Subj : Re: Sanctions Hit Linux K
To   : AARON THOMAS
From : Mike Powell
Date : Sun Oct 27 2024 15:19:00

>  MP> It is part of the sanctions against Russia.  Many government agencies,
>  MP> and private companies, forbid what they call "offshore developers"
>  MP> (anyone living outside the US) having access to their code and/or data,
>  MP> or at least restrict developers residing in certain countrie (ex. Iran).

> I'm still confused about which code they're referring to. There is a lot of
> open source software that was made in the USA, and it's not likely that all th
> developers are as anti-Russia as Biden pretends to be.

Any code that is copyrighted in the USA, per the sanctions, is not allowed to
have Russians working on it.  That includes code copyrighted under the GPL,
which Linux is.

I know executive orders supposedly only cover federal agencies, but I
listened to a podcast the other day (which I think I linked here) where the
podcaster explained that it is actually covered because the copyrights are
granted (and also denied) by a federal agency.

If the code is not copyrighted, or is not copyrighted in the USA, then
Russians can still work on it.

Something else interesting is how the podcaster compared/contrasted it to the
sanctions against the company Huawei, a Chinese company.  He pointed out
that the difference is that the Huawei santions prevent US entities from
sharing tech with Huawei, but does *not* prevent Huawei from sharing tech
with US entities.

So Huawei developers can work on code copyrighted in the USA, but Russians
cannot.

BTW, if you google this situation, Linus Torvalds is 100% OK with it.

>  MP> I think it is a good policy but I am not sure how you enforce it.

> Yea, the enforcement part is puzzling. We can't even regulate the flow of
> people, but now we're supposedly going to regulate the flow of text files.

Torvalds seems confident that the Russians won't be working on the linux
kernel code, most likely because the Linux Foundation won't allow it.


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