On Thu, 2024-10-24 at 07:27 +0300, Serge Semin wrote:
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.
Please accept all of our apologies for the way this was handled. A
summary of the legal advice the kernel is operating under is
If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC
sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list, our
ability to collaborate with you will be subject to restrictions, and
you cannot be in the MAINTAINERS file.
In your specific case, the problem is your employer is on that list.
If there's been a mistake and your employer isn't on the list, that's
the documentation Greg is looking for.
I would also like to thank you for all your past contributions and if
you (or anyone else) would like an entry in the credit file, I'm happy
to shepherd it for you if you send me what you'd like.
Again, we're really sorry it's come to this, but all of the Linux
infrastructure and a lot of its maintainers are in the US and we can't
ignore the requirements of US law. We are hoping that this action
alone will be sufficient to satisfy the US Treasury department in
charge of sanctions and we won't also have to remove any existing
patches.
God this sucks. I get sanctions are needed and they must be applied equally across the board, and that the kernel would be a prime target for exploits and backdoors from state actors, but these...
God this sucks. I get sanctions are needed and they must be applied equally across the board, and that the kernel would be a prime target for exploits and backdoors from state actors, but these guys likely never meant any harm and they just got cut off from maintainership because of the Russian government's actions.
I would be heartbroken if this happened to me honestly, and there's not much to do except accept it. Sad.
Could be worse. You could be a Russian or a Ukrainian soldier who never wanted the war, but now you are spending the rest of your life missing limbs, burned, otherwise mutilated, etc.
Could be worse. You could be a Russian or a Ukrainian soldier who never wanted the war, but now you are spending the rest of your life missing limbs, burned, otherwise mutilated, etc.
Relevant email with more explanation:
So it isn't all Russian contributors, but just ones who's employers are sanctioned?
That's indeed what it looks like. So it really isn't about them being Russian, but the companies they work for.
God this sucks. I get sanctions are needed and they must be applied equally across the board, and that the kernel would be a prime target for exploits and backdoors from state actors, but these guys likely never meant any harm and they just got cut off from maintainership because of the Russian government's actions.
I would be heartbroken if this happened to me honestly, and there's not much to do except accept it. Sad.
Could be worse. You could be a Russian or a Ukrainian soldier who never wanted the war, but now you are spending the rest of your life missing limbs, burned, otherwise mutilated, etc.
I get what you're saying and you're not wrong - but two bad things can coexist at once.