here in France? At this point it feels like they can do whatever they want… especially given the recent threats to impose sanctions on the EU…

[@jean-francoisaubry]

And you why you finish in jail ?...Pretty simple I accepted a patch from "Captain Crunch" named Zak427...BTW NASA still use SoYuz ???🙃

[@vannoo67]

It may be necessary to off-shore the Linux Foundation for it to move forward in any way that makes sense.

[@JamesBaldassari]

The Linux Foundation should just ignore these (overly broad at best and illegal at worst) EOs and, in the extremely unlikely event that they are actually enforced on Linux, step up and fight them in court on behalf of the rest of the open source community so that smaller projects do not have to worry about who sends them patches. Surely the Linux Foundation has the resources for this.

[@puntadeleste427]

This is disgusting. It seems clear at this time that we need more projects free from this political bs.

[@Wkaelx]

This was such a communication mess.

[@DavidGardener-w1v]

Just another day in the dystopia. If only we worried about the military industrial complex as much as we do open source patches 😂

[@iamllux]

How short sighted is this? The US govt has directly benefitted from this kind of open interaction. It can ALL be forked and development WILL continue and leave the US behind. Isn't the US already falling behind in technology?

[@EuropressMusic]

Russia should hardfork linux. The us may not ne trusted with the most important os

[@daveamies5031]

Brian, it would be interesting for a follow up to this video but for open sourced projects that have no "USA" based inputs, i.e. projects run by people in Australia, Japan or EU countries? My small OS project is run me in Australia with contributors from Poland and France, no RU or CN input so far but curious how the sanctions could impact me?

[@ger_Raenef]

15:54 bug report with questions after the intial bug report? would that be a violation?

[@argonaut5617]

Thank you, very interesting. You describe everything very to the point, carefully and honestly, excellent. I definitely subscribe.

[@ri-oj1ul]

Can someone explain how this doesn’t kill open source anything? If you literally can’t collaborate with half the people on the planet

[@ZappyOh]

Open Source Foundations should just flag out. Like ship owners, chose a jurisdiction that is neutral and agnostic towards geopolitical issues. Problem solved.

[@brandishwar]

This likely had to get funneled through... more than a few attorneys before it could be released publicly, and most likely to ensure they aren't making any statements that could be seen as directly admitting to violations. So that's why it took so long for them to release a statement.

[@theloststarbounder]

Born too late to explore Earth, Born too early to explore the space, Born just in time to see USA became the worst dictatorship on Earth.

[@felixjohnson3874]

Friendly reminder that this is why you don't let the government do anything. Even if you think tariffs, sanctions, etc. help people (which, they don't. It's hypothetically possible that they could in any given instance, but natural systems such as free markets, ecosystems, etc. self-optimize to purge inefficiences. A tariff is sorta like introducing a new species into the wild ecosystem or bringing an existing one to extinction. You're far, far more likely to break some unseen balance than you are to actually improve things) you need to remember government regulations are like rhinos, basically blind and with a small tank of firepower armed and pointed at anything they think might be something they don't like. So, even if you do believe government intervention would help if it worked out as it was planned (again, no, this is badically never true) you can't ensure it will and by pure statistical law, it won't. Even if we steel man it as if this specific ban were an intentional act to prevent malicious code from entering the kernel as an act of cyber warfare, the reds could just use alt accounts, and a much *_better_* solution would be donating dev-hours of federally paid cybersecurity specialists to go through and secure the kernel, rather than futily trying to stop an entire country from submitting code. Anyone who ever looked at a problem and said "I know what'll fix this, bringing in more politicians!" is somehow more dense than the politicians they seek to empower. Edit : "strict liability" doesn't mean "even if you don't know about the sanction it applies to you" it means "even if you don't know they were red, you're still at fault". Meaning if the red's were smart they'd use this regulation against the us by contributing to various critical software projects under alts, then posting some nugget of info somewhere obscure proving those apts are red, then reporting the projects they contributed to for violating sanctions.

[@ValdikSS2]

SDN list (Specially Designated Nationals) include only private persons and companies. It does not include the country. Huawei is not in SDN list for example, that's why they could maintain Linux subsystems.

