James Bottomley, the SCSI subsystem maintainer and former member of the board and chair of the technical advisory board of the Linux Foundation, has joined the discussion regarding the removal of maintainers from Russia. James apologized for how the removals were executed and explained that they are related to sanctions against companies from Russia that are on the OFAC SDN list published by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. According to James, employees of these sanctioned companies have limited ability to collaborate with U.S. companies, and such employees cannot be among the Linux kernel maintainers.
If the removal was a mistake and the current employer is not on the specified list, the developer should provide this information to Greg Kroah-Hartman (this is the documentation referred to in the first removal announcement). In any case, James promised to include mention of the contributions of the removed participants in the CREDITS file if necessary. The reason for adhering to sanctions is cited as the presence of the entire infrastructure for Linux kernel development and a large number of accompanying staff in the U.S. Therefore, it is impossible to ignore U.S. legal requirements in kernel development.
James also expressed hope that the removals from the maintainers list would be sufficient to meet the U.S. Department of Treasury's requirements and that no code contributed by sanctioned developers would need to be removed from the kernel. In a separate letter, James wrote that the delay in publishing explanations and responses to questions is due to ongoing discussions by lawyers regarding the specifics of compliance with sanctions in kernel development, and they intend to publish a detailed document describing the rules related to sanctions.
James' explanation was sent in response to Sergey Semenov's farewell letter, who was among the removed maintainers. In his letter, Sergey stated that after the incident, he lost motivation to continue participating in kernel development, and attempts to obtain more detailed information about the reason for his removal from a higher maintainer did not clarify the situation — the response only included an apology, mention of sanctions, regret about the inability to do anything, and advice to consult his company's lawyer. Sergey has been participating in kernel development as a volunteer for over a year, not as a paid employee. During his time in the community, Sergey has submitted 518 patches, reviewed 253 patches, and participated in testing 80 patches.
The kernel mailing list also published a proposal to remove developers employed by Huawei from the list of maintainers, as this company is also on the US sanctions list. Theodore Ts’o, the creator of the Ext4 file system, explained that multiple different sanctions regimes exist in the US, and the sanctions applied to Huawei have exceptions allowing for the acceptance of fixes and involving developers from that company in code reviews, provided interactions occur on a public platform, such as the Linux kernel developers' mailing lists.
In the case of sanctioned Russian companies, the requirements are stricter as Linux can be used for military purposes, for example, in rockets and unmanned aerial vehicles. Maintainers residing in the US are required to comply with US laws and regulations when accepting changes, and must ensure that their actions do not pose a danger to other Linux developers. Meanwhile, maintainers from other countries may face different obligations.
Source: opennet.ru
