Asklemmy

Not realy since Open source is most of the time still the best Option, and you cant realy controll Open source since there is always the option to fork Things. (For example If the US decided that China ist a NoNo the Open source Community in EU or India can do what they want since it is not under their jurisdiction)

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.

I think the prestige of "maintainers" and contributions/control are what is being torn down. Anyone anywhere is still welcome to contribute, they are simply limited from direct control. They can still fork at any time, anyone can. Getting people to follow your fork is another thing entirely, and your open source code will still likely be incorporated directly or indirectly. The only thing that has changed is the misguided prestige that has grown around the project and is not a required or relevant part of the project as a whole.

No.

Hasn't changed my view much. I already knew Linux was a company that has a legal presence in the US and so would be subject to their laws. The only real surprise is that it's taken so long to action this particular set of sanctions.

I do think the announcement was poorly handled - it should have been explained either before or immediately afterwards to cut back on the conjecture. The git notice only said that these contributors' names had been removed from the credits, not that they'd been stopped from contributing completely. Any company, including Linux, that does something they know is going to be contentious like this should bloody well get ahead of that curve and put the facts out.

The world is at war. It's not a bloody world war as we've seen before, but it is nation against nation by other means. FOSS is used so widely it is absolutely a target and nobody can be so idealistic that they cannot see the conflict, nor not know that it's constantly being attacked. Where you live does matter. I wish that wasn't the case - I truly do, but it's naive in the extreme to pretend otherwise.

So like what happened

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.

I get that it's a nice daydream to think of open source projects as existing in some kind of independent, ethereal vacuum just because the code is out there and accessible from any place on Earth. But every software project is (mostly?) dependent on the jurisdiction in one country, in this case it's the US, and so their laws about sanctions and so on apply. And yes, this means that unless conflicts/wars between nations happen to cease, that we will eventually have completely separated blocks of politics/culture/military and also IT. Globalization is over. China will have their own stuff, Russia will have their own stuff, and US+EU will have their own stuff. And none of those countries should continue using high-tech products made by the other because they could be sabotaged and it might be hard to find, so it's best to not use them at all and just cook your own stuff. It's unfortunate, but bound to happen in the current state of the political world.

If someone really wants to use the contribution of the expelled maintainers they can just make their own fork. Part of the Free in FOSS is the freedom to associate or not associate with contributors.

I'm ootl. Quick summary?

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. :)

From what I understand this wasn't a decision dictated by sanctions nor was there any strongarming. Otherwise it would've happend way earlier.

I also think splitting politics and literally anything else doesn't work and is something people who benefit from the discussion (or lack therof) made up.

Nothing is devoid of global politics.

There was more drama? I didn't even notice. They're always doing drama.

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.