• @[email protected]
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    22214 days ago

    Couldn’t think of a more lemmy thread topic than one involving both Russian geopolitics and linux.

    • @[email protected]
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      Couldn’t think of a more lemmy thread topic than one involving both Russian geopolitics and linux.

      part of me is sad that there aren’t many .worlders defending blocking those evil tankies. lol

      • LukácsFan1917
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        012 days ago

        Yes there are, I think you guys should block .ML and enjoy your botted shithole website. Better your feed be an obvious echo chamber full of hate.

          • LukácsFan1917
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            512 days ago

            Lmao sarcasm is indistinguishable from the full on brigading from the “help tankies are brigading us” instances going on in here to me 😅

            • @[email protected]
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              412 days ago

              friendly fire is common on the lemmyverse and i think it’s because of the reddit liberals; they’ve managed to get almost every single reddit refugee to self sort into a few instances to protect their delicate sensibilities so they’re incredibly well organized and funded, or they’re EXTREMELY dedicated individuals to the point of doing it full time for free.

  • kbal
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    15314 days ago

    Hello Internet commenters. Please remember that there’s no rule that says you need to tell us all your gut reaction to this if you know absolutely nothing about the situation.

    • @[email protected]
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      4214 days ago

      knowing nothing about the situation is indeed the problem. if only this process was more transparent…

      • Possibly linux
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        13 days ago

        Being Russian => banned from doing business with the rest of the world

        That’s pretty straight forward to me.

        • @[email protected]
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          and what do random developers have to do with a war between oligarchies? are we banning the dirty us imperialists next, because they do more damage than russia ever will?

          or are we finding a negative thing about every nationality and ban international opensource collaboration entirely?

          or, and hear me out on this one, the individual programmers making linux and 90% of the internet happen might not be fascists regardless of what shitty government reingns their lives?

        • davel [he/him]
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          13 days ago

          Western chauvinism:

          the imperial core == the rest of the world

          You may not have noticed that most of the world is ignoring the international rules-based order’s sanctions. And not only almost all of the Global South, which represents ~85% of the world’s people and the bulk of the world’s production* and natural resources. Even many Global North countries are skirting their own sanctions to trade with Russia.

          The Global North is largely sanctioning itself, and Europe is paying a very high price for it. In particular high energy prices, which is eroding their industrial base even more.


          *Since the Global North in its infinite wisdom de-industrialized itself.

          • Possibly linux
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            13 days ago

            The almost the entire world is against Russia. And I don’t see China coming to Russia’s aid any time soon.

            • davel [he/him]
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              1213 days ago

              You’re just making it worse 😂 You really have no idea what’s going on in the real world outside of the imperial core, and you’re really sure you do.

              • Possibly linux
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                13 days ago

                You can look up the UN vote. 141 counties voted for the movement to have Russia withdraw from Ukraine. 5 were against it and 35 abstained.

                • davel [he/him]
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                  13 days ago

                  Sure, but that vote hasn’t actually done anything, and countries continue to trade with Russia. And the Global South countries haven’t curtailed their relations with Russia one whit. In fact some are building even deeper ties with Russia. They’re building an alternative system to SWIFT, they’re trading in each others’ currencies to avoid the dollar, and they’re making plans for some kind of BANCOR-like currency. The BRICS summit is happening right now, hosted by Russia.

            • @[email protected]
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              412 days ago

              There’s definitely a lot of opposition to Russia’s actions in the world but your comment sounds especially funny today when leaders of most of the world(including the UN Secretary General and even a certain NATO country President) are currently in Kazan, Russia on a global cooperation summit.

    • Possibly linux
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      I have seen pictures of Linus Torvads so I feel that I am uniquely qualified to explain whats going on. Let me break it down for you.

      The Linux Kernel is meeting compliance requirements by removing Russian maintainers.

      Thank you all and have a good night.

      • @[email protected]
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        2613 days ago

        The problem is they aren’t even saying what those requirements are even after numerous inquiries about it.

        Don’t you think its wrong to ban someone only because of their nationality? I mean for real man. Every country in the world has done some fucked up shit but open source software is supposed to go beyond politics and ideologies.

        They weren’t doing anything malicious it was wrong to remove them.

