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.
Yes. There is an extremely arbitrary distinction made between the USA and Russia. Both are known for injecting spyware. China is somehow still okay? It makes no sense.
Not to mention the elephant in the room by not banning another certain country actively committing war crimes.
All software should be safety checked. Where the maintainer is from should be irrelevant.
But the most weird aspect is the timing. Why now and not a few years ago?
China is somehow still okay?
China is too important a supplier to the West. Sanctions against them would lead to retaliatory sanctions against the West from China which would be economically devastating.
Obviously they are just as dangerous and as actively involved is espionage as the other world players, but they hold too many cards to risk escalation. The West is also too important to their economy to escalate beyond war games. At least - we all hope so.
There is an extremely arbitrary distinction made between the USA and Russia.
Your world view seems to be highly influenced by propaganda. It’s very easy to draw a distinction between these two countries. Let me start with an easy one:
Russia is a dictatorship, the US is a democracy.
Which one is killing us faster? I’m pretty sure it’s the USA. Nice that you get to live in a democracy I guess but that doesn’t mean a damn thing to someone living outside the USA and being exploited and abused by it.
I’m in Sweden. The idea that the US is somehow more of a danger to us than Russia is laughable.
Russia invading is a statistical risk. The USA (as the leading avatar of capital) exploiting, degrading, and destroying the commons we need to survive is an unavoidable certainty. Russia and Sweden are also doing those things, but on a significantly lesser scale.
Maybe you should read the IPCC reports?
That’s a lot to cover… I’ve learned so far that Russia is responsible for 4% of the world’s CO_2 emissions, and that emissions in Russia and Ukraine have decreased fastest of all countries since 1990. That the USA is responsible for 28% of all emissions that have accumulated since the Industrial revolution, and that Russia has emitted 11%. Is there something specific you would like me to learn about?
In large part, it’s simply a matter of scale and wealth concentration. If Canada was as large and wealthy as the USA, we’d probably all be cooked by now.
Climate change is not a risk to human survival. Please study the WG2 parts for the possible risks we’re facing depending on when and how much action we take.
You’re correct in that large parts of Russia don’t have indoor toilets and proper sanitation. Not sure that’s a positive.
US is a democracy
Lmfao
Modern Russia is a shitty liberal “democracy” just as incompetent as the US’s
No, it’s not. But the US is closer to it than some Americans think.
I see why some people block lenny.ml. Many there put everything through a high-standard threshold function.
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You’re replying to someone from db0
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Lemmy.ml is not the only place that believes the US isn’t a democracy.
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The US is an oligarchy. It’s one of the things agreed by philosophers, including my teacher. The current controversy in the left surrounding the elections obviously proves this point.
- Oops. That’s… interesting.
- Maybe, but we at least get to select which oligarchs we prefer. In Russia, you select from Putin, Pootin, and Puteen.
I assume you’re happy with the oligarch you got now?
I’m not saying the system works or rises to the level of good. I’m saying that it is much better than the Russian system. The people at least get to choose who they think they want, and which group of people will be whipped more.
If you think the oligarchs in America are the people up for a vote, you’re completing misunderstanding what you’re being told right now.
The candidates up for a vote represent the different oligarchs at feud.
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well yeah, how does us being democracy change the fact that they basically did almost everything that Russia did
“basically”
You’ll be surprised if you actually challenge your convictions.
Are you sure you want to compare how many wars the US has waged compared to Russia and how many people they’ve murdered each?
That commenter is doing you a favour by implying it’s anywhere close.
The current Russian govt is not aligned with Soviet principles or ideology, right?
And the Stalin period saw the Soviets fighting and defeating the Nazis in WW2. Does the calculation of excess mortalities account for such effects too?
Nazi instigators punished, famine caused by the effect of war, infrastructure damage by the Nazis, deaths in Nazi occupied areas. These things don’t seem to be discussed much.Invasion of Vietnam.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_in_the_Vietnam_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_invasion_of_Afghanistan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guatemalan_genocide
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_assassination_attempts_on_Fidel_Castro
https://dessalines.github.io/essays/us_atrocities.html#sources--starting-pointshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_the_United_States
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Japanese-American_internment_camps
And since the current Russia is seen as the extension of the Soviets:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Native_American_genocide_in_the_United_Stateshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Famine_of_1876-1878
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_major_famines_in_India_during_British_rule
I did, and I found that the US does WORSE shit than Russia sometimes.
Russia ain’t good. Neither is the US. Get your head out of your ass.
Heard about what Russia has been doing in the occupied parts of Ukraine?
Heard about what the US did in Afghanistan? US soldiers raped a LOT of children before and after murdering their entire families.
America JUST exited a decades long war where the only results were death and destruction.
Tell me more about the US government requiring their soldiers to rape pre-teen girls then.
Or, you know, they really aren’t the same.
What happened this time?
Edit, answered elsewhere:
Recently, Linux removed several people from their organization that have Russian email addresses. Linus made a statement that confirmed this was done intentionally. I believe that there was some mention of following sanctions on Russia due to the war. I haven’t looked into the details of it all, so take my analysis with a grain of salt. From what I understand, it sounded like it was only Russian maintainers that were removed and normal users submitting code from Russia can still contribute. Maintainers have elevated permissions and can control what code gets accepted into a project, meaning that a bad actor could allow some malicious code to sneak past. This may have also contributed to the decision since this type of attack has happened before and Russia seems like a likely culprit. The reactions to this change have been varied. Some people feel it is somewhat justified or reasonable, some people think that it means it is no longer open source, and some people think it is unfairly punishing Russian civilians (it is worth noting that that is part of the point of sanctions).
