What? Almost none of the tech where I live is from the US. Not to mention that Samsung is the biggest contender to Apple in the US and they're more or less 50/50 with market share ATM.
The US is losing the war on world domination, something they were winning the past century or so, and they don't like that. That's basically the only reason any of this is happening. The war is just an excuse. As always, they would rather have Russia and China out of the picture than having to compete with them... because they can't, especially not with China.
Like how my preference is Protonmail being hosted by a neutral country based company
I also use Protonmail because of this. Sure, the free plan is not really great, but I only keep important stuff, so I don't get over the 500MB limit, I delete or archive the rest.
kernel....however any novel encryption does have to be noted to NSA and other organizarions in the USA
That may be true, but only if you're a US citizen. For example, my country doesn't have such regulations. In the end, if it's open source, it shouldn't matter whether I report stuff like that to any organization. It's open source, look it up, it's on a git repo online freely for everyone to review the code.
A foreign state actor wanting to send encrypted communications to overthrow another entity isn't going to follow software laws anyway.
Exactly. As if hacking and DDOSing are legal 😒. It's just throwing money away on some people doing pointless things.
On the other hand, having a ln encryption technologies taskforce makes sense IMO. Watching over what's going on in the open source world regarding cryptography, yeah, that is something that can actually be useful... for the country's cyber-security I mean.
I wasn't saying that Russia is not an ass, I was just saying that the whole point of open source is that it's above borders and nationalities, religion, sexual orientation, etc. It should be an imperative to keep these core values, not bend over backwards when even no warning has been issued, which I'm fairly certain it would have never happened. And on top of that, Linus'es reaction to them being Russian, I mean... come on!
But moving people around to code isn't 🤨? I'm sure it far easier to justify a donation than to book plane tickets and find places for the devs where to stay. And to be perfectly honest, the whole point of open source is "you can contribute from anywhere". The first time I would've encountered the move people around problem, I would have been "this is not the point of open source, it goes against the very spirit of it, we have to do something about this".
US and EU double standards is what this whataboutism is all about. I can state this for a fact, since my country is also in this pickle because of EU double standards. And it is constructive if you have a valid reason to raise the issue. There is a valid reason to raise this issue.
I still don't think something so important should be beholden to the whims of one company (Linux Foundation) or their country's laws (USA).
Exactly my thoughts.
I would strongly prefer to use an operating system that didn't have this problem. Do any even exist?
I was contemplating using FreeBSD, but then I found about the kernel switch to forbid Russian or Chinese usernames and... well, that's not an option as well IMO.
This thread is full of software engineers with just no concept of how society functions, or even a basic understanding of the geopolitical context of any of this.
The whole idea of open source is that you can contribute without restrictions and regardless where you live.
Then why in the hell was the LF founded in the US? That is something that clearly needs explaining. For example, Sweden is a much better place to do these sorts of things, their software laws are very liberal.
Some of these things need to be rethought if you ask me, this is not something that should be left like this. If no one in the kernel, including Linus, doesn't see a serious problem with "we have to move people around to code", then most of these people are probably braindead... I'm sorry, but if it was me, once I found out I had to move devs around to code, I would have been "fuck this we're moving the foundation".
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.
because the santion load is just going to increase and more countries will be included.
Not to mention more stupid shit, like not being able to visit the US if your wife is Russian, cuz.. you know, you might be a spy.
If they are just doing this because of a political fad and partaking "the current thing" then they are just voluntarily digging their own and the linux foundation's grave.
My 2 cents. Nobody is asking them to do anything... yet... and they probably never will, but... they're scared shitless and they would rather comply, even for things no one is asking of them yet and is dubious whether or not they're even covered by the sanctions, than show some backbone.
Maybe the better rule is that if you work for a company that produces weaponry for war you shouldn't be allowed to contribute, period.
This is something I can actually get behind on.
But, you see, there is just one teeency weeency tiny problem with that. They spend trucks of cash on whatever they deem will give them what they want, including funding organizations that they profit from.
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.
US law CAN'T apply on foreign ground, period. Nothing can. Just because they can bully their way around that, doesn't mean they are right.
And it should be only fair that Israeli maintainers be removed as well.
They should also rethink their infrastructure policy and whether they still want it on US soil.
This is all wishful thinking, I know, but this just goes to show you how they have absolutely no backbone whatsoever. As if anybody is gonna touch the Linux kernel and jeopardize the safety of millions of systems. We all know that is never going to happen, but they still bent over for the US... so typical... just goes to show you how little backbone everyone has, including Linus.
Oh, and don't get me started on the Russia/Finland history comment...
0x4E4F @ 0x4E4F @infosec.pub Posts 28Comments 931Joined 2 yr. ago 
That's shared source, look it up, it has nothing to do with open source.