        • @[email protected]
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          211 days ago

          Allegiance is another thing. Russian citizens unfortunately are subject to Russian law and the influence of the agencies.

          Maintainer is more than a contributer in that it is a position of trust, which is called into question when they and their computer systems are subject to a belligerent governments jurisdiction.

    • @[email protected]
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      -213 days ago

      Actually insane lol. But you can’t expect much from anybody who willingly takes money from IBM.

    • Possibly linux
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      412 days ago

      He’s Finnish by heart even though he lives in the US. I think it is probably a pretty big worry for him that Russia might invade Finland.

      I doubt this is something that he would initiate but if there was any pressure from other parties (I’m sure there was) I don’t think he is going to fight it.

      • @[email protected]
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        he’s just an American nationalist at heart. his dad was a member of the Russian communist party and his biography seemed to make clear that rebelled from that.

        socially he’s not terrible but when the war drums come beating he’s stepping in line for the stars and stripes

        • @[email protected]
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          512 days ago

          socially he’s not terrible but when the war drums come beating he’s stepping in line for the stars and stripes

          Like pretty much every Finn would these days, really.

        • Possibly linux
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          -512 days ago

          I know you are saying this is a bad thing but as an American I have no issues with it.

            • @[email protected]
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              011 days ago

              American national can take many forms. The kind the person is probably the kind based in American idealism (think superman, Captain America, “liberty and justice for all”) and less the kind based in racism.

      • @[email protected]
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        1012 days ago

        I understand that.

        But he also sits at the heart of the open-source community, and his actions might ripple through the entire sector. With this much influence, allowing your personal fears to chime in is unacceptable.

        Once we start fragmenting open-source the way we fragment everything else, we lose the very spirit of it and open doors to so much potential power abuse.

        Besides, I really don’t see how restricting Russian maintainers would prevent Russian military aggression. If something important there is powered by Linux, it can be forked and modified to serve a specific need. Not to mention Finland is now part of NATO.

      • @[email protected]
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        18 days ago

        Russia might invade Finland.

        Finland’s part or NATO now. Putin may be a lot of things, stupid ain’t one of them. Ironically, this kinda backfired on him but can’t say it was unexpected considering most scandinavians love the american dream.

  • @[email protected]
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    “Compliance requirements”? The kernel’s american now?! WTF?

    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.

    Not short-sighted in the least…

    Similarly, the driver code remains within the kernel – including for Russian hardware such as around the Baikal CPUs from Russia’s Baikal Electronics.

    Not a hypocrite move at all…

    Are israeli developers blocked as well? How about all american developers considering how the US foreign policy keeps fucking everyone up all over the place in the name of liberty and freedom… of oil?

    • @[email protected]
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      -2513 days ago

      The kernel’s american now?! WTF?

      Now we see the intended outcome of the “Inclusively” movement of the past few years.

      I can’t wait to see this “Inclusively” extended to China, India, Brazil and others.

      We’ll truly be the most Inclusive ever!!! What a great thing!!!

      • LukácsFan1917
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        1913 days ago

        The open source / FOSS movement in China is pretty rad. I use a sweet all platform text editor maintained by Chinese devs only.

        People should be more wary of the control universities, NGOs, finance through those, law enforcement infiltration etc from US, Euros, Japan, South Korea, Aus has over open source projects due to technology being such a high national security priority.

        Guess we’re just going to be racist and run with the misdirection of criticism of US laws on to foreign enemies. Just go with the flow, I guess.

        If they really want reverse brain drain it isn’t my problem, it’s their long term problem. CERN is also making a dumb mistake, all universities are in on this, it’s imperial chauvinism.

        • @[email protected]
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          513 days ago

          Fantastic to hear! wonderful news. Racists and Xenophobes will try to stop global collaboration, but the real conflict that matters will always be the smart vs the lowiq. FOSS is about humanity first and not any particular sub-category. Everyone who gets in the way is trying to divide and stop FOSS from saving the planet.

