Perhaps one of the more surprising changes in the 6.12-rc4 development kernel was the removal of several entries from the kernel’s MAINTAINERS file. The patch performing the removal was sent (by Greg Kroah-Hartman) only to the [email protected] mailing list; the change was included in a char-misc drivers pull request with no particular mention.
The explanation for the removal is simply ““various compliance requirements””. Given that the developers involved all appear to be of Russian origin, it is not too hard to imagine what sort of compliance is involved here. There has, however, been no public posting of the policy that required the removal of these entries.
An early comment likely pins down the prevailing institutional pressures leading to this decision
What’s the deal with an international project adhering to what is obviously a decision of the US government?
Hint: The Linux Foundation (which notably employs Greg KH and Torvalds, and provides a lot of the legal and other infrastructure for this “international project”) is based in the US, and therefore has to follow US laws.
This is pretty fucked up. Like, we might see the kernel forked in the coming months/years.
See also: Phoronix: Linus Torvalds Comments On The Russian Linux Maintainers Being Delisted
Is it really a fork if all you do is take upstream and remove the blobs?
What code has this fork created that makes it novel? Have they tried to replace those blobs with open source drivers?
Yes that’s what a fork is, a disagreement with upstream’s direction and taking your own measures. Git is a decentralized version control system that allows for this.
Deblob scripts and regularly checking the source code for complying licenses. They regularly follow upstream kernel releases and are the first ones to signal license issues and inconsistencies.
I should have been more specific. Virtually all drivers in the upstream Linux kernel are licensed under a libre license. However, manufacturer firmware (small amounts of code designed to “unlock” the device’s capabilities) are distributed as a binary blob that gets loaded into your computer (you’re allowed to redistribute the firmware in binary form, but not anything else). The Linux kernel’s upstream (aka Torvalds and other high level maintainer’s own trees) allows the use of nonfree firmware for device support (AKA getting your foot into the door). In short, no modern computer device that people use regularly is free from private tampering. Who are these “private” tamperers? The US-led digital empire.
If you have a machine (or more likely, a virtual machine) that doesn’t require device firmware, then linux-libre is the superior kernel as it subtracts the space and attack vector costs of nonfree firmware. We aren’t at that point yet as CPU microcode is far too important to give up on physical hardware, but for nations in the Global South with the engineering capacity, linux-libre does all the work of de-westernizing the kernel.
You don’t need a decentralized version control system to fork, you can do it in Perforce or SVN or whatever too.
That’s all, just wanted to pedantically correct this thing.
Ok but again if all they are doing is removing the proprietary blobs, and not replacing them with firmware or drivers that are open source, they’re not adding anything of value. They’re just deleting code and patting themselves on the back.
Compare this to OpenBSD’s stance where they refuse binary blobs and only support drivers where they’ve written the code for it.
What’s your point here? That volunteers not financially backed by the US regime don’t magically have the capacity to reverse engineer the dozens upon dozens of blobs that get added to the kernel every release cycle? Or that they’re even trying at all? Both aren’t a good look for whatever you’re trying to say
Now you’re just being vindictive towards others and I really don’t like that. It doesn’t cost anything to not be unkind towards people’s contributions. You’re free to criticize the approach but I draw the line at the idea that it is worthless because none of this work is.
Comrade, I’m merely pointing out that binary blobs have been the bane of open source for decades and my ass is old enough to remember when the original debate about accepting them or rejecting them originally happened. Some, like mainline Linux accepted then, while more hardcore folks like Theo de Raat from OpenBSD refused to accept them, and wireless drivers for a decade were absolutely shit until everyone reverse engineered the broadcom drivers.
I’m merely stating that a fork needs to be more substantial than just deleting a bunch of binary drivers and saying boom I now have my own fork of the Linux kernel.
I mean I could delete all the Linux fiber channel drivers and claim that I have a fork of Linux but that’s not notable
it’s still a useful thing to have exist even if it doesn’t meet your arbitrary standard of a “real” fork
for people that aren’t severe linux-heads, recreating what they’ve done and producing a working kernel without blobs and such would be non-trivial to impossible.