Did the recent Linux drama change your views on how you perceived Open Source projects?
Did the recent Linux drama change your views on how you perceived Open Source projects?
I for one am going through quite a culture shock. I always assumed the nature of FOSS software made it immune to be confined within the policies of nations; I guess if one day the government of USA starts to think that its a security concers for china to use and contribute to core opensource software created by its citizens or based in their boundaries, they might strongarm FOSS communities and projects to make their software exclude them in someway or worse declare GPL software a threat to national security.
Those kinds of problems aren't particularly new (PGP comes to mind as an example back when you couldn't export it out of the US), but it's a reminder that a lot of open-source comes from the US and Europe and is subject to western nation's will. The US is also apparently thinks China is "stealing" RISC-V.
To me that goes against the spirit of open-source, where where you come from and who you are shouldn't matter, because the code is by the people for the people and no money is exchanged. It's already out there in the open, it's not like it will stop the enemy from using the code. What's also silly about this is if the those people were contributing anonymously under a fake or generic name, nothing would have happened.
The Internet got ruined when Facebook normalized/enforced using your real identity online.
Yes. There is an extremely arbitrary distinction made between the USA and Russia. Both are known for injecting spyware. China is somehow still okay? It makes no sense.
Not to mention the elephant in the room by not banning another certain country actively committing war crimes.
All software should be safety checked. Where the maintainer is from should be irrelevant.
But the most weird aspect is the timing. Why now and not a few years ago?
It just shows how hypocritical and Western biased the community is. Are Israeli and US maintainers ever going to get kicked out of projects for their countries many crimes? No of course not, they would never apply their own standards to themselves, which defeats the point of them in the first place.
Not really, open source projects don't necessarily have to be open to all contributors and I was aware of this already. They have to be open to anyone doing what they want with the code, by definition, which is good, but they don't have to allow everyone to contribute to upstream. I'm not sure if there's any particular defence against this being used in a discriminatory manner, but I do think this effect is significantly mitigated by the decentralised nature of open source and the fact that it's not too uncommon for forks to become preferred over the original, the fact that open source projects rise and fall in popularity, etc.
I wonder if there's some way to manage an open source project so that it's not subject to particular national laws in this way.
Is this really Linux drama though? It seems more like political drama that ended up jizzing on Linux.
I mean, yeah, there's been drama after the decision was made based on legal issues brought about by political drama, but this part of it isn't, if you get the distinction.
The only real linux drama part, as far as I can see is the crappy way it was announced, which isn't what most of the people involved in the drama after the fact are complaining about.
I dunno, I'm not complaining about the post here, just talking about the overall issue itself using the post as a jumping point.
Anyway, I guess what I'm getting at is that foss development can't be immune from political fuckery (no matter how justified or unjustified it is). Everyone that's going to be involved in development is going to live under some nation's thumb, and is vulnerable to any legal ramifications of that nation. So there's no way to prevent a project being strongarmed; all that's possible is having enough people that can review the code do so, so that any fuckery that affects the project is known, so that everyone can decide what they want to do about it as individuals.
As long as individual people have the ability to use any foss software they want on their own devices, there's a limit to how bad the fuckery can get. Tbh, I'm more worried about corporate fuckery in foss projects than governmental
Open source means open source, I never assume anything else from open source projects.
Linux at this point is an absolutely critical part of the information infrastructure our world is built on. It's not just a few nerds in basements cobbling together code. Safeguarding this infrastructure against bad actors is absolutely crucial for everybody's safety. Unfortunately we're going to see more of this kind of stuff in an increasingly polarised world.
Well, in theory open source is immune to all that. However, the country a project is registered at, matters. That's why the RISC-V project, for example, took its headquarters from the US to Switzerland. For that exact reason: so no country could strong arm it, especially since Chinese were the major contributors to the project (Switzerland is not 100% neutral, but it's more neutral than other countries).
It changed my view on how true to their ideas some people are.
What happened this time?
Edit, answered elsewhere:
Recently, Linux removed several people from their organization that have Russian email addresses. Linus made a statement that confirmed this was done intentionally. I believe that there was some mention of following sanctions on Russia due to the war. I haven’t looked into the details of it all, so take my analysis with a grain of salt. From what I understand, it sounded like it was only Russian maintainers that were removed and normal users submitting code from Russia can still contribute. Maintainers have elevated permissions and can control what code gets accepted into a project, meaning that a bad actor could allow some malicious code to sneak past. This may have also contributed to the decision since this type of attack has happened before and Russia seems like a likely culprit. The reactions to this change have been varied. Some people feel it is somewhat justified or reasonable, some people think that it means it is no longer open source, and some people think it is unfairly punishing Russian civilians (it is worth noting that that is part of the point of sanctions).
