Why remove Russian maintainers of Linux kernel? Here's what Torvalds says

Recently, the Linux kernel community was shocked when Greg Kroah-Hartman, a senior Linux kernel leader, announced in a patch that several Russian Linux maintainers had been removed from their roles because of “various compliance requirements.” He added, “They can come back in the future if sufficient documentation is provided.”

The Linux community’s reaction can be best summed up as, “Say, what!?“

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These persons — all are apparently Russian citizens — were not nobodies. They were maintainers of important hardware Linux drivers, including devices from Acer and Cirrus Logic. 

So what was the problem? And how can the problem be fixed? No answers were immediately forthcoming — which has led, naturally enough, to widespread speculation and dissatisfaction within the open-source community. 

Kroah-Hartman has not provided any further explanation. Linux’s founder, Linus Torvalds, has, however, spoken out on the Linux Kernel Mailing List (LKML). 

Torvalds wrote:

It’s entirely clear why the change was done, it’s not getting reverted, and using multiple random anonymous accounts to try to “grass root” it by Russian troll factories isn’t going to change anything.

And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren’t troll farm accounts — the “various compliance requirements” are not just a US thing.

If you haven’t heard of Russian sanctions yet, you should try to read the news some day. And by “news,” I don’t mean Russian state-sponsored spam.

Torvalds is referring here to the international sanctions against Russia following the nation’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Contrary to some reports, the maintainers’ ouster is not purely a move being pushed by the US. While Linux is supported by The Linux Foundation, a US-based nonprofit organization, kernel maintenance is handled by a global group. That means geopolitical issues will occasionally impact this and other open-source groups. 

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Usually, we think of sanctions in terms of blocking oil exports, blocking Western technology imports, or seizing oligarchs’ yachts. Sometimes, though, sanctions can impact individuals far away from the political or economic levers of power. That’s the case here. 

While this action has removed these maintainers from their official roles, it does not bar them entirely from contributing to the Linux kernel. They can still propose changes and be reinstated — if they meet yet-to-be-specified documentation requirements in the future. 

In open-source circles, many of us like to think that our work is unrelated to geopolitical issues. As this episode shows, that’s not the case.