No, new linux or other OS but war is knocking on our doors daily now and we are in no position to say what will this mean for our daily material and social lives, how communication and exchange of information will continue. All we can tell from history is that “any” little freedoms we may locally enjoy can go out of the window as soon as the sound of the first bomb flies in.
– This does relate to linux and OS in general and users. –
Marx was wrong, and Marx was right. Capitalism is about industrial output, and industrial output has heavily shifted away of the previous century “called” industrialized nations and onto what was known as “non-industrial” or “developing” world. But Marx was wrong about what industrial is and what is not, and clearly now we see industrial agriculture, in terms of product being coded down to the seed and dna, and division and specialization to labor using heavy machinery for this production. All the way down to international pizza shops and industrially organized delivery systems. Industrial production is meaningless without controlling market and distribution systems (including financial/monetary industries) from raw material to consumption. And this industry has been heavily been controlled by the US/UK/France industrial banking. Occupied territories of Japan and Germany don’t really count outside this trio, they are just bubbles to replicate the trio in the territories. BRICS has been a thorn to their totalitarian tendencies and its expansion from Iran to Venezuela, and more is making them really obnoxious. Ukraine, SaudiA and Israel have been recruited for their pilot proxy pre-war.
So what we see now is two capitalisms colliding, or should we say the one federation of capitals has an interest and benefit to collide with the other federation of capital. Daily we are fed with propaganda of how evil the other side is, and it is mutually perpetuated. Mass media have become subdivisions of defense ministries/departments, and they are tools of capital and its protective mechanism. What is important to us on the immediate front is that “information systems” and criminal activity has become connected through this war time. In Germany for example “expression” of anti-Israeli war has become criminal while Islamophobia is fed and perpetuated as the usual reactionary paramilitary mechanism that “has worked for more than a century”. Even countries with traditional friendships to Russia, India, Iran, China, have been shoveled and recruited for/against this building of a war front. Pakistan is ready to attack Iran while it is banning communication with India. Countless examples of countries “getting ready”. Even major online mapping information systems have been recruited to redraw or eliminate borders as they are “planned to change”. You look at weather maps and what you remember as borders between Israel and its neighbors have vanished or altered.
It does not matter whether we like it or not, or believe it will not happen, or it will not affect “us”, it may happen and there is little we can do at this stage to avert it. Primarily because we haven’t been organized enough (or at all) to be able to counter propaganda or be able to stop or avert participation in wars at the national level. The class (material social) war continues daily and peace will only come with equality, to avert comments of yada-yada we have always been at war. Yes, we have, but what other word do we use for that war where rockets land on apartment buildings, hospitals, orphanages, powerplants, and water distribution systems? Loud vs silent “acceptable” war with casualties being casualties for both? There has been plenty of screaming from the silent war front. Some ears are better tuned to that frequency than others.
Linux was mandated by the government, where Linux Foundation is based on, and where nearly ALL funding comes from that country’s based corporations., to exclude any “Russian” developers. Russian as in citizenship, residence, employees of Russian corporations, … not very clear or could possibly be clear. Could Snowden be participating in linux under a fake name, to ensure backdoors can’t be activated by the kernel? He is not Russian. But SourceForge access from Pakistan has effectively been blocked by the military as SF reroutes their traffic to an Indian mirror. Accessing Indian news media is impossible from Pakistan.
To what degree do people think that no matter where they live in the planet they can’t be affected? Will Perth Australia be affected by their alliance to US/Japan/Taiwan/S.Korea/UK involvement in Pacific/Indian ocean war? Their kids will be drafted, energy and food supplies may become scarce, and certainly information will be state controlled and monitored. Deviant behaviors will be branded in war terms as betrayal or espionage, and if there still will be an internet active it will be very restricted. Furthermore digital activity will be highly monitored. MS-w, android, .. and possibly some forms of FOSS is engineered already to provide such tools for the monitoring of users.
VPN? Are you kidding? You think you can trust a private corporation to protect your anonymity and location? Tor, gnunet, … those are questionable tools against state tendencies, and the reality is whether our perceived “human rights” to access and share information freely, even against government, corporations, agencies, mass media, can’t and should not be controlled.
But my systemd based desktop is more convenient and “modern” than your runit based window manager and terminal.
