Linus has never been the best communicator, but he usually speaks the truth. But this is just bonkers and wrong. Not everyone living in Russia has “ties with Russia” other than “they were born there”. If this is about sanctions, he could have still just told them that. But instead he just disrespected contributors completely and then double down in it by being xenophobic.
Hate to break it to you, but if you live in Russia and can be useful to the government, they will make you useful. Unless you don’t mind you, or your family suffering and dieing, there is no stopping that.
Russia has no law to protect its citizens, only to scare and oppress their citizens. If Russia wants you to do something, such as working in a backdoor in software, you have no choice. So it is a good choice to not leave that door wide open in my opinion.
It’s really disappointing seeing Russian contributors being disrespected like this, the regime that rules Russia wasn’t entirely their fault, and allegiance, nationality, and ethnicity are all clearly different things
Also, wouldn’t a state sponsored Russian hacker pretend to be from the US or something anyway? No way they’d contribute code as a Russian, that’d just increase others’ suspicion
I agree with Linus a lot too but I strongly disagree here. I hope he’s just being made to say this because of government policies
Linux foundation is a US company, and he’s a EU citizen and there’s companies that those devs where employed that are under sanction , hot that hard to understand
Linus has never been the best communicator, but he usually speaks the truth. But this is just bonkers and wrong. Not everyone living in Russia has “ties with Russia” other than “they were born there”. If this is about sanctions, he could have still just told them that. But instead he just disrespected contributors completely and then double down in it by being xenophobic.
Hate to break it to you, but if you live in Russia and can be useful to the government, they will make you useful. Unless you don’t mind you, or your family suffering and dieing, there is no stopping that.
Russia has no law to protect its citizens, only to scare and oppress their citizens. If Russia wants you to do something, such as working in a backdoor in software, you have no choice. So it is a good choice to not leave that door wide open in my opinion.
Yup. If you don’t want to “mysteriously fall from a window,” you do what they say.
I agree 100% with Linus here
It’s really disappointing seeing Russian contributors being disrespected like this, the regime that rules Russia wasn’t entirely their fault, and allegiance, nationality, and ethnicity are all clearly different things
Also, wouldn’t a state sponsored Russian hacker pretend to be from the US or something anyway? No way they’d contribute code as a Russian, that’d just increase others’ suspicion
I agree with Linus a lot too but I strongly disagree here. I hope he’s just being made to say this because of government policies
And the most dangerous part here is the whole rethoric of “if you disagree, you are a Russian shill”.
I don’t understand how sanctions can impact free software, tbh, what’s free about this? This leaves a weird taste, I have to admit.
Linux foundation is a US company, and he’s a EU citizen and there’s companies that those devs where employed that are under sanction , hot that hard to understand