Linus Torvalds Comments On The Russian Linux Maintainers Being Delisted

Ancient Slashdot reader szo shares a report from Phoronix: Quietly merged into this week's Linux 6.12-rc4 kernel was a patch that removes a number of kernel maintainers from being noted in the official MAINTAINERS file that recognizes all of the driver and subsystem maintainers. [...] [Greg Kroah-Hartman who authored the patch] simply commented in there: "Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements. They can come back in the future if sufficient documentation is provided." [...] The commonality of all these maintainers being dropped? They appear to all be Russian or associated with Russia. Most of them with .ru email addresses. Linux creator Linus Torvalds has since commented on the situation: Ok, lots of Russian trolls out and about. It's entirely clear why the change was done, it's not getting reverted, and using multiple random anonymous accounts to try to "grass root" it by Russian troll factories isn't going to change anything. And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren't troll farm accounts - the "various compliance requirements" are not just a US thing.

If you haven't heard of Russian sanctions yet, you should try to read the news some day. And by "news," I don't mean Russian state-sponsored spam. As to sending me a revert patch - please use whatever mush you call brains. I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be *supporting* Russian aggression? Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of history knowledge too.

For their protection too.

[Gravis Zero]

This isn't just for the protection of the world but it's also to protect the maintainers from government "influence" as well. I know that not all Russians support their government's actions so potentially putting them in the position of becoming pawn for said government is unethical. However, if they do support their government's actions then they may be tempted to to be a willing agent for said government. In both cases, it's best to not put them in a potentially compromising position.

Re:

[sg_oneill]

I do kinda feel for russians who arent happy about this. Early in the invasion there was a lot of , particularly millenial and gen z russians who seemed genuinely distressed about it, but where freaked out by the prospect of protesting. At least one told me they knew a guy who was organizing protests and just disappeared one day. She hoped he was just laying low, but didnt know.

This is why rather than funding ukranian armaments, something I'm pretty uncomfortable with (not opposed, just uncomfortable) I put

Re:

[Martin Blank]

There are places that you can donate that purchase equipment other than weapons, including humanitarian supplies. Be careful about where your money goes, as there are also some fraudulent groups out there. But lots of groups are doing good work that doesn't involve weapons.

Re:

[keltor]

I know lots of Russians who were 100% unhappy about everything, and this just pushes them further into their personal efforts to move their parents/immediate family out of Russia and to "wherever" they are living.

Re:

[Cito]

I don't quite understand why this has gotten more "noise" when after the attack last October they pretty much did the same for any code pushed or reverts from Palestinians although they made the same exceptions for unblocking with "sufficient documentation provided" as was also stated in this article. There was zero posts on Slashdot about that when it happened, although there was one on news.ycombinator that had some people upset and making a lot of the same arguments that people now are making in support

Re:

[martin-boundary]

This argument (we need to protect the world from our enemies du jour) works for closed source but is not needed for open source. In a true open source community, there are eyeballs which look at the code and point out bad sections. And commits get accepted in the open and only after verification. Trust in the personal motivations of the original authors of the code is not needed.

I think what you're trying to imply is that the Linux kernel is not true open source any more today. Perhaps it is too big and h

Re:

[gnasher719]

I very much doubt your "eyeballs" theory. Who is good enough to do a competent job at it and willing to do it for free?

Laws in question

[phantomfive]

Here is what Linus had to say about which country made sanctions:

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to go into the details that I - and other maintainers - were told by lawyers. I'm also not going to start discussing legal issues with random internet people

That's it. But he definitely made his opinion clear on the "Russian aggression."

Re:

[rta]

The US doesn't currently look back with much pride on the Japanese Internment during WW2 (and German and Italian but nobody really talks about them much).

From a security of the ecosystem POV this is relatively meaningless since the threat is not any higher than during normal times from either political or financial threats.

From a "the EU is about to arrest me and i don't want to go to jail POV" it's ... understandable, but hardly something to be proud of. (And it's also "letting the terrorists win" kind

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

Let me see if I have my facts straight. According to Russia, they invaded Ukraine because the country had a nazi problem. The same country who elected a jewish president. Or is a police action like Vietnam?

