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Balkanization -- full steam ahead

Balkanization -- full steam ahead

Posted Oct 23, 2024 0:37 UTC (Wed) by yeltsin (guest, #171611)
Parent article: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

What's the deal with an international project adhering to what is obviously a decision of the US government?

I hope our Chinese friends take note and not waste a number of years on thankless work to be thrown overboard when your time comes. Remember this news next time you hear complaints about there not being enough maintainers.


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Balkanization -- full steam ahead

Posted Oct 23, 2024 1:25 UTC (Wed) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> What's the deal with an international project adhering to what is obviously a decision of the US government?

Hint: The Linux Foundation (which notably employs Greg KH and Torvalds, and provides a lot of the legal and other infrastructure for this "international project") is based in the US, and therefore has to follow US laws.

Balkanization -- full steam ahead

Posted Oct 23, 2024 17:25 UTC (Wed) by kazer (subscriber, #134462) [Link]

Not only US but also EU cyber resilience act.

It would be silly to continue to as before in the light of current situation.

Balkanization -- but still jobs to be had.

Posted Oct 23, 2024 4:10 UTC (Wed) by gmatht (subscriber, #58961) [Link] (2 responses)

While forks are unfortunate, it would seem wise for the CCP to throw money at the chinese maintainers to maintain a trusted-by-CCP linux regardless of whether they are official "Linux" maintainers.

Balkanization -- but still jobs to be had.

Posted Oct 23, 2024 6:50 UTC (Wed) by matthias (subscriber, #94967) [Link]

How would this be wise? Employees of Chinese enterprises are contributing to the kernel such that their employers can sell their hardware to people and institutions using Linux. This will not work with a trusted by-CCP Linux unless they are able to convince the world to use this fork, which seems rather unlikely.

Balkanization -- but still jobs to be had.

Posted Oct 23, 2024 17:19 UTC (Wed) by wittenberg (subscriber, #4473) [Link]

Perhaps this is what Red Flag Linux was intended to do.

Balkanization -- full steam ahead

Posted Oct 23, 2024 5:11 UTC (Wed) by s_vlad (guest, #120162) [Link] (3 responses)

Interestingly, other comments miss the point.
The post I'm replying to is authored by "yeltsin".
That's exactly the figure in post-Soviet russia in 1992, who declared strategic alliance with China. And the post appeals to Chinese friends...
The original Yeltsin died in 2007. So this is the case of mummies' return!

I'd say "I hope our Chinese friends take note" from the post I'm replying to can even be seen as a threat!!!

The post I'm replying too also mentions "maintainers", which invokes memories of XZ from not too long ago...

Balkanization -- full steam ahead

Posted Oct 23, 2024 7:44 UTC (Wed) by riking (subscriber, #95706) [Link] (2 responses)

It's also clearly the highest / newest subscription # on the page.

Balkanization -- full steam ahead

Posted Oct 23, 2024 8:23 UTC (Wed) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (1 responses)

Yeltsin has been around for a while. I don't know when I first noticed him, but it's a good long time.

(Disclaimer - I may be a russophile, but I am no fan whatsoever of their leadership ...)

And while I don't particularly understand Russian names (I understand they emphasise patronymics over surnames), Yeltsin could easily be a fairly common name?

Cheers,
Wol

Balkanization -- full steam ahead

Posted Oct 23, 2024 9:11 UTC (Wed) by dottedmag (subscriber, #18590) [Link]

Yeltsin is quite uncommon surname — beyond the Russia's 1st president and his family there don't seem to be any public figures bearing this surname, and a cursory check at https://forebears.io/surnames/eltsyn makes it _very_ uncommon.

(for the reference, I was born in USSR in 1983)

Balkanization -- full steam ahead

Posted Oct 23, 2024 13:28 UTC (Wed) by raven667 (subscriber, #5198) [Link] (3 responses)

This has a couple if misconceptions that are worth clearing I think

1) An organization being a multi/inter-national project doesn't mean that it's magically exempt from jurisdiction in every place where it's members live and do business. Cyberspace is _not_ an independent domain from the "real" world, people are made out of meat, not sci-fi beings of pure thought energy, they eat food and live in places. on earth. where every square centimeter of land is subject to some sort of rules.

2) The Chinese government are currently competitors of the US government in international influence/relations and resource extraction, but not enemies in the way the Russian government has made of many nations for the way they behave with their neighbors. Sometimes international politics is just teenage middle-school drama, with more resources, with somewhat arbitrary emotional decisions, but I don't think this is one of those cases. This is different than say a ban of Huawei telecom equipment, which is subject to the rules of the place it's members live and do business, including having lawful intercept features, that the US government isn't comfortable allowing (which just incentivized the Chinese intelligence services to compromise the US CALEA lawful intercept features of its own domestic equipment instead, lol) which is more about the competition between US intelligence and others in gathering and protecting information.

3) The hypothetical situation where the organization that any developer works for becomes a sanctioned entity by some other nation who's jurisdiction matters requires a different geopolitical alignment to make sense, either someone's host nation authorized something very bad that pissed off a number of other powerful nations, or the leadership has changed to someone who has an irrational animosity and the power to enforce it. Either way I don't think trying to anticipate such things as if you control the outcomes makes a lot of sense, where you have influence over your local government please exercise it to advise them not to do stupid self-destructive shit, but you have almost no responsibility for or control of the decisions other nations governments make, sometimes your government has influence but you as an individual have almost none.

Balkanization -- full steam ahead

Posted Oct 23, 2024 16:56 UTC (Wed) by cida (guest, #174189) [Link] (2 responses)

I register in lwn to reply:

1) This is basically cyber sovereignty, the perfect argument for Great Firewall of China. If all nations wish to make rules on its cyber network, there will be no more open Internet.

2) I don't think it is that different. It's just typical US exercising its power. US has banned NASAs' engagement in any bilateral activities with China or Chinese-owned companies for some time. This ban is not that different from the ban enforced on Russia developers on linux. Such ban will alert all countries to be more careful towards the risks in open source software.

3) We all have almost zero power. Maybe it marks the beginning of the end of open source communities.

The end of Open Source?

Posted Oct 26, 2024 0:16 UTC (Sat) by hackerb9 (guest, #21928) [Link] (1 responses)

Um... no. Open Source and Free Software communities have always had to abide by the laws of the countries in which they reside. This is not fundamentally different.

I can see why Linus thinks there is a Russian troll factory jumping on this, but I think it is more likely that there are just a lot of people who don't know what the sanctions are or what Putin did to bring such seemingly unfair treatment upon the Russian people. On the other hand, Linus might be right about trolls fanning the flames given the amount of outrage being expressed by people who seem to be getting their "facts" from an alternate reality.

I keep seeing people talk about this as an across the board "ban of Russian developers" from Linux when actually it only affects maintainers and only if they work for a sanctioned company. Hopefully, that will get sorted when the compliance paperwork goes through and some of the maintainers are reinstated.

The end of Open Source?

Posted Oct 28, 2024 14:00 UTC (Mon) by netghost (guest, #54048) [Link]

Yes, first it only affects "maintainers and only if they work for a sanctioned company" so you feel it is OK. Does this sound familiar?

BTW, I don't even expect guys like Linus has a particular higher standards except he is an extremely capable coder, but just don't act like one.


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