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Did the recent Linux drama change your views on how you perceived Open Source projects? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 6 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I for one am going through quite a culture shock. I always assumed the nature of FOSS software made it immune to be confined within the policies of nations; I guess if one day the government of USA starts to think that its a security concers for china to use and contribute to core opensource software created by its citizens or based in their boundaries, they might strongarm FOSS communities and projects to make their software exclude them in someway or worse declare GPL software a threat to national security.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Hasn't changed my view much. I already knew Linux was a company that has a legal presence in the US and so would be subject to their laws. The only real surprise is that it's taken so long to action this particular set of sanctions.

I do think the announcement was poorly handled - it should have been explained either before or immediately afterwards to cut back on the conjecture. The git notice only said that these contributors' names had been removed from the credits, not that they'd been stopped from contributing completely. Any company, including Linux, that does something they know is going to be contentious like this should bloody well get ahead of that curve and put the facts out.

The world is at war. It's not a bloody world war as we've seen before, but it is nation against nation by other means. FOSS is used so widely it is absolutely a target and nobody can be so idealistic that they cannot see the conflict, nor not know that it's constantly being attacked. Where you live does matter. I wish that wasn't the case - I truly do, but it's naive in the extreme to pretend otherwise.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

This wasn't a decision made based on sanctions, it was just an excuse given but no actual evidence of Linux being required to act on them was ever given.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Why do you think Linus is not being truthful?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Because of the tone he used when making his announcement and the white nationalist references to the Finno-Russian historical squabbles

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 days ago

Other countries are similarly sanctioned, and hundreds of maintainers from those sanctions are still there. So the sanctions thing is absolutely just an excuse.

What Linus just did to Russians is scaring a lot of people right now, who are probably wondering if they should keep working in association with a project which has just demonstrated its unreliability.