All power to you
I do want ipv6 connectivity, I don’t want to be left out of the party, even though I have no clue on how to utilize it now
You deserve to have what could possibly be of future use! (note that Xorg-Xwayland release back in June couldn’t compile with GCC >= 14 when ipv6 was turned off, and now the latest Xorg-Xserver does the same exact thing, meanwhile VirtualBox is crashing out when ipv6 connection is off.)
Why is it important that certain nationality developers are excluded from the kernel?
kernels before the ban and attack on “free” software
- 6.11.5 2024-10-22
- EOL 6.10.14
- LTS 6.6.58 2024-10-22
- LTS 6.1.114 2024-10-22
- LTS 5.15.169 2024-10-22
- LTS 5.10.228 2024-10-22
- LTS 5.4.284 2024-09-12
- LTS 4.19.322 2024-09-12
These are the current linux kernels before the ban (possibly of backdoor finders). I wouldn’t upgrade after them, whistleblowers may have been eliminated.
If it is free it can’t include bans based on geography, nationality, gender, even religion and sexual orientation or people are having a really disturbed perception of what free means. Free for us but not them has nothing to do with freedom, only beer!
Linux is not really Free, it has never been, libre-kernel has been around but a bit underdeveloped and very restrictive to hardware use. Unfortunately many of us throughout this world can’t afford the luxury of a libre machine and kernel.
The hungry can’t be fed as vegans on bio/organic vegetables and nuts. It is too expensive of a hobby.
May all wars be over soon, people getting wiser, not killing one another for the benefit of “3rd others”, and equality can be organized and prevail globally, and production/consumption systems can follow FOSS ideals of “producing and sharing”, instead of the authoritarian/violent “produce and exchange” system.
Till then we can passively sit unorganized and witness the effects of war, and try to realize what we have been doing so wrong to allow it to take place and disrupt our lives and relations.
PEACE, by any means morally acceptable
Stay human, don’t allow authority and wealth alter you
PS The clowns that pose as a couple of grandfathers of the Kernel from Finland have the audacity to speak of history as authorities, providing an Ethnic excuse for being anti-Russian, forgetting all too easy their pro-nazi past, and current neo-nazi explosion. On whose payroll are they preaching history lessons? Enough, the line has been crossed! You can’t be getting 6-7 figure $/Eu annual incomes to be preaching history while allowing a state intervention/attack to FREE and OPEN software.
Over and out!
ref: https://lunduke.substack.com/p/long-term-linux-maintainer-banned (podcast)
https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366614875/Why-geopoltics-risks-global-open-source-collaborations
https://news-pravda.com/world/2024/10/31/818984.html
systemd-free linux community 
Not sure what you are trying to say here, especially in the first paragraph or so. Something about a ban on Linux kernels being unavailable to certain nations perhaps? Or am I still reading this incorrectly?
I don’t understand how the West can possibly ban any nation or other actor from accessing open source software. It is abundantly available through umpteen different routes… unless you are saying github has also been dismantled (and again, how do you do that for only a specific nation or so?).
I follow political news closely, yet I still don’t follow what you mean. It could be that MSM news outlets (which includes the five eyes and others, like Israel) are simply not reporting on this even though software and OS’s are integral parts of the “infrastructure” we all depend on so heavily on a daily basis.
Perhaps the news of which you refer simply hasn’t landed at any of the outlets I use for my daily dose of capitalism’s excesses, without which the MSM probably wouldn’t be able to garner ad revenue.
LikeLike
My fault for not adding references to the main story. I was under the illusion that everyone knew about it.
References added now in the bottom of the article.
It seems as 12 people were removed due to this “compliance” and now non-free war-linux has taken the side of the “nationalists” who lead the project. It was their nationality that came as defense to their decision to comply. I’d say their salaries were at stake which is a more respected decision, even though we are talking about millionaires.
Russia didn’t invade Finland, the Soviet Union did!
In the NATO defense about the violation of the agreement in 1991 about NATO not expanding its membership towards the SU, the hypocrisy reached RED when they said the agreement was made with SU, which no longer exists, we didn’t violate an agreement with Russia.
It is very questionable historically whether the US would have entered the war if the SU was defeated, which was a less spoken wish and hope of the west’s leaders. The US entered so the Red Army wouldn’t take London!
Anyway, “free” is not equal to “free but not for everyone”. The reason FOSS works is that it is free and open for everyone and not just biased people from a certain doctrine/nation/other-grouping.
This has the potential to polarize and split the FOSS communities in two or more groups, and that is as far from free and open as it can get.