          • LukácsFan1917
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            313 days ago

            I think at the moment FOSS movement has a core of libertarian idealism which historically cleaves to the west when anything is on the line. This is because of academic institutions being dependent on/greedy for financial and political backing, and the control of the time economy of workers by tech corps trying to turn open source into “mow my lawn for free, build character” or by the media platforms which popularizers/online tutors of open source tech and software and operating systems are dependent on

            However it is also a worker’s movement in some ways not just a device user’s movement, and I think it will play an important part in the battle over Wall St’s tech cash cow globally.

          • @[email protected]
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            012 days ago

            Racists and Xenophobes will try to stop global collaboration,

            Yes! Go on…

            real conflict that matters will always be the smart vs the lowiq.

            Uff… That’s some serious brainworms right there. How do you call your worldview? IQ Supremacy?

      • Possibly linux
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        412 days ago

        I wouldn’t be surprised if they did something similar for China at some point. (If tensions worsen)

        I don’t see them doing anything outside of that

    • gian
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      112 days ago

      “Compliance requirements”? The kernel’s american now?! WTF?

      Nope, but it is not above the law.

        • gian
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          I suppose any law in any jurisdiction you want to use it, don’t you think ?

          Guys, are you all really that young to not remember alla the fuss with crypto software ? Same thing here: you want to distrubute something in a country, you need to follow the country’s law, even if they are stupid.

    • Possibly linux
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      712 days ago

      You do realize that the Linux foundation is an American based entity right? It isn’t a shock that it is bound by US law.

  • @[email protected]
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    My first thought is that this was to make Linux palatable to western regulations, like how companies can’t use Kaspersky anymore. Stupid if I’m right because it’s not like the fsb is going to sneak spyware into Linux.

    Edit: Linus commented on this and I was right: https://lemmy.world/comment/13034386

    • Possibly linux
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      2913 days ago

      They very well could. However, it also could come from some US intelligence agency as well.

    • burghler
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      1713 days ago

      Wasn’t that XZ Utils backdoor recently with state ties or am I just remembering wrong

      • @[email protected]
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        113 days ago

        Possibly, but that’s a much smaller project being run by 1 guy. Linux has a lot more people and reviews involved.

      • Agility0971
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        513 days ago

        No one knows yet. Given the scale of the operation it’s most likely a large organization.

  • @[email protected]
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    2612 days ago

    Linus is an absolute cunt for not only following this gleefully but then attributing pushback to “russian trolls” and “state propaganda” fuck you man.

    These people weren’t the MIT pricks who inserted vulnerabilities into the kernel, they were contributors who did hard work and helped advance FREE software. Linus is now turning his back on the GPL and manning it clear that Linux can be controlled by the US state on a whim.

  • LukácsFan1917
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    1213 days ago

    While this is completely appalling, I cannot say I am shocked considering what Linus posts on some platforms and in some conversations. Really not surprising.

    Don’t take this justification seriously for a second. This is the check coming due for a community with leadership still beholden to western political hegemony, the intellectual appratus that decides who gets educated and what is published, etc etc. Getting a bit offtopic. View this in the same context as CERN kicking out Russians. Mask is coming off of science, democracy, freedom of speech and all that nonsense made up to spruce up the myth of civilization versus barbarity.

  • @[email protected]
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    Dude, WHAT. This is totally against what Linux and Open source in general stand for.

    I don’t support the thing that I’m sure was their reason for this but I definitely don’t support banning someone from contributing to an open system solely off nationality.

    So what eventually only the “good guys” can contribute to and use open source software? Who exactly decides who the “good guys” are in this scenario? USA? China?

    The implications of what this can cause in the future for potentially all of the open source community is absolutely sad. We should welcome all our fellow human beings to contributing to open source.

    • @[email protected]
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      2213 days ago

      As far as I can read from that, they’re still maintainers, just have had their credit removed from the contributors page, no?

      Still a strange thing to do and I look forwards to an explanation.

    • Norah - She/They
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      5313 days ago

      Reminds me of a comment the other day on a post about Ventoy. Whatever the situation there is, which definitely needs clarification still, the person was saying that you shouldn’t trust it at all because the maintainer is Chinese, even though he has emigrated away. Because the CCP will be able to leverage his family still there to force him to create a backdoor.

      That’s just thinly veiled racism in my opinion.

      • Possibly linux
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        4513 days ago

        That’s plain racism honestly.

