The title really undersells it, it seems like under a Biden Executive Order, free/open-source software will have to ban all Russian contributions. Its unclear if American developers would be allowed to contribute to Russian software like Nginx

  • enkers
    17•4 hours ago

    From the other phoronix article:

    UPDATE: When asked whether Linus Torvalds was under any sort of NDA around this, he responded:

    "No, but I’m not a lawyer, so I’m not going to go into the details that I - and other maintainers - were told by lawyers.

    I’m also not going to start discussing legal issues with random internet people who I seriously suspect are paid actors and/or have been riled up by them."

    I don’t love this decision, but I think if you’re willing to read between the lines here, it sounds like maybe he didn’t have much of a choice. Then again, Torvalds also seems pretty happy to comply.

    In other areas, sanctions don’t always mean a complete ban. For example, Ian Nepomniachtchi is still allowed to play chess internationally, just not under the Russian flag. This seems needlessly putative unless there are legitimate security concerns.

    • @InverseParallaxEnglish
      8•3 hours ago

      In other areas, sanctions don’t always mean a complete ban. For example, Ian Nepomniachtchi is still allowed to play chess internationally, just not under the Russian flag. This seems needlessly putative unless there are legitimate security concerns.

      This is absolutely not an absolute ban, they can contribute code, they simply can’t be named maintainers with full commit authority.

      Also apparently they are intending to re-add those who can be confirmed as unaffiliated with the Russian government.

      • @aidanOP
        4•3 hours ago

        Also apparently they are intending to re-add those who can be confirmed as unaffiliated with the Russian government.

        Do you have a source for this? Because that would be really good news.

        • @InverseParallaxEnglish
          3•2 hours ago

          In the patch.

          Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements. They can come back in the future if sufficient documentation is provided.

          It was vague, but this seems the clear intent.

          • @aidanOP
            2•2 hours ago

            But its not clear that the compliance requirements are about being government affiliated…

    • @aidanOP
      6•3 hours ago

      Yep, my reading of the law is the ban is specifically to do with “providing software services to Russians” and somehow collaborating on open-source software would be that. But I don’t entirely understand how.