Re:

[DarkOx]

America elected Obama twice but we are still a nation of racists with a fundamentally racist system. At least that is what they tell me...

Re:

[Archtech]

There is quite convincing evidence that Nazi policies were actually copied from Jewish ones - especially those so proudly boasted of in the Old Testament. It's ironic that today, the continuation of those Jewish policies attracts comparison with the Nazis.

Re:

[posixively_true]

This is one of the stupidest comments I've ever read. I rarely comment on political/controversial submissions like these but this comment made me jump out of my chair.

First, what does "behaving like a nazi" means? This is so vague that it could means waging a war or complete industrial extermination due to a belief in a "superiority of a race". Secondly, this is just intellectual laziness and actually transform the word "nazi" to a single pejorative term of countries committing war crimes and lessen its tru

Re:

[caseih]

Those were Torvalds' words, not @phantomfive's words. That's why they were in quotes!

Re: Laws in question

[jovius]

It is not a euphemism. The longer expression would be the Russian war of aggression. But simply Russian aggression puts the blame squarely on Russia as the aggressor. The war or the aggression has been going on since 2014.

Re:

[nicubunu]

How do you know that's what Linus was thinking?

He have basic language comprehension.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

They're really scraping the bottom of the barrel sending you out as the token propagandist. Couldn't they find anyone better?

Re:

[alexgieg]

the war of aggression has been going on since the US started meddling in Ukrainian politics

So, a country offering advantages to another in exchange for benefits is a war against a third, and of aggression no less, despite it involving exactly zero deaths or and zero destroying infrastructure on that third country.

And a country actively bombing and killing another because that country was peacefully choosing the better of several proposals and decided a different offer was better, is neither a war, much less of aggression.

Got it. Thanks for the new edition of the new newspeak dictionary. Mine wasn

Re:

[nicubunu]

Russia denies it's a war, so you can't call it that, but it's a war.

Of course we can call it a war, we live in a free part of the world and have freedom of speech.

Re:

[DarkOx]

Don't forget about when the EU had to regime change Gaddafi's Lybia for reasons ... reasons that mostly had to do with showing they could be serious players in the war on terror too and pretending to be peers with the USA.

Re:

[manu0601]

Any able-bodied Russians (of either sex) who aren't actively working to depose or assassinate Putin are basically complicit in everything that's happening

You seem confident that once you will get rid of Putin, he will be replaced by a nicer power. Do you have a some knowledge about Russian politics that support that?

Re:

[drinkypoo]

You seem confident that once you will get rid of Putin, he will be replaced by a nicer power. Do you have a some knowledge about Russian politics that support that?

We have seen kinder, gentler Russians in the past, so there is at least a chance.

Re: Laws in question

[ArmoredDragon]

Yeah and you know what Russians think of them?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]

They're just like you and railvergun: They absolutely despise every past leader that has made very profoundly positive change, and they want leaders who will happily flush economies down the toilet in the name of making everybody except the political elite equally miserable.

Re: Laws in question

[drinkypoo]

"They absolutely despise every past leader that has made very profoundly positive change"

So what causes you to imagine that I feel that way?

Re:

[phantomfive]

: They absolutely despise every past leader that has made very profoundly positive change

Not really, they despise past leaders who are not like the current leader, and cheer for past leaders who are like the current leader.

Right now Peter was great because he conquered Estonia and parts of Finland, but in the future Peter will be great again because he connected with the west. This is not unlike current Republicans saying how great Reagan was because he agreed with whatever is their current agenda.

Re:

[nicubunu]

He will be replaced with a weaker power. The new dictator will have to take it easier for a while.

Re:Laws in question

[nicubunu]

I am an East European and old enough that I went trough a bloody anti-communist revolution. I guess I am allowed to say any dictatorship is built upon the support of the masses, when the masses revolt, the dictator always fall (but it won't be easy and require sacrifices). Been there, done that.

Re:

[laddiebuck]

I am Hungarian and lived through the end of Communism. When the masses revolt, the dictator doesn't always fall - sometimes they send tanks and murder everyone revolting. It happened in my country in '56, in Czechoslovakia in '68, and in many places around the world at different times throughout history.

