Linus Torvalds Comments On The Russian Linux Maintainers Being Delisted

Following yesterday's news first featured on Phoronix of several Linux driver maintainers being de-listed from their maintainer positions within the mainline Linux kernel over their connections to Russia, Linus Torvalds has today commented on the matter.

Since yesterday there's been a lot of concern and mixed views over a number of Linux kernel maintainers being de-listed from the kernel's MAINTAINERS file seemingly over being Russian or using Russian email addresses. In response to the patch posting from last week has also been proposals to revert that prior patch, some of the affected maintainers voicing their surprise over this sudden move, and some being upset over the lack of public clarity into the seemingly new "compliance requirements" imposed on the Linux kernel.

Greg Kroah-Hartman who authored the patch dropping the various maintainers has yet to comment on the mailing list thread, but a few minutes ago Linus Torvalds chimed in with his opinion. Linux creator Linus Torvalds wrote:

"Ok, lots of Russian trolls out and about.

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.

As to sending me a revert patch - please use whatever mush you call brains. I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be *supporting* Russian aggression? Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of history knowledge too."

So the decision stands and is okay'ed by Linus Torvalds. There still isn't public clarity though such as whether patches from these now-removed maintainers will be accepted into the mainline kernel moving forward or any other new restrictions on said contributions, especially with many times being hard to decipher the origin of kernel patches unless using an email address explicitly tied to a region or organization.

UPDATE: When asked whether Linus Torvalds was under any sort of NDA around this, he responded:

"No, but I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not going to go into the details that I - and other maintainers - were told by lawyers.

I'm also not going to start discussing legal issues with random internet people who I seriously suspect are paid actors and/or have been riled up by them."

UPDATE: Some Clarity On The Linux Kernel's "Compliance Requirements" Around Russian Sanctions