I just wanted to say that I have the same questions, and it’s a relief to see it posted by someone with more courage. I’m too ignorant to contribute to the discussion though. I don’t know how a government or private entity could pressure a FOSS project in this way, unless that pressure was put on the project’s git platform. At which point the repo just moves elsewhere.
FOSS does not mean:
- Community owned: Linux is owned by the Linux Foundation, a legal entity of the United States and subject to it’s laws.
- Obliged to accept all contributions: The owner is free to accept or reject contributions for any reason.
Nothing changed except some people are no longer responsible for maintaining parts of the source tree. Their delegated power to accept contributions was removed. They can still propose changes, but they will be reviewed by others who aren’t subject aren’t at risk of Russian state influence.
This isn’t saying they’ve done anything wrong, or that they are currently under state influence, but now that they no longer have maintainer privileges the chance of the FSB knocking on their door has probably dropped 90%.
I’m out of the loop, what’s the recent Linux drama? If you don’t wanna type it out, you can point me in the right direction. Thanks. :)
Torvalds kicked out a bunch of Russia-based kernel maintainers.
For additional context, this was not a choice, but a requirement. The Linux Foundation is US based, and Torvalds is a US citizen. This was required due to current US sanctions against Russia, and was not just some sort of “Russia bad” thing from Torvalds that a lot of people are framing it as.
this was not a choice, but a requirement
It has been framed as such, but no evidence has been given that it was a requirement
So like what happened
Recently, Linux removed several people from their organization that have Russian email addresses. Linus made a statement that confirmed this was done intentionally. I believe that there was some mention of following sanctions on Russia due to the war. I haven’t looked into the details of it all, so take my analysis with a grain of salt. From what I understand, it sounded like it was only Russian maintainers that were removed and normal users submitting code from Russia can still contribute. Maintainers have elevated permissions and can control what code gets accepted into a project, meaning that a bad actor could allow some malicious code to sneak past. This may have also contributed to the decision since this type of attack has happened before and Russia seems like a likely culprit. The reactions to this change have been varied. Some people feel it is somewhat justified or reasonable, some people think that it means it is no longer open source, and some people think it is unfairly punishing Russian civilians (it is worth noting that that is part of the point of sanctions).
As per usual, the discussion of the Linux drama far exceeds the actual drama. I’m guessing most of those people will still contribute.
It’s banning contributors but not contributions themselves. So there must be inconvenience but somewhat effective workarounds. That could be fun to see unfold.
Although why would anyone from Russia even consider helping a project which sees them as lesser
But that’s not what happened. If the lawyers are saying that some open source groups can’t work with open source groups in Russia, as Linus indicated, that doesn’t mean either group dislikes the other group. I don’t think this is a question of animosity.
Yes. If FOSS projects bend the knee to shitty laws just because “they are the law”, then FOSS is free labor for corporations with no gains for the people.
That’s the point of FOSS as copyleft, to use the law to protect “free and open” information. This allows bigger projects, because contributors don’t have to keep their heads down.
At the same time maybe this is a downside, not an upside. As the reason why it has all gotten so big and complex and corporate-influenced.
The usual consequences to not following the law are not in your favor.
If your goal in contributing to FOSS is to go to prison, there are a lot better avenues to achieve that.
Law aren’t always right and governments don’t always do the best neither for the world nor for its citizens. Open source projects and corporations shouldn’t rely on any government, they shouldn’t do the biddings on governments — either “good” or “bad” — and act in people best interests.
Of course this is a pipe dream and what we got is more free work for companies with none the benefits
I don’t understand why you think “avoiding prison” equals free work for companies. The individuals contributing to open source are subject to the same laws we’re discussing in this thread, and are the ones that would actually be getting consequences.
No one exists without a government, and that’s not even a pipe dream, it’d be societal collapse.
Yes. I always thought of sanctions as being finance-related, meaning you can’t transact with sanctioned groups. I figured it couldn’t apply to decision-making/membership in non-profit organizations (that it might somehow violate “free speech” or some shit). Finding out this is not the case is terrifying and one more reason to hate the US (not that we needed more). This might disincentivize some people to contribute to FOSS.
Certain Open Source movements are pure bigotry and opportunism, the Linux Kernel / The Linux Foundation for example, so it doesn’t really make me wonder.
Nope. Politics is part of being open source.
As for US strong arming you don’t have to be a US company for them to do that. RISK-V and ASML have been targeted by them in the past to prevent Chinese use.
Same here. For now it’s only barring contributors which won’t harm actual users much, but that could change in the future with the precedent this is setting.
What’s the point of “FOSS” at that point if it’s not so different from corporate products, being similarly vulnerable to sanctions? I could see genuine free software being relegated to piracy communities if it goes that far.
FOSS gives people the option to take the original code and create their own version of it in case they don’t like what the original maintainers are doing. With closed source you would be stuck and would have to look for something new.
