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114

Western Sanctions Regime Reaches the Linux Kernel (lwn.net)

submitted 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) by PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net to c/technology@hexbear.net

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Perhaps one of the more surprising changes in the 6.12-rc4 development kernel was the removal of several entries from the kernel's MAINTAINERS file. The patch performing the removal was sent (by Greg Kroah-Hartman) only to the patches@lists.linux.dev mailing list; the change was included in a char-misc drivers pull request with no particular mention.

The explanation for the removal is simply ""various compliance requirements"". Given that the developers involved all appear to be of Russian origin, it is not too hard to imagine what sort of compliance is involved here. There has, however, been no public posting of the policy that required the removal of these entries.

An early comment likely pins down the prevailing institutional pressures leading to this decision

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.

This is pretty fucked up. Like, we might see the kernel forked in the coming months/years.

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[–] wheresmysurplusvalue@hexbear.net 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

On Thu, 2024-10-24 at 07:27 +0300, Serge Semin wrote:
> 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.

Please accept all of our apologies for the way this was handled. A summary of the legal advice the kernel is operating under is

If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list, our ability to collaborate with you will be subject to restrictions, and you cannot be in the MAINTAINERS file.

Anyone who wishes to can query the list here:

https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/

In your specific case, the problem is your employer is on that list. If there's been a mistake and your employer isn't on the list, that's the documentation Greg is looking for.

I would also like to thank you for all your past contributions and if you (or anyone else) would like an entry in the credit file, I'm happy to shepherd it for you if you send me what you'd like.

Again, we're really sorry it's come to this, but all of the Linux infrastructure and a lot of its maintainers are in the US and we can't ignore the requirements of US law. We are hoping that this action alone will be sufficient to satisfy the US Treasury department in charge of sanctions and we won't also have to remove any existing patches.

Regards,

James Bottomley