Official statement regarding recent Greg' commit 6e90b675cf942e from Serge Semin
Hello Linux-kernel community,
I am sure you have already heard the news caused by the recent Greg' commit 6e90b675cf942e ("MAINTAINERS: Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements."). As you may have noticed the change concerned some of the Ru-related developers removal from the list of the official kernel maintainers, including me.
The community members rightly noted that the quite short commit log contained very vague terms with no explicit change justification. No matter how hard I tried to get more details about the reason, alas the senior maintainer I was discussing the matter with haven't given an explanation to what compliance requirements that was. I won't cite the exact emails text since it was a private messaging, but the key words are "sanctions", "sorry", "nothing I can do", "talk to your (company) lawyer"... I can't say for all the guys affected by the change, but my work for the community has been purely volunteer for more than a year now (and less than half of it had been payable before that). For that reason I have no any (company) lawyer to talk to, and honestly after the way the patch has been merged in I don't really want to now. Silently, behind everyone's back, bypassing the standard patch-review process, with no affected developers/subsystem notified - it's indeed the worse way to do what has been done. No gratitude, no credits to the developers for all these years of the devoted work for the community. No matter the reason of the situation but haven't we deserved more than that? Adding to the GREDITS file at least, no?..
I can't believe the kernel senior maintainers didn't consider that the patch wouldn't go unnoticed, and the situation might get out of control with unpredictable results for the community, if not straight away then in the middle or long term perspective. I am sure there have been plenty ways to solve the problem less harmfully, but they decided to take the easiest path. Alas what's done is done. A bifurcation point slightly initiated a year ago has just been fully implemented. The reason of the situation is obviously in the political ground which in this case surely shatters a basement the community has been built on in the first place. If so then God knows what might be next (who else might be sanctioned...), but the implemented move clearly sends a bad signal to the Linux community new comers, to the already working volunteers and hobbyists like me.
Thus even if it was still possible for me to send patches or perform some reviews, after what has been done my motivation to do that as a volunteer has simply vanished. (I might be doing a commercial upstreaming in future though). But before saying goodbye I'd like to express my gratitude to all the community members I have been lucky to work with during all these years.
It's crazy how the US Treasury isn't sanctioning companies for working on US government approved contracts. /s
It would be if Blinken weren’t burying government reports proving that it legally must.
Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.
Then it would be sanctioning Israel, not defense contractors.
Yes and? You keep arguing against things I'm not saying.
I'd be perfectly happy if we told Bibi to fuck off. But the US government isn't going to impose sanctions on itself.
The genocide has such wide support in the USA community and defense companies ( irregardless of the louder minority of people protesting it)
That if there were justice, then many other people and organizations would have similar treatment and be kicked
We can’t get away from politics, or limits, but if I will point out the hypocrisy
I feel a little bad encouraging the what-about-ism here but: Genocide actually does not have majority support in the US. Most polls show a majority of the public opposes genocide and what Israel is doing right now.
It's a minority that supports it.
With that said, that's not really related to the situation with the Linux kernel developers.
You’re right, it has shifted. I looked at the polls week overall it’s split into thirds. 1/3 for, about the same against and the balance not sure or don’t know
However I think a majority of older adults still support the crimes, as well as more conservative voters. But that is ordinary people. Government and defense firms are pretty dirty right now.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/10/01/slight-uptick-in-americans-wanting-u-s-to-help-diplomatically-resolve-israel-hamas-war/