Balkanization -- full steam ahead

Posted Oct 23, 2024 16:56 UTC (Wed) by cida (guest, #174189)
In reply to: Balkanization -- full steam ahead by raven667
Parent article: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

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.