LikeLike
Emphasis on “people” NOT CORPORATIONS, we are not the same, we will never be!
LikeLike
ussr was ruSSia, it was the russian way or a way to Siberia.
LikeLike
The Ukraine was part of the USSR when ww2 started, more than 100K troops from Ukraine fought against the Nazis, although there were some in W.Ukraine that betrayed their country, collaborated, and helped in the genocide of Jews and other minorities.
But, to be accurate, Russia didn’t invade or bombard Finland, the SU did, including Ukraine.
So why not ban Ukrainians and Georgians and Kazakhs from the kernel if historic reasons drove the Fin leaders of the linux project to ban contributors?
LikeLike
,Russia didn’t invade Finland, the Soviet Union did!, thats the kind of propaganda ooring on ru-media.
LikeLike
The Soviet Union was a product of the Russian revolution, in a tiny part of Russia to be specific, but that is the weakness of centralized control, power, economy. Whoever captures the castle gets the territory. But the Soviet Union was much much more than Russia. About the only part of the SU that was always Russia and there was little dispute about it and fell off after 1990 was the Eastern part of Ukraine that was consolidated for bureaucratic reasons to Ukraine post-ww2. To place it under perspective, Mariupol before 1990 had more Greek speaking population than Ukrainian, they all spoke Russian though.
If you have gaps in history and geography I suggest you visit wikipedia in your favorite language and read before you reproduce Fox (flat earth) propaganda.
LikeLike
a way to deflect you russky-lover-genocidal-communist.
LikeLike
what way? Display of total lack of intelligent argument? Just a long characterization one can hardly recognize where it is based on.
Linux is now a fork under the guidelines of the US State Dept. Real linux has remained what it was in mid October.
They should rename it as a special DoD-edition linux-fork.
Hating Russians just on the basis of being Russian is just as racist as hating any other human group based on any special characteristic. Hate comes very easy and handy to those belonging to a majority group (not necessarily numeric, but as in power – as in S.African apartheid being white of European origin was a majority).
LikeLike
hey you first started insults, my so called gaps in ^soviets^ history and today Ukraine, about whitch i never spoke to you…
so my last words is still valid you russky-lover-genocidal-communist.
LikeLike
Your stupidity is mind-boggling, ukroanon…
LikeLike
I knoq what your trying to say. I am confused though. I am always on the peoples side wheter they are Russians or Ukraine. I haven’t got any clues as to why linux banned these maintainers from Kernel but i think it was not the right decision. I mean if a company is supporting a war or the government who started the war, the employees not necessarily support the company. But this is a long story to speak. What i would like to see is banning some redhat kernel maintainers working secretly for purposes beyond foss principals.
rhtoras
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ela re rhtora
“Those who started the war”
Just like the war in Afghanistan the CIA provided the grounds where the SU (then) Russia (now) had no alternative but to engage in a war that would wear it down as much as possible as to not be a “competitor” in…. What is the object? To rule on people globally and to rule centrally. Centrally to where the organized federated industrial capital is based and from which command center it is defended (NATO) and to which center totalitarian control of all resources (including the human resource of labor) is managed.
When the CIA chief visited the Ukraine with a brief case full of candy, not that long ago, shortly after a private professional army begun training in new facilities and with evidence of western experts in the faculty. This private army with a clear tendency of neo-nazi symbolism came into play during the destabilization counter-insurgency of pro-EU/pro-NATO and helped the overthrow of the government. Parties became illegal, ethnic and religious organizations became illegal, syndicalists across the country got executed and persecuted. This army became a semi-official branch of the army and acted almost autonomously in many cases disregarding central military command. The Azov was clearly a US creation
So “who started the war”? Gorbachev had signed an agreement of pulling off the army from Eastern Europe based on a promise by NATO that it will not even “attempt” to expand beyond its current membership and any closer to Russia.
The NATO defense is that the SU doesn’t exist so the agreement was null and void, and so they can do what they like.
So they surrounded Russia from all sides and Belarus/Ukraine/Ossetia/Georgia were the last frontiers.
The BP country, sorry that would be Azerbaijan, is basically an unofficial expansion/territory of Turkey with Turkish military being actively participating in years of aggression against Armenia, for which US/California politicians try to play down as the Armenian voter base is quite strong there. Even mapping of US based mapping puppets redesign borders and territories according to US State Dep. rhetoric.