        I knew a (asian) guy who was working for a government contractor serving the US military. The racism is very serious to say the least. He got framed when something went down and was almost tied with treason. (that carries the death penalty) The authorities hit him with questions about his loyalty to the US for 5 hours even though he grew up in the US and so did his parents.

      • @[email protected]
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        513 days ago

        Where is that argument wrong, though?

        Think about how completely unacceptable binary blobs are for most people in this community. And now comes a guy who for no reason whatsoever puts a binary blob of unclear origin into a project that can be used to inject code on a bootloader level. And that’s somehow okay?

        And the threat of the CCP is real. Look at the xz situation. The Chinese agencies are willing and capable to invest a lot of money to get access to systems, and they also have a track record of taking families essentially hostage (or just taking the target hostage directly, if they happen to visit).

        Don’t you understand that China is ruled by an evil party? The maintainer could be the nicest bloke in existence, with the best intentions and highest intellect - but if he can be pressured by a dictatorship, that’s a problem. And that’s not even a personal thing, I wouldn’t blame him for giving in to the pressure - I would cave in too, probably.

        You have to grow up and don’t just throw around racism for everyone you don’t like. That’s not helpful and actually diminishes actual racism.

    • Bobby Turkalino
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      7013 days ago

      Yeah, being from Russia is a lot different from being associated with the Russian government. If the maintainers are in the latter, then yeah fuck em, but if they live in Russia with no realistic way of getting out and they’re just trying to live a normal life removed from the bullshit and write code as an intellectual escape? And you take that away from them? Precisely how you radicalize people

      • @[email protected]
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        2613 days ago

        Yeah, being from Russia is a lot different from being associated with the Russian government.

        Lies! You’re a communist! Russian troll!

        /s for the obtuse

        • LukácsFan1917
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          112 days ago

          You need that reddit.world or shitty.twerks URL to really sell the bit and make the tone indicator necessary IMHO

      • @[email protected]
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        -1613 days ago

        …and we don’t know whether they’re the former or the latter, no? So maybe a little early to get outraged?

          • @[email protected]
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            313 days ago

            Honestly I wish that was a principle that the internet embraced more. We’re so trigger-happy to be outraged.

            • LukácsFan1917
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              312 days ago

              No the contributors should not be considered guilty until proven innocent just to give Linus et al the benefit of the doubt fuckface!

              • @[email protected]
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                212 days ago

                Oh geez, this the third reply by the same account… Again, I’m just saying that we don’t know whether the contributors were assumed guilty, or if they have actual ties to sanctioned companies.

                • LukácsFan1917
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                  012 days ago

                  I’m pretty talkative on certain subjects when I see people mangling the discussion and engaging in bad faith.

                  This is just softpedaling it and telling people to suspect foul play just because they are Russian honestly. There are some significant sanctions going up against Israeli companies but nobody seems concerned with that.

        • @[email protected]
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          3713 days ago

          Considering the US foreign policy and the impact it has on the world, regardless of whether the white house is R or D, i propose to ban all american devs… preemptively, ya know?

          • nanook
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            513 days ago

            @0x0 @Vincent Yea well that makes about as much sense as banning the Russians, maybe we can stop development of Linux altogether. I’m sure Gatis of Borg would approve.

          • @[email protected]
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            213 days ago

            I don’t see what this has to do with my comment. I see no indication that all Russians are blanket-banned.

            • LukácsFan1917
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              312 days ago

              You are casually declaring all Russians should be assumed to be state agents until proven otherwise, and therefore the negative reaction to this obvious betrayal of principles, not even for convenience but for hatred, is unjustified.

              • @[email protected]
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                412 days ago

                I am literally saying the opposite: I am saying that it’s not clear that this applies to all Russians, or just ones that are sanctioned.

        • LukácsFan1917
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          512 days ago

          Would you say that Linux contributors with ties to MIT and other US universities that get funding from the same organizations of the MIC and intelligence racket are suspect? No? Yeah just Russians. Cold War propaganda chugging little twerp

          • @[email protected]
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            312 days ago

            No, I’m saying that if the banned people are only banned because they’re associated with the Russian government (/employed by sanctioned companies), then I’m not going to get outraged over the kernel maintainers. I do not expect them to break the law just to die on this hill.

