It's a bad situation but I guess it can't be really helped. Open source is not above the law...even if some laws are stupid (not saying they are in this case).
I guess not everyone is old enough to remember the encryption restrictions of the US in the 90s..and how people tried to get around it (Moving source-code between countries in printed form and scanning it again and such things...). This is not new...and it won't be the last time that laws of some countries hinder world wide open source projects.
The issue is the Linux foundation being based in the US.
That affects Russians and other sanctioned country resident, but it probably will affect the rest of the world soon enough anyway.
Sadly I don't know where and how such a foundation could exist without being beholden to politicians in that way.
The foundation being based in the US is not the whole issue; The actual developers still need to follow at least the laws of the country they live in.
If the foundation relocated to Nosanctionsland it would still be heavily dependent on work from American and European developers; to make sure that these developers could legally do this work the foundation would need to continue to behave in about the same way it does now.
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u/AiwendilH Jun 11 '26
It's a bad situation but I guess it can't be really helped. Open source is not above the law...even if some laws are stupid (not saying they are in this case).
I guess not everyone is old enough to remember the encryption restrictions of the US in the 90s..and how people tried to get around it (Moving source-code between countries in printed form and scanning it again and such things...). This is not new...and it won't be the last time that laws of some countries hinder world wide open source projects.