Re:

[dargaud]

Unfortunately yes, and with modern tech, it's becoming increasingly difficult to revolt. Imagine when there are AI cameras that can identify you everywhere, even by your gait, would you go to a public manifestation ? And of course your phone if located at all time, as is your car, etc... In a few years there will be no more regime change due to mass revolt because any premise will be met with quick visits of the perps at their homes...

Re:

[Archtech]

Absolutely right. Which nation has been at war every year, save 17, since its foundation? Which nation has invaded, attacked, or overthrown the government of most of the countries in the world? Which nation's armed forces and spy agencies have been responsible for at least 10 million civilian deaths since 1945? Which nation's idea of diplomacy is to say, "Do as we say or we'll bomb you"?

Not Russia.

Re:

[Linux Torvalds]

Helpful tip: when your argument includes the words "What about," you're just wasting bandwidth. You should think of the electrons you've unnecessarily agitated, feel bad, and resolve to do better.

The root cause

[jovius]

Anyone disappointed by this should direct their indignation at Putin.

It is telling that someone else is supposed to be blamed.

Brain drain

[Malay2bowman]

As long as they are in Russia, physically, they are a liability. I know this sounds cold but think of the situation. You are Russian citizen, and you really hate Putin. You don't dare say it out loud but it's in your heart. You continue on as more or less as if he never existed. But then you get that knock on the door and you have orders to put back backdoors into the the software your global team is working on. At that point it's a wrap. You must comply, or face serious physical consequences which won't be as easy or merciful as a quick bullet in the head. Anyone physically in Russia can be conscripted to do these things at any time, and they won't even be able to warn the rest of the team. Putin's goons are watching and they better not do anything to raise suspicion in that team.

Re:

[Halo5]

Well put! This describes the situation perfectly IMO, and I think it's important to point these things out as it sounds as if Torvalds has already been thrust into the unfortunate situation of having to deal with state actors on these matters. It's bad enough having to stay vigilant against your ordinary, standard (peacetime?) bad actors, such as those related to the recent "XZ" incident. I expect that he has neither the time nor patience to deal with state-sponsored campaigns, so his response makes tota

Re:

[1s44c]

That reasoning is correct, but it probably applies to every other country too. Open source had always got around it by having lots of people checking and commenting on all code.

Re:Brain drain

[AmiMoJo]

If the Linux kernel team can't spot backdoors then there is a much bigger problem here, because it's likely that other governments are trying to sneak them in as well. Banning Russians because of fears over backdoors is no solution.

There are good legal reasons to not accept patches from people inside Russia, but not good security reasons.

Re:

[F.Ultra]

This is not about not accepting patches from Russia, this is only about removing Russians from the list of active maintainers.

Re:

[yababom]

If the Linux kernel team can't spot backdoors then there is a much bigger problem here, because it's likely that other governments are trying to sneak them in as well. Banning Russians because of fears over backdoors is no solution.

Do you think that the fact that the backdoors might be detected in audits will stop the Russian government from coercing the attempt? IMO, the answer is clearly no, so the OP's point that the 'mere opportunity is a liability to the Russian developers' still stands.

"Other governments" which contribute to the Linux kernel are less likely to use physical threats to force a developer to risk their reputation/career on a backdoor attempt.

Re:

[fph il quozientatore]

As if a state actor couldn't make up a fake identity: make up a random name like "Jia Tan", start committing legitimate patches, and one or two years later, boom, you sneak in the payload.

So.. what specific sanctions?

[1s44c]

What's missing here is someone mentioning which specific sanctions say you can't list names. I thought sanctions were about money transfers, not listing names of contributors who gave their work away for free.

Did the work these contributors do get reverted too? Because it just sounds like their names were taken off it.

Re:

[F.Ultra]

nothing at all like this happened, their names where only taken of the file that contains a list of people that you should contact in order to get your code merged.

Nice one that man!

[dlarge6510]

You tell 'em Linus.

Cancel culture hits OSS/Linux

[nik_qc]

I am Russian. Does not matter where I live and what do I think, I was born Russian and that is impossible to change. Even considering that today's "views" allow "changing" anything, from the birthplace to skin color.