            • LukácsFan1917
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              112 days ago

              This is all hypothetical, they are calling everyone dismayed by this Russian bots, and it’s clear this is happening in sync with US aggression against Chinese professors and tech workers in the west. Most of my comments here have been pretty independent of what you’re saying anyways. The wider context which could even justify speculating about this where open source is beholden to western laws and corporate practices should be a wake up call to people.

              • @[email protected]
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                512 days ago

                This is all hypothetical

                Yes, that is exactly my point: let’s not get all worked up about something where we have almost zero facts. Although:

                open source is beholden to western laws and corporate practices

                is definitely the case for the Linux Foundation: it’s beholden to US laws. And wake-up call or not, a foundation would always be incorporated somewhere, and beholden to the laws of that somewhere.

                • LukácsFan1917
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                  -112 days ago

                  I think getting all worked up about it is probably the first step to getting more information out of them. ┻━┻︵ (°□°)/ ︵ ┻━┻

    • @[email protected]
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      213 days ago

      It’s about sanctions, simple as that.

      You guys love to walk yourself on how super friendly open source is and that utopia is juuust around the corner, if everyone would finally switch to Arch.

      But the reality is, that it’s straight up illegal for the Linux foundation to deal with Russians. Yes, that sucks for a lot of people, but that’s exactly the point of sanctions. Every time some NSA adjacent entity contributes anything to Linux, you all get hysterical, but people living under an openly fascist regime, that is willing to kill literally millions of people, having write access to core infrastructure, that they are known to attack is perfectly fine? You really don’t see the problem here?

      You still act like open source exists on a plane removed from everything else. Linux is critical infrastructure, it runs all critical infrastructure. We have to act like it.

      • davel [he/him]
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        2113 days ago

        it’s straight up illegal for the Linux foundation to deal with Russians.

        [Citation needed]

          • davel [he/him]
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            1813 days ago

            I gotta say, that seems likely. Not sanctions in a direct way, but indirectly through funding or other assistance.

            • @[email protected]
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              813 days ago

              Exactly. But mods here are too butthurt to accept that and rather delete my comments, so they can live in their delusions - which was my point

  • @[email protected]
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    1014 days ago

    Greg sent out the patch but won’t respond to mail list questions. Sad to see Linux leadership bend the knee

    • @[email protected]
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      1713 days ago

      Dude seriously and I can’t believe how many people don’t seem to see how sad that is in this thread.

      Even if you hate this country or that, not even responding about it and keeping the code and using it anyway and only removing the attribution to the maintainers they removed (although that will escalate to banning them altogether I imagine this seems like a step one kind of thing) is just salt on the wound .

      Super sad shit honestly.

    • beleza pura
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      213 days ago

      honestly, i’m not even sure i’d blame him. who knows what kind of pressure he’s getting behind closed doors

  • @[email protected]
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    3313 days ago

    I’m definitely all for Ukraine winning, but this is bullshit, basically the red scare all over again (but for tech).

  • Agility0971
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    1813 days ago

    This is such an odd thing to do… I really cannot see the benefits for the project doing this. Maybe those maintainers were payed for their work and sanctions prohibit paying them or something?

  • @[email protected]
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    3813 days ago

    Gotta have them “various compliance requirements”, man, gotta have’em. Don’t ask me what they are, but damnit, gotta have’em.

  • @[email protected]
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    3213 days ago

    This is dumb. Corporate divestment, sure, of course, fuck their money and their power structures. But open-source developers are not generally gung-ho about the war effort… let alone propping up their local military-industrial complex.

    • LukácsFan1917
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      1012 days ago

      This is the only plan the west has to win the war. Keep fucking over random Russians in the hopes Putin somehow becomes politically vulnerable over this, despite opposition getting weaker than ever throughoit the war and with the onset of sanctions. Now we are asking random Linux contributors, please come back when you’ve overthrown your government for us.

      Russia is of course the only country that has ever invaded another country so it’s only fair.

      No matter how many vulnerabilities are introduced into software by western allied intelligence agencies, we should never be held accountable for dealing with them ourselves. After all Russians are uniquely responsible for their tyrannical government because of their Asiatic brainpans.