No
It's basically the same as me not installing that Flappy Bird copy because the dev is Russian. I don't trust it, even if the code is available to review.
We also learned a lot about trust with that file zip software a year or so ago. I don't remember the details of that, but open source doesn't automatically mean secure.
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, bad actors can exist everywhere, it doesn't really help anything but fragment the project and harm it, do we need multiple directed forks ? Fuck no it will be best if everyone can monitor and contribute, I kind of think of it as they do peer reviewing in research and shit, it's always better when more people can view it, that will leave less room for biasing and frankly detect bad actors easily
This shows that no open-source project can really be directed from the US, or if they are then a fork should exist and be maintained by BRICS citizens who are obviously viewed as lesser, at least in the Linux project.
No, only of Linux
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.
No.
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.
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.
Unfortunately no.
I remember the selinux controversy and the nsa trying to slip bad algorithms in.
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.
There was more drama? I didn't even notice. They're always doing drama.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Nothing is devoid of global politics.
No
@Artemis_Mystique@lemmy.ml Views on the idea, no. But it confirmed my opinion that the current socio-economic system is unfriendly to FLOSS
You can't really pretend that a piece of software it is not related to the decisions that the developers make.
People are just waking up to the fact that theory isn't reality.
Everything be it software or anything else is beholden only to those who is the highest bidder. Being FOSS doesn't change anything. This has been true for some time now that Linux and TLF is duty bound to businesses running it.
It had been covert till now, it is the overtness of this action which is surprising to most. I for one am surprised it didnt happen sooner.
Certain Open Source movements are pure bigotry and opportunism, the Linux Kernel / The Linux Foundation for example, so it doesn't really make me wonder.
Not really, I understand the decision.
I support sanctions against Russia, because of their attack on Ukraine. This is one of the consequences of sanctions. Russia can get rid of them if they want, but they are choosing to live with the sanctions and continuing the war.
Sanctions are NON-VIOLENT means of punishing unwanted behaviour. It is not fair for the innocent bystanders in a country being sanctioned, but it is the only non-violent tool we have to deal with military aggression.
There are no alternatives to it besides military intervention, unless we want Russia to crush and destroy the society and civilians of an independent country.
Nothing justifies this war. We can either stand by and watch the injustice or we can do something.
I am no fan of USA, but they are right in sanctioning Russia. Yes they have done a lot of shitty stuff, but that does not mean they are not doing the right thing here. Europe is also right in sanctioning Russia.
And it does not matter if Linux had to implement these sanctions or not, they should be there and everywhere. The sanctions has to be painful to work.
We can say that we don't want politics in FOSS, but that's not possible. Not wanting something to be political is often a political statement itself. Not sanctioning Russia when given the choice is ultimately a political choice in support of this war. Even though it might not matter much in all cases.
I'm not concerned that they followed the best advice of their lawyers to respond to the legal and political challenges that currently exist.
I am concerned that hostile nation states (define those as you will) have made supply chain attacks (remember the xz Utils backdoor) so common that actions like this or worse are becoming necessary and that open source, globally contributed software could be at risk.
If you are having sensitive information stored using closed-source software/OS, you can stop reading right here. This is your biggest vulnerability and the best thing you can do is to switch to FOSS.
For those that have already switched:
It made me think about how to improve the resistance of large FOSS projects against state-sponsored attackers injecting backdoors.The best thing i came up with would be to have each contribution checked by a contributor of a rival state. So a Russian (or Chinese) contributor verifies a contribution by an American.
The verifying contributors would have to be chosen at random in a way that is not predeterminable by an attacker, otherwise a Chinese-state contributor will contribute harmless code until the next verifier will be a US-based Chinese spy. Then they will submit a backdoor and have it checked by an American citizen paid by China.
Also the random number generator has to be verifiable by outsiders, otherwise a spy in the Linux-Foundation can manipulate the outcome of choosing a favorable verifier for a backdoor.This can obviously only be done as long as there are lots of contributors from rivaling states. If the US decided that Linux can only allow contributors from USA/EU, then this model can not work and Linux would have to relocate into a more favorable state like Switzerland.
What one should keep in mind that even if the US would ban all foreign contributions and the foundation would not relocate, Linux would still be more secure than any closed source OS, as those foreigners can still look at the code and blow the whistle on bugs/backdoors. It would however be much more insecure than it is now, as the overhead for finding bugs/backdoors would be much larger.