James Bottomley, a SCSI subsystem maintainer who previously served as a board member and chairman of the technical advisory board, joined the discussion on removing maintainers from Russia. Linux Foundation. James apologized for the manner in which the removal was carried out and explained that the removal was related to sanctions against Russian companies included on the OFAC SDN list published by the US Treasury Department. According to James, employees of sanctioned companies are restricted from collaborating with US companies, and such employees cannot be kernel maintainers. Linux.
If the deletion was made in error and the current employer is not on the specified list, the developer should provide information about this to Greg Kroah-Hartman (this is the documentation mentioned in the initial deletion message). In any case, James promised to add a note about the removed contributors' contributions to the kernel development to the CREDITS file if necessary. The reason for the sanctions was given as the location of the entire kernel development infrastructure in the United States. Linux and a large number of maintainers. Because of this, it is impossible to ignore US legal requirements when developing the kernel.
James also expressed hope that the removal from the maintainer list would be enough to satisfy the Treasury Department's requirements and that the kernel would not have to remove code transferred by sanctioned developers. In a separate letter, James wrote that the delay in publishing clarifications and answers to questions is due to the fact that lawyers are still discussing the specifics of following sanctions during kernel development and intend to publish a detailed document describing the sanctions-related rules in the future.
James's explanation was sent in response to a farewell letter from Sergey Semin, who was among the removed maintainers. In his letter, Sergey said that after what happened, he lost motivation to continue further participation in the development of the kernel, and attempts to get more detailed information about the reason for the removal from a higher-ranking maintainer did not clarify the situation - the response only contained an apology, a mention of sanctions, regret about the inability to do anything and advice to contact a lawyer of his company. At the same time, Sergey has been participating in the development of the kernel for more than a year only as a volunteer, and not as a paid employee. During his work in the community, Sergey sent 518 patches, reviewed 253 patches and participated in testing 80 patches.
A proposal to remove developers employed by Huawei from the kernel maintainer list was also published on the kernel mailing list, as the company is also on the US sanctions list. Theodore Ts'o, creator of the Ext4 file system, explained that the US has several different sanctions regimes, and the sanctions applied to Huawei fall under exceptions that allow for the acceptance of patches and the involvement of Huawei developers in code reviews, as long as interaction with them takes place on a public platform, such as the kernel developer mailing lists. Linux.
In the case of sanctioned Russian companies, the requirements are more stringent, since Linux It can be used for military purposes, such as in missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles. Maintainers residing in the United States are required to comply with U.S. government laws and regulations when accepting changes, and to ensure that their actions do not pose a danger to other developers. LinuxHowever, maintainers from other countries may have different obligations.
Source: opennet.ru