[@Tukemuth]

These "international" sanctions are more or less American sanctions against the rest of the world (including Americans now, apparently). I mean, if an American is forbidden to communicate with a Russian, isn't the American targeted with this restriction?

[@TheA1ester]

Yes, Russia never imposes sanctions :-D

[@Tukemuth]

@@TheA1ester I don't remember Russia ever forcing its private companies to ban, say, American developers. The USA is blatantly abusing this sanctions umbrella to put private companies under its boot.

[@vintagewander]

I still don't get it, good code is good code, why divide people because of their political situation, and why does software needs to have political things involved in, those are 2 distinct things

[@joemerino3243]

Certain countries insert malicious code more than others.

[@cericat]

​@@joemerino3243so no one should work with US devs got it.

[@retrocomputing]

@@joemerino3243what are the stats? Are these stats correlated with the total number of contributors from a country?

[@sohlasattelite]

Everybody is ditching the new Microsoft update, because of all the spyware included. How they are going to do that if the government makes using and developing the open source alternative illegal? :)

[@joemerino3243]

@ US devs make almost all the software the world uses. China's impressing people now by beginning to do so. For all it's enormous industry and know how, the contribution of Europe and Russia to software have been embarrassingly minimal. Yandex?

[@ARockRaider]

i can't be the only person smart enough to realize that this opens up a great attack against open source anything. (assuming i understand this right) for example, if China finds a critical vulnerability they can attack they just have to submit a bug report about it and now it can't be fixed, and they could threaten that if it does get fixed they will make sure the cooperation is reported.

[@xpusostomos]

Somebody else could submit a similar report

[@ARockRaider]

@xpusostomos I figure it would be one of their agents/contacts that aren't overtly connected to them, but still effectively "them" if you catch my meaning.

[@xpusostomos]

@@ARockRaider If I read his bug report and submit one basically the same, I can't see how that would contravene sanctions.

[@JamesSmith-ix5jd]

​@@xpusostomos What if that someone is a Russian behind a VPN connection?

[@ARockRaider]

@@xpusostomos Possible laundering like that might work. but do you really trust the government to allow that? the same government that will happily nail you for "structuring" your deposits even if you can prove you are just depositing the money your small business receives regularly.

[@robertgosz4281]

That is sick. It literally destroys open source software...

[@outsideworld76]

It's all BS.

[@epockismet76]

All the good witing wont fix the effect of all the demonic acting everyone is expressing against other humans, especially among those who claim to be good guys, and heroes seeing evil everywhere.

[@george-stathopoulos]

We knew it was about sunctions. The thing is landuk knew it as well.

[@qriist]

With modern version control systems (GitHub, for example) I believe it is impossible to apply a patch without 2 way communication. Even if the humans never actually talk to each other the patching systems will return an accept or deny response based on the intent of the code maintainer. EDIT: you touched on that just a moment later lol

[@rhaberkorn]

Isn't any TCP connection a two way communication? Can you really send ACKs into sanctioned countries? We should really turn off the internet!

[@xpusostomos]

The law probably means humans, not programs

[@kenabi]

they didn't give much of a care until it was russia on the block. so ask me if i care about their backnarrativing.

[@andersmeiniche2746]

How can USA stop developers from working on linux when i can see that there is Linux Foundation Europe Linux Foundation India in WIki ?

[@xpusostomos]

They can only stop US developers, and since the US is more important than other places they tend to win

[@JamesSmith-ix5jd]

Because the US is basically THE World when it comes to finances, big corporations, mass culture, internet (google, dns, cloudflare, aws), technology - android, ios, microsoft. What do they have in Europe or India? Even if you could relocate Linux to somewhere else it wouldn't be feasible, because the infrastructure, the finances, the developers and everything else would be left in the US.

[@xpusostomos]

@JamesSmith-ix5jd it is feasible, if Linus was in a neutral country he could take patches from everywhere

[@MkThUnderwd]

I wish Runix didn't need to exist, but it should be called that if it does.

[@MkThUnderwd]

Линус:Линукс;Россия:Руникс. Just sayin.

[@AleksLazar]

I think they call it RedOS

[@GLOW_IN_THE_DARK_CIA_NIBBAS]

What if I, being not in America, fix a bug or respond to a bug request?