Is US still the best environment to run global open source projects? [LWN.net]

Is US still the best environment to run global open source projects?

Posted Oct 23, 2024 7:08 UTC (Wed) by tesarik (subscriber, #52705)
Parent article: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

This may be a good time to ask whether the Linux Kernel Organization should move away from California and where. This question may soon become even more pressing, if GOP under Donald Trump turns the US into a fascist country.

Is US still the best environment to run global open source projects?

Posted Oct 23, 2024 10:23 UTC (Wed) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]

Unfortunately, moving to another country will not really solve the problem, since the US has far-reaching influence that the foundation cannot ignore regardless of where it is legally located. Linux as a project cannot solve this. It's up to the politicians of the world.

Is US still the best environment to run global open source projects?

Posted Oct 23, 2024 11:36 UTC (Wed) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

The problem isn't just the location of the organisation itself, it's also the location of the maintainers; it is an offence under US sanctions law to attempt to bypass sanctions (e.g. by working with a non-US organisation to interact with sanctioned entities), and thus the only way that moving the LKO out of the USA helps is if all the US-based maintainers (such as Linus Torvalds and Greg Kroah-Hartman) leave the USA completely and relinquish their citizenship. Additionally, they'd have to accept that they might never be allowed to enter the USA ever again.

Given that some of these people have family in the USA, that's a huge request to make of them.

Is US still the best environment to run global open source projects?

Posted Oct 23, 2024 11:59 UTC (Wed) by mikebenden (guest, #74702) [Link]

based on the Trumpster's historical sympathies (to the extent that's even a coherent thing one can track and rely on), he's probably likely to un-ban the Russians and focus on the Chinese instead :)

Either way, I'd rather keep dreaming that the Linux project would judge me by the content of my contributions, not by the color of the list my employer's been placed on by some big powerful government throwing its weight around.

Alas, all good things eventually must come to an end... :(