Harald Welte, a well-known Linux kernel developer, recipient of an award for significant contributions to open-source software, founder of gpl-violations.org, creator of the Openmoko project, and one of the developers of netfilter/iptables, published his opinion regarding the removal of participants from the Linux kernel maintainers list based on their alleged work in sanctioned companies. According to Harald, he was proud of his involvement in the kernel developers' community, but the current community does not resemble what he remembers, and he is pained to see what is happening now. In his view, there is nothing worse than discriminating against people simply because of their passport, place of residence, or workplace.
As a resident of Germany, he compares such discrimination to the law on familial responsibility that was enacted during the dark times of his country, which allowed a person to be held accountable for crimes committed by a family member. Of course, being excluded from the kernel development process does not compare to incarceration, but the principle is similar — punishment comes not for specific actions but merely for associating with those who have committed condemned acts.
In addition to the discrimination of developers based on their name, email, or employer, the lack of explanations for the removals has raised eyebrows. Subsequent clarifications indicated that the issue lies with sanctions, and the removals were made following consultations with lawyers, yet no comprehensive legal analysis was provided, nor were the parties involved in the necessity of adhering to sanctions identified (Linux Foundation? U.S. developers? Distribution creators?).
Harald Welte believed that in the development of the kernel, collaboration among individual developers is what matters, regardless of who their employers are, and contributions to development should be evaluated on merit rather than on the person's identity or their employment at a particular company. The removal from the list of maintainers could be understood, in Welte's opinion, if specific developers had been added to a sanctions list, but in this case, people were removed who were only presumably related to sanctioned companies.
However, even if compelling legal arguments were provided, it would have been appropriate to hold a public discussion before actually excluding maintainers, attempting to find a way to circumvent the lawyers' requirements and organize a public movement against it. Ultimately, if no workarounds were found, Welte believed it would be reasonable to expect civil disobedience or to leave notes in the MAINTAINERS file indicating that the removal was a forced measure. Instead, the most significant developers quietly applied a patch with vague wording in the context of driver corrections, showing disrespect for the work of removed participants and demonstrating to other developers how people in the community treat each other.
Source: opennet.ru
