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Posted Oct 24, 2024 12:55 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46)
In reply to: Related links by paulj
Parent article: Several Russian developers lose kernel maintainership status

> On the other hand, this is a standard that a) would affect many many contributors, and b) is sadly very difficult to escape,

Some time ago, I pointed out that I was 99% sure that software I wrote was used to kill people (offensive military robots). I'm also 99% sure it has been used to save innocent lives (bomb disposal robots by same manufacturer). I'm 99% sure it has been used to plan (if not outright commit) any number of crimes Yet the overwhelming majority of its use has been to watch cat videos, read email, and other "normal people" activities.

The software in question? A wifi driver that was part of the mainline linux kernel for more than a decade. But before it got mainlined, the maker of those robots paid my employer to figure out a problem that caused high-bandwidth streaming video dropouts. _Every other user_ of that driver benefited from those reliability improvements.

My point? Any given Linux (or almost any F/OSS) contributor is at most two steps away from being directly affiliated with a military force. This standard is not"very difficult to escape"; it is for all intents pretty much impossible.