I always considered OSS to be border-free and free from the politics. Russians, North Koreans, Cubans, Americans, Ukranians are all the same in OSS world as long as they do not bring their "real world" sh...t associations with them. They are judged by their contribution to the code, not by their

Re:

[Retired Chemist]

Exactly who would that leave? I think you would run out of bodies pretty quickly.

Re: Anyone and everyone

[St.Creed]

I think it would leave Linus back where he was when he started it.

Re:

[phantomfive]

actively involved in military activities on foreign soil as recognized by the UN

Of course, Russia agrees completely. As a member of the security council, the UN will never recognize them as such.

Re:Anyone and everyone

[quantaman]

We should remove anyone and everyone who is a citizen of a nation actively involved in military activities on foreign soil as recognized by the UN

Not sure how cute you're trying to be. Ie, are you include the US and other western (often NATO) aligned nations that conduct military operations at various times. Or are you just trying to implicate Israel.

If you were just trying to draw a circle around Russia, Israel, and a few smaller nations involved in conflicts, then you left out a fairly important qualifier, ie, "nation actively involved in military activities on foreign soil with the express purpose of conquering their territory".

Of course, the problem there is as much a critic as I am of Israel (and some of those smaller nations), there does tend to be some legitimately complicated history involved with those conflicts.

With Russia it's basically just "oh, we want to be an empire again and so we'll conquer one of our neighbours and just annex and/or puppet all their territory".

It's the difference between a property dispute and a car jacking.

Re:

[luvirini]

>With Russia it's basically just "oh, we want to be an empire again and so we'll conquer one of our neighbours and just annex and/or puppet all their territory".

That is correct, except the word "again" even before the adventures into Georgian and Ukraine they were already an empire. Many of the provinces in "russia proper" are places with a subjucated local population ruled by russians.

Re:

[quantaman]

If you were just trying to draw a circle around Russia, Israel, and a few smaller nations involved in conflicts, then you left out a fairly important qualifier, ie, "nation actively involved in military activities on foreign soil with the express purpose of conquering their territory".

Oh. So ... everyone who is chanting "from the river to the sea" then?

Do you mean to include some Israelis [wikipedia.org]?

Like I said, there's some legitimately complicated history involved with those conflicts. You're free to criticize one side or another, but it's not the same as what Russia is pulling.

Re:

[Erioll]

Assuming I even agreed, why would the UN be considered a trustworthy body for this? Right now, at this moment on the UN Human Rights Council [wikipedia.org] are China, Cuba, and at least a few other places with "questionable" practices.

The UN is a dictator's club. Democratic (or even close-ish) countries should separate from it. They have nothing resembling ethics or morals by any standard I would recognize. It's a farce, and while good people work there for some good purposes, it offers a veneer of legitimacy to man

Re:

[shanen]

Well, you know you're doing something right when you attract so many censor trolls with sock puppets.

The US will eventualy invade Canada & Mexico

[rsilvergun]

if/when we turn into a dictatorship. That's just what failing empires do. When the country starts to collapse you send your army to loot other countries in order to prop it up. It buys you a few decades.

Project 2025 has a *lot* in it. It won't all pass at once. The important/scary part is "Schedule F" where every government employee (including army generals) gets replaced with sycophants.

From there it's a hop, skip & jump to massive voter suppression and a super majority in Congress, and then fi

Re: The US will eventualy invade Canada & Mexi

[ThurstonMoore]

I'm no Trump fan, but Your statement about the missing amendments in Trumps Bible are true but misleading. It's not just missing 11-17 it missing everything but the Bill of Rights. The way you stated it makes it sound like they carved out a chunk in the middle. Thats why the only news I could find about it when I searched were a very few questionable news sites. You really hurt your credibility with shit like that.

Re:

[DarkOx]

That is what Democrats to they lie and use disinformation to make their arguments, because they are in face bad arguments.

If they make a good argument, they almost certainly have plagiarized it.

Re:

[jmccue]

I can see the US eventually "invading" Canada, but Mexico ? No.

