Getting Called "Paid Actor" by Linus Torvalds
typeblog.netI think Linus has short temper and there are examples of his remarks that are borderline toxic (or cross the line), but this really isn't one of them.
The situation is pretty clear and calmly explained by Linus in the quoted messages. They removed contributors from Russia. The main reason is that they were told by a lawyer that they need to do this due to international sanctions. The secondary reason appears to be that Linus is not a fan of what Russia is doing, and is OK with sending a message.
They made a call and were immediately swarmed by people trying to argue geopolitics, law, personal responsibility, transparency, and so on - many of whom aren't regular kernel contributors. Linus responded that he's not going to argue, and I can't blame him: it's a software project, not a discussion club. Sometimes, maintainers make the call and you suck it up, leave, or fork it. This is just that.
Linus is a Finn. They have their own bloody history with Russian occupation. I can see how that would run deep. It certainly does, and rightfully so, in Finnish culture as a whole.
The baltic states learned their lessons about russia enough times to know how they behave. And russia never changes the way they behave.
So it's fine to be a racist if you hold historical grievances? Let me give you a clue: a Fin has no high moral ground when it comes to WWII, they were Nazi allies that had "work camps" where the death toll was on par with some Nazi death camps.
Absolutely. And regarding Linus' skepticism towards russian emails, my tiny hobby projects get tons of russian spam (and others), I can't imagine what Linux boards get. It must be really hard to trust new or infrequent users.
"Calmly explained"? Linus is equating having maintainers from Russia with "supporting Russian aggression".
Yes, that is what sanctions are.
> referring to the existence of said law or NDA itself seems to be the minimum for transparency
If it’s being done under the aegis of national security then they might not be allowed to discuss it.
"Getting called "Paid Actor" by Linus Torvalds"
Sounds like a resume line item to me 8-)
At least its more sophisticated than calling someone a "wanking walrus", or saying they should have been aborted.
Jokes aside though, this whole situation is very disturbing.
One would hope that free software developers would be more aware than to equate the identity and actions of a nation state with the identity of each and every one of it's geographic inhabitants.
I'm a US citizen, I massively disagree with a lot of what the US government does, especially WRT warfare which is basically mass murder. I would very much expect that many Russian people feel the same way about their government's actions.
From another, completely different argument, when there is conflict, cutting off communications with the conflicting party is counterproductive, e.g. barring Russians from chess tournaments, scientific conferences, etc.
Lastly, how effective can this removal of committers even be? If an account is truly a Russian state operative, does LF actually think that actor would be unable to establish a false account from a US location?
Maybe the way the whole thing played out was really Linus' personal "Scandinavian angst" about Russian aggression? There is a real history there, and Linus does cite his Finnish heritage in the email. If that's the case, we're back to calling people wanking walrus, and it's just another over emotional outburst from Linus, which would be a less concerning cause than the systematic elimination of Russian contributors by the LF organization.
> From another, completely different argument, when there is conflict, cutting off communications with the conflicting party is counterproductive, e.g. barring Russians from chess tournaments, scientific conferences, etc.
Communication and taking part in international events are two different things.
Ambassadors should talk, but when you started a hot war of aggression there is no space for inclusion of athletes etc in international events.
In this particular case, there were already many Ukrainian athletes that were killed on the frontlines while Russian ones are to be allowed to compete and promote their flag... I dont think so.
Nonbody removed any contributors. They just took away maintainer status from some people (rights to commit direcly to the kernel repo). They are still allowed to contribute via the normal process.
So Linux is Linus's project and he is subject to Finnish/EU laws. It's not a global project owned by some global "community". When you take this into consideration, these actions are perfectly reasonable. Any open source project will work similarly.
Contributors from "non western" countries must realise this and be thankful for the current circumstances, as sad as they are, to bring this fact to light.
As a European, I'm still kind of confused about what law is being used to remove Russian contributions here. Sanctions against Russia are mostly aimed at either entire trade sectors or at individual powerful Russians to put pressure on the leadership through the corruption already there.
It's possible some intelligence agency has identified backdoors placed by the Russian state and they're using this as an excuse to make larger changes without showing their hand, but in that case I'd say Torvalds has already said too much by even responding to these emails.
As for Linux itself, I'm not entirely sure where its geographical representation is. Torvalds lives in the USA, as a full citizen, the Linux Foundation that sponsors Linux is American, so going by him as project owner would probably mean the project isn't Finnish. It was started and got some major development back in Finland, though, and most contributions are submitted from countries all over the world.
I don't think Finland can make Torvalds do much in terms of kicking out Russian contributions, but the American government could.
Related:
Linus Torvalds comments on the Russian Linux maintainers being delisted
If I understand correctly, this blogger wasn't a maintainer or directly involved, he's just personally upset on behalf of anyone whose feelings were hurt by being accused of being a Russian bot? Or have been "riled up by them"?
No, he is a direct participant in the cited discussion.
He is a random blogger with an email and a liar though. He claimed Linus called him "paid actor", but Linus did not.
Linus said of anyone who disagreed with his approach and wanted to have dialogue (such as this guy) that they are "random internet people who I seriously suspect are paid actors and/or have been riled up by them."
That's multiple levels of insinuation and weasel words but does allege that this guy is a "paid actor"... any anyone else who disagrees with Linus. He doesn't even acknowledge random internet people that have been riled up not by "paid actors" but by his own boneheaded approach to this issue, and are directing their criticism at him in the hopes he and his organisation will do better next time. Linus being Linus.
Can't read on mobile. Why do these people still use hard line breaks?
You could try your browser's Reader View functionality. The page works fine enough, at least in Firefox mobile, after choosing Reader View.
Such hardworking Russian bots, wow. They wrote WHOLE 20+ emails in several hours!
Linus just dehumanized everyone who dares to disagree with the change and/or ask about why it was done on the 3rd year of the war (an increasingly common way of dealing with opponents, unfortunately). No one even tries to explain why this "compliance" selectively applies to ru emails (oh, look the maintainer has graduated from the Moscow State University! He is surely a Putin agent!), but not to Huawei ones. And how reverting the change became equivalent to "supporting Russian aggression" I simply can not comprehend.
Today he has dealt a huge damage to the Linux reputation among non-Western developers. Do not act surprised when, for example, Chinese developers and organizations will start behave accordingly.
Linus explicitly calls out in his email:
> And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren't troll farm accounts - the "various compliance requirements" are not just a US thing.
directly followed by a painfully ironic and arrogant:
>If you haven't heard of Russian sanctions yet, you should try to read the news some day. And by "news", I don't mean Russian state-sponsored spam.
Seems like he himself isn't up to date or he would have done this 2 to 9 years ago.
Preaching "racism and xenophobia bad" and then proudly talking about how much you hate everyone of a specific nationality is unfortunately par for the course for modern armchair political activists like Linus. If they didn't have double standards, they'd have no standards at all.
I want to say I hope he steps down at some point and lets someone more sane manage the project because his tantrums are clearly starting to have serious negative effects on it, but I know better than to not assume whoever would replace him would be even worse.