On Thu, Oct 24, 2024 at 06:19:16PM +0000, Hantong Chen wrote: > > I wonder some of Ukrainian misiles and drones might also be using > the embedded Linux controllers, and why aren't there any sanctions. > This cannot be used as an excuse. The question of whether there are any sanctions is up to governments and legislatures of those countries that have enacted the relevant laws and regulations. This is not up to the Linux development community. But given that we are citizes of our respective countries, we are obliged to follow the laws of our countries --- and if we don't, we can be subject to enforcement actions of our countries' governments. For someone who is a Chinese citizen, the same would apply to any rules and regulations promulgated by the Chinese government, no? The question of why a particular country has decided to sanction Russia and not Ukraine, and why a country has decided to support one country versus another, whether it's Germany, France, and Poland sending tanks and armored vehicles to Ukraine, or North Korea sending artillary shells to Russia, is not up to the Linux development commuity. As individuals we may have our own opinions of the appropriatness one one versus another, but the fact remains that there are sanctions imposed on one set of countries, but not the against the other set. Hypothetically, if someone was a Russian Citizen, and there was a Russian Law forbidding them to provide technical assistance to US entities, then that person would be obliged to respect that law, and not send any patches to US-based open source projects. Depending on how that law was worded, a Russian-based open source project might not be allowed to accept changes from US entities, and again, if you were a Russian open source project maintainer, you would be obliged to follow that law --- or maybe you would be thrown into a Russian jail. Whether you are a Russian patriot and are 100% behind the Russian law, or think that perhaps it's not the best policy, doesn't really matter; you are still obliged to follow the law one way or another. (Personally, my sympathies are entirely with Ukraine, but my opinions really don't matter for the purposes of this discussion, because I don't make my country's foreign policy.) > What LF and Linus done will inevitably create a climate of fear where > contributors and maintainers from the *Countries of Particular Concern* > feels endangered. In the ideal world, one country would't be invading another conutry, and we wouldn't have these sanctions regimes. But they were not *caused* by the decisions of the LF and Linus. The sanctions regimes were enacted by multiple countries' legal governmnts, and now the question is how can we best protect the Linux development comunity, the operators of web and git servers that are redistributing Linux kernel sources. etc. The Linux community may be an international open source project. But it is composed of individuals who have to respect the rule of law of their individual country; and many countries have spoken quite clearly on this subject. Cheers, - Ted