As Global Warming increases, people in the US South will need to migrate north, and many people will start heading into Canada. So I can see Canada becoming part of the US in some manner.

Invading Mexico would be a waste because people in Mexico and South of it will need to head north when those areas become to hot to live in. I think some kind of conflict will happen.

FWIW, similar actions will occur in Africa, Europe and Asia. The difference

Re:

[drinkypoo]

You will never get a Constitutional Convention. You need a super majority of the states, not government to open that up. It will never happen.

They will beg, buy, borrow, steal, defraud, cheat, and murder to make it happen.

They came within a hairs breath

[rsilvergun]

of calling one through the state legislature. Betcha didn't know that.

The Koch brothers spent decades buying state legislature seats for exactly that purpose and almost had the votes. It literally came down to two elections that went to the Democrats in huge upsets. After that the window closed.

That's why they're trying to do it again but from the top down instead of bottom up this time.

Folks don't realize how fragile our democracy is right now. Or if they do they're doing everything in their po

Re:

[phantomfive]

The Koch brothers spent decades buying state legislature seats for exactly that purpose and almost had the votes. It literally came down to two elections that went to the Democrats in huge upsets. After that the window closed.

I see plenty of articles saying the Koch brothers are trying to get a constitutional convention (because they want limited government or something?), but I don't see anything that says they almost got it. Do you have a link?

Re:

[DarkOx]

The ONLY threat to our democracy is Democrats and their total war our first and second amendments and plan to pack the court to make it happen.

As is always the case with them its the big lie over and over. "OMG Trump threatens our institutions" then they attack the filibuster and threaten to pack the court!

What a joke.

Re: They came within a hairs breath

[drinkypoo]

"The ONLY threat to our democracy is Democrats and their total war our first and second amendments and plan to pack the court to make it happen."

Trump packed the judiciary with people who support his election theft lies and has told us he isn't going to accept the election results if he doesn't agree with them. He has already launched one coup attempt. He is not going to fail to launch another, this time through his corrupt court appointments.

Re:The US will eventualy invade Canada & Mexic

[ArmoredDragon]

Did you guys get bribed by a Russian troll farm this morning or something? How much did they pay you? A dollar?

Re:

[shanen]

Really? That was the only comment modded Funny? Talk about a story that was a rich target for humor...

But I should check the comments again for any mention of the 50-cent paid trolls from China.

Re:

[wyHunter]

A lot on the right AND the left want a con-con. I keep saying 'it will be an utter disaster. The left hates things like the first and fourth amendment, and the second amendment. The right hates the first and fourth amendment. Personally I'm still hoping for an ELE.

Re:The US will eventualy invade Canada & Mexic

[Martin Blank]

Trump is a lazy narcissist who is well-known to do basically whatever the last person to talk to him before a decision said to him. He's not going to fight Project 2025, but he will absolutely allow Schedule F to go into place because it means more people bowing to him. Schedule F means that the people below him who suck up to him will pick the people below them, and they'll be the people who want Project 2025 to happen. He won't care, because it won't affect him directly, and all the people putting it into place will be saying the right things to him. And neither he nor the people hired under Schedule F will care about the law, and even if the courts do fight back, it will be a giant mess that sends everything into chaos.

Re:

[alexgieg]

This has been debunked many times.

No, it hasn't been debunked even once.

Re:

[AvitarX]

I was just replying to a bonkers comment with the absurd situation needed to make it equivalent.

I don't think the US will invade Canada or Mexico, that was kind of the point of the comment. The US won't get European sanctions.

Re:

[alexgieg]

strongly implies that therefore he is against Russia.

No one is against Russia. People are against Russia invading them.

NATO could well be renamed as UFPRA - United Front in Prevention of Russian Aggression, and nothing whatsoever would change about it, nor about the reason countries join it.

Re:

[alexgieg]

the US are already a dictatorship

And China, Cuba, North Korea etc. aren't, since they practice fully """popular""", fully """democratic""" centralism [wikipedia.org], right?

Right?

