The title really undersells it, it seems like under a Biden Executive Order, free/open-source software will have to ban all Russian contributions. Its unclear if American developers would be allowed to contribute to Russian software like Nginx

  • enkers@sh.itjust.works
    38·
    1 month ago

    From the other phoronix article:

    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."

    I don’t love this decision, but I think if you’re willing to read between the lines here, it sounds like maybe he didn’t have much of a choice. Then again, Torvalds also seems pretty happy to comply.

    In other areas, sanctions don’t always mean a complete ban. For example, Ian Nepomniachtchi is still allowed to play chess internationally, just not under the Russian flag. This seems needlessly putative unless there are legitimate security concerns.

    • aidan@lemmy.worldOP
      7·
      1 month ago

      Yep, my reading of the law is the ban is specifically to do with “providing software services to Russians” and somehow collaborating on open-source software would be that. But I don’t entirely understand how.