linux: Goodbye from a Linux community volunteer
lore.kernel.org

Official statement regarding recent Greg’ commit 6e90b675cf942e from Serge Semin

Hello Linux-kernel community,

I am sure you have already heard the news caused by the recent Greg’ commit 6e90b675cf942e (“MAINTAINERS: Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements.”). As you may have noticed the change concerned some of the Ru-related developers removal from the list of the official kernel maintainers, including me.

The community members rightly noted that the quite short commit log contained very vague terms with no explicit change justification. No matter how hard I tried to get more details about the reason, alas the senior maintainer I was discussing the matter with haven’t given an explanation to what compliance requirements that was. I won’t cite the exact emails text since it was a private messaging, but the key words are “sanctions”, “sorry”, “nothing I can do”, “talk to your (company) lawyer”… I can’t say for all the guys affected by the change, but my work for the community has been purely volunteer for more than a year now (and less than half of it had been payable before that). For that reason I have no any (company) lawyer to talk to, and honestly after the way the patch has been merged in I don’t really want to now. Silently, behind everyone’s back, bypassing the standard patch-review process, with no affected developers/subsystem notified - it’s indeed the worse way to do what has been done. No gratitude, no credits to the developers for all these years of the devoted work for the community. No matter the reason of the situation but haven’t we deserved more than that? Adding to the GREDITS file at least, no?..

I can’t believe the kernel senior maintainers didn’t consider that the patch wouldn’t go unnoticed, and the situation might get out of control with unpredictable results for the community, if not straight away then in the middle or long term perspective. I am sure there have been plenty ways to solve the problem less harmfully, but they decided to take the easiest path. Alas what’s done is done. A bifurcation point slightly initiated a year ago has just been fully implemented. The reason of the situation is obviously in the political ground which in this case surely shatters a basement the community has been built on in the first place. If so then God knows what might be next (who else might be sanctioned…), but the implemented move clearly sends a bad signal to the Linux community new comers, to the already working volunteers and hobbyists like me.

Thus even if it was still possible for me to send patches or perform some reviews, after what has been done my motivation to do that as a volunteer has simply vanished. (I might be doing a commercial upstreaming in future though). But before saying goodbye I’d like to express my gratitude to all the community members I have been lucky to work with during all these years.

  • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubOPEnglish
    163·
    27 days ago

    The senior maintainers of arguably the most important FOSS project trying to operate secretively on something like this has shattered my trust in them, as well as many others.

    Basically, my stand on this.

    And that it was dismissed like it was “no big deal” by Linus and some of the other senior maintainers.

    But seriously, Linus’s comment regarding this was… just… I have no words… he basically put every Russian in the same basket, called them trolls and added a racist comment on top of that, I mean… yeah, I lost all respect for him. At least his previous fits were about code and only if someone fucked up something, this is completely different.

    • mihor@lemmy.ml
      22·
      26 days ago

      Exactly, that’s also my view. In Serge’s thread somebody else said Linus used to be his role model but now he is questioning his own beliefs. Sums up my feelings perfectly.

      It sucks so bad, Linus really screwed up big time, and GKH dropped the ball as well. What kind of a hellish timeline is this?

      • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubOPEnglish
        2·
        26 days ago

        Sums up my feelings perfectly.

        Mine as well.

        Not that invested that much, but I seriously, I thought Linus was better than this… I wouldn’t expect this even from Stalman to be honest, this is new level of low if you ask me.

        What kind of a hellish timeline is this?

        I have no idea… if everything is dictated by corps and governments (at least ones that we can’t trust with simple things, such as healthcare), I really have really lost all faith in humanity as a whole… not because they’re not human, but because no one sees anything wrong with this, in general…

    • secretlyaddictedtolinux@lemmy.world
      14·
      26 days ago

      But seriously, Linus’s comment regarding this was… just… I have no words… he basically put every Russian in the same basket, called them trolls

      There are a huge number of online Russian trolls. That part of his response was not hyperbolic. They do have troll factories there to influence public opinion.

      The problem is this still leads to questions about transparency about the project in general and how this decision was made and whether it was made by those involved in the project or was an order from the US government.

      • 0x4E4F@infosec.pubOPEnglish
        11·
        26 days ago

        They do have troll factories there to influence public opinion.

        In the Linux kernel? No. Definitely not. Maybe you’d like to see what happened after they got removed from the maintainers list, it was spam and trolling, and that is not OK in any scenario.

        The problem is this still leads to questions about transparency about the project in general and how this decision was made and whether it was made by those involved in the project or was an order from the US government.

        My personal belief is that it was an advice by the lawyers and they went with it balls in because who would care about a few Russian maintainers, right 😒. Linus probably probably put GHK to it, as to not be him that does the PR, split the heat that may come their way, which it did.

        I coldheartedly believe that Linus meant what he said since there was no apology afterwards. Russians are bad in general and they all think the same, they support Puttin.