Re:

[alexgieg]

arresting your political opponents

Do you mean common-crime criminals? Those opponents?

censoring as hard as you can

Do you mean all the right-wing, anti-science, anti-knowledge, conspiracy theorists who become even bigger celebrities the minute after a private platform removes them for violating their service, as they move to another platform where they can continue saying everything they were saying before without any fear of imprisonment whatsoever, their wealth doubling in the process? Those people?

the "voting" shenanigans

Do you mean the voting shenanigans the extreme-right keeps accusing t

Re:

[phantomfive]

I'm critical of the US Defense world-view and its incarnation as NATO.

What is the US Defense world-view?

Re:

[drinkypoo]

History didn't start in Feb-2022.

True [wikipedia.org]

Re:What if he had said "no"

[dskoll]

Uh... Finland historically had a few wars with Russia, you know. Most famously, the Winter War [wikipedia.org].

Re: What if he had said "no"

[edi_guy]

Thanks for the link. Holy crap, this is so very similar to the Ukraine invasion.

Just wanted to conquer adjacent territory for economic and military purposes. Check.

Blame bogus security reasons for invasion. Check.

Install fake puppet government (eg DPR) in pathetic attempt for legitimacy. Check.

Soviet..err Russia losses are heavy against far smaller, nominally weaker opponent. Check.

And Russia ended up with 9% of Finlandâ(TM)s territory afterwards. Donbas is 9% of Ukraineâ¦tbd

According t

Re:

[i.r.id10t]

Might find reading about Simo HÃyhà a fun thing to do when you have a few minutes to spare...

Re:

[Rick Zeman]

Might find reading about Simo HÃyhà a fun thing to do when you have a few minutes to spare...

If you are not a Finn I am seriously impressed.

Re:

[i.r.id10t]

Nope, Florida-man. But I like history, and guns, and ol' Simo is well known in both communities....

Re:What if he had said "no"

[TeknoHog]

A Finn here. The GP is correct in that we did have a strong economic relationship with the Soviet Union, and also with Russia until their attack on Ukraine. A number of trade sanctions started in 2014 but a huge majority of the business continued until 2022.

Until WW2, Finland was largely an agricultural economy. In the aftermath of the war, we were ordered to pay war reparations to Soviet Union, which kickstarted a huge growth in our heavy industries. Besides paying the penalties, we ended up selling a lot of hardware to the Soviets, and transformed ourselves into a modern industrial economy that spawned companies such as Nokia.

After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, a lot of Finnish companies didn't realize what was going on, and they continued to invest in Russia. They ended up losing a lot of money, as their Russian operations were halted in 2022 and in many cases Russia seized their assets left on Russian soil, such as Fortum's power plants.

Re:

[abulafia]

Sometimes it is impossible to distinguish between useful idiots and fellow travelers.

Re:

[ArchieBunker]

How quickly would Linux have been seized?
Finland historically had an strong economic relationship with Russia. That's all been trashed by NATO expansion. Critical OSS software could do someting against the neo-liberal defense state. History didn't start in Feb-2022. I'm neither pro-Russia or pro-Ukraine. I'm critical of the US Defense world-view and its incarnation as NATO.

Greetings fellow lead paint chip enthusiast.

NATO expansion my ass

[rsilvergun]

If countries want to join a defense pact there's absolutely no reason why. Russia could join the NATO defense pact if they wanted to they would just have to demonstrate that they are a functional democracy and meet the requirements.

It's 2024 the Cold war is long over and NATO isn't about containing Russia anymore. Russia is long since contained. NATO is about stopping the spread of war especially in a world that has nuclear weapons. Russia on the other hand and specifically Vladimir Putin wants to reli

Re:

[drinkypoo]

It's 2024 the Cold war is long over and NATO isn't about containing Russia anymore. Russia is long since contained. NATO is about stopping the spread of war especially in a world that has nuclear weapons.

So it's about containing Russia, then?

Re:

[NoWayNoShapeNoForm]

It's 2024 the Cold war is long over and NATO isn't about containing Russia anymore. Russia is long since contained. NATO is about stopping the spread of war especially in a world that has nuclear weapons.

So it's about containing Russia, then?

