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

submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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 [email protected] 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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[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 weeks ago

Apparently they have just been removed from the MAINTAINERS file for now but it is not yet known if this will have any implications for their ability to send patches for inclusion in the kernel. If the latter proves to be the case, some of the drivers might end up unmaintained until another person gains enough trust to become a maintainer. This will surely affect support for the Russian BAIKAL processors, for example.

Apparently the removed contributors can return only if they provide some sort of "documentation" (not specified which though). They can still work on the kernel, but now they are not able to directly merge changes into the codebase, they can only send patches which may or may not be accepted. Or they could organise and create an independent Linux kernel fork which they would have to keep up to date by merging code from the upstream.

This much I understood from the news and comments.