At least its more sophisticated than calling someone a "wanking walrus", or saying they should have been aborted.
Jokes aside though, this whole situation is very disturbing.
One would hope that free software developers would be more aware than to equate the identity and actions of a nation state with the identity of each and every one of it's geographic inhabitants.
I'm a US citizen, I massively disagree with a lot of what the US government does, especially WRT warfare which is basically mass murder. I would very much expect that many Russian people feel the same way about their government's actions.
From another, completely different argument, when there is conflict, cutting off communications with the conflicting party is counterproductive, e.g. barring Russians from chess tournaments, scientific conferences, etc.
Lastly, how effective can this removal of committers even be? If an account is truly a Russian state operative, does LF actually think that actor would be unable to establish a false account from a US location?
Maybe the way the whole thing played out was really Linus' personal "Scandinavian angst" about Russian aggression? There is a real history there, and Linus does cite his Finnish heritage in the email. If that's the case, we're back to calling people wanking walrus, and it's just another over emotional outburst from Linus, which would be a less concerning cause than the systematic elimination of Russian contributors by the LF organization.
> From another, completely different argument, when there is conflict, cutting off communications with the conflicting party is counterproductive, e.g. barring Russians from chess tournaments, scientific conferences, etc.
Communication and taking part in international events are two different things.
Ambassadors should talk, but when you started a hot war of aggression there is no space for inclusion of athletes etc in international events.
In this particular case, there were already many Ukrainian athletes that were killed on the frontlines while Russian ones are to be allowed to compete and promote their flag... I dont think so.
Nonbody removed any contributors. They just took away maintainer status from some people (rights to commit direcly to the kernel repo).
They are still allowed to contribute via the normal process.
Sounds like a resume line item to me 8-)
At least its more sophisticated than calling someone a "wanking walrus", or saying they should have been aborted.
Jokes aside though, this whole situation is very disturbing.
One would hope that free software developers would be more aware than to equate the identity and actions of a nation state with the identity of each and every one of it's geographic inhabitants.
I'm a US citizen, I massively disagree with a lot of what the US government does, especially WRT warfare which is basically mass murder. I would very much expect that many Russian people feel the same way about their government's actions.
From another, completely different argument, when there is conflict, cutting off communications with the conflicting party is counterproductive, e.g. barring Russians from chess tournaments, scientific conferences, etc.
Lastly, how effective can this removal of committers even be? If an account is truly a Russian state operative, does LF actually think that actor would be unable to establish a false account from a US location?
Maybe the way the whole thing played out was really Linus' personal "Scandinavian angst" about Russian aggression? There is a real history there, and Linus does cite his Finnish heritage in the email. If that's the case, we're back to calling people wanking walrus, and it's just another over emotional outburst from Linus, which would be a less concerning cause than the systematic elimination of Russian contributors by the LF organization.