Long ago, supposedly in the 1950s, Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of NATO, stated that the goal of NATO:

“keep the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”

https://www.nato.int/cps/en/na... [nato.int]

Re: NATO expansion my ass

[drinkypoo]

Yeah, let me reiterate, I am in favor of containing Russia. Their continual invasion of their neighbors for centuries demonstrates the necessity

Re:

[vbdasc]

It's 2024 the Cold war is long over and NATO isn't about containing Russia anymore.

You might be joking. The Cold war right now is back with vengeance, and has a potential to grow into a hot global nuclear war that is almost as high as it was during the Cuba crisis. And NATO's task is again, as it was 50 years ago, containing Russia. Ten years ago NATO was on the brink of irrelevance because nobody in the West believed anymore that Russia had to be contained, and, honestly, for NATO no task other than containing Russia ever made any significant sense. But these times are over.

Re:

[DarkOx]

Putin actually asked if he might join NATO one day (informally), and Bush entertained it. Then spooks, MIC, and Euorocrats got wind and shut it down.

Which of course they did because they left needed an enemy that both was not China (that's the rights choice for a 20min hate) because of economic dependence, and would be scary enough to make the conversation about something other than the migrant crisis (great replacement) 24x7 and tragically its worked for 20 years now.

Re:

[Baron_Yam]

You should be embarrassed that you just trashed whatever reputation your account had on such stupid and ineffective Russian propaganda.

Re:The Winter War?

[dskoll]

The contributors are being removed most likely for the Linux Foundation to comply with US sanctions against Russia. It has nothing to do with the Winter War, except for the parallel between that war and the war against Ukraine: The unprovoked invasion of a neighbur followed by Russian failure to conquer the country and subsequent reduction of Russian war aims.

Only difference is the unprovoked Russian war against Ukraine is lasting much longer and is much more brutal with far more casualties.

The war pales in comparison to what the occupation

[rsilvergun]

Would look like. Russia does not have the resources needed to occupy Ukraine. That means they're only option to take the land, and it's the land they want, is genocide.

Best case scenario they are going to ship everybody in Ukraine to parts of Russia or one of their satellite countries. Worst case we are looking at death camps. Honestly moving that many people is probably going to result in death camps no matter what.

The people of Ukraine, all of the people of Ukraine, are fighting for their lives not just their land and freedom. You need much larger forces than Russia has to occupy a hostile country that is unquestionably going to be armed by other hostile nations. So Russia's only options are going to be horrific and brutal if they manage to take over.

Re:

[aRTeeNLCH]

No Igor, just,... no. You only have to look at Crimea and Donbas to see what Russia ruling over the Ukrainians could look like, and surely it would be much worse. No sensible person living in a democracy would want to live under Russian fake democracy rule. Thank you for posting anonymously, but it didn't hide your identity.

Re:

[Bert64]

They are not removing credit for their past contributions, they are removing them from the active maintainers list.

Re:

[Rujiel]

It's sad how even smart people get looped into this racist culture war.

Re:

[vbdasc]

Racist? Which races are involved?

Re: Linus identifies as a Fin?

[reanjr]

Finland allied with the one country who could help them defend against Russian invasion. Then they turned around and joined the Allies to fight against the Nazis.

Re:

[TeknoHog]

Exactly. We were the little guy between two big bad guys, we could either join forces with one of them, or be trampled over as the two fight it out.

Re:

[dlarge6510]

He doesnt "identify" as a Finn, is IS a Finn.

Thats some wierd statement there, almost like suggesting someone could "identify" as a martian or a banana.

If you were never born on Mars, or have Martian citizenship and have lived there and consider that your permanant residence then you could say you are Martian.

If you have been grown from a banana tree, then you are a banana.

Re:

[Schoenlepel]

HEY! I identify as a banana, ok?

Re: Exterminate ruZZia

[vbdasc]

How do you do, Adolph. Long time no see.

Re:

[vyvepe]

Did you miss that the removal happened because of regulatory compliance requirements?

Re:

[1s44c]

Which specific regulatory compliance requirements?

Re:

[chas.williams]

It's too bad this is downvoted. Using a .ru address would get additional scrutiny, not less. The Chinese and North Korean hackers don't use .cn and .nk email addresses.