NATO wants to take over Black Sea and its resources and to keep blocking Russia to access western markets and having a monopoly on natural gas supplies. The puppet states of Azer, Turkey, Greece, Albania, Italy facilitate this plan the best they can.
Some time ago Linus published an attempt by the US gov. to install backdoors for “security” to Linux and he refused. Did he?
Who would have been best qualified to identify such attempts? Ahh… exclude them using a war as an excuse.
It all makes sense if you don’t think along the lines of the propaganda.
Do I like Putin better that neo-Nazi sympathizing dictator who would rather have all Ukrainian young men killed in a war of US control? I don’t like either, but nor do I accept the US rhetoric that Russia started the war. It is a total lie.
It took decades of abuses, nearly slavery, against the residents and workers of Donetsk and Luhansk (read their history), robbing their resources, having thugs run mines and farms illegally, exporting coal and grains unaccounted for, and it took syndicalism (labor) of both Russian and Ukrainian speaking workers to struggle for independence and retaking their resources from the West’s thugs. Russia, protecting its own interests, when they would have been sentenced unreliable and insignificant, had to step in and offer protection, or remain silent against genocide by the Azov brigades slaughtering unarmed civilians for years before the Russian invasion.
For one bully to get paid for protection a second bully must exist, so they had to push them into a corner where they would become one.
BRICS is a thorn on the tiny minority’s ribcage (the so called west is the tiny minority). The world is huge compared to the few Europeans and N.Americans. Russia, Brazil, China, India, Syria, Iran, Venezuela, that is where most of the energy comes from and where most of the industry is based.
Unfortunately the dreams of an independent Donetsk and Luhansk is gone now, they will either be consumed in Russia or they would have to become refugees to Russia surrendering their home to Ukraine/EU/NATO.
The partisan left across the world is criminally guilty for allowing privatization of high seas and not raising resistance against the theft for EEZ. Just like public land was robbed of human rights to it to be privatized, they privatized water. If it wasn’t for this armed robbery against humanity this war in the Black Sea would make no sense at all.
Between Ukraine, Romania, and Turkey the Black Sea would be passed to BP/Shell overnight.
It is all very simple and straight forward.
A world turned to hell and a partisan left being obsolete and bankrupt, while the masses learned to rely on them for mobilizing against important issues. Instead they have one safe long term anti-American agenda to liberate Palestine in hope Marxists will take over this government. The general left is morally bankrupt and is dragging humanity down its black-hole, unable to explain reality, let alone propose any realistic ways to change it.
LikeLike
Absolutely amazing post. I’ve found a kindred spirit.
LikeLike
This is such a bad and dangerous precedent for not only Linux Kernel development but for open source software, too.
If this is allowed to stand, then open source development becomes an arm of whatever government controls the company or individual developer under whichever jurisdiction in which the software is developed. It becomes a legal dispute with the government having absolute authority, and unlimited funds, in their area; and, apparently, a possible criminal allegation if the work is exported to or receives collaboration from sanctioned entities.
This is probably the most scary thing I’ve read in recent technology development.
LikeLike
Exactly, you phrased all my concerns even better and in simpler terms.
Linux as it stands now is a US government fork, FOSS linux ended before this current state controlled fork.
LikeLike
From: joborun
A small correction here is needed, as we researched this thoroughly the mentioned patch on blocking 12 devs was issued by Greg Kroah on October 18th, 4-5 days before the press picked up on it, so the last “safe” editions are those that were issued on the 17th, (one version less than what is displayed) and a massive rebuild was done again on the 22nd after those devs were removed. If one looks at the archive, the changelogs and release dates, one can assume this was planned ahead of time, it wasn’t a decision of the moment. In this respect, the changes submitted on the 10/17 wouldn’t have had adequate time to be reviewed by the silenced devs, so you can speculate that “safe” editions were those published even before the 17th.
Nationalism expressed by the two leading devs of linux was not necessary to “comply” with USSD it was provided extra as an eye opener. Need we remind the great historian Linus that it wasn’t Russia that attacked his homeland but also Ukranian, Azeri, Uzbeki, Turkmeni, as well all under the command of a Georgian leader. If one wants to act as a scientific authority, beyond reproducing Voice of America and CNN rhetoric one should open up a book. His nazi sympathizing relatives may not have been the most reliable source of history either.
Fuck linux development, we will patiently await the upcoming true open and true free fork to go with. Till then we will keep rebuilding on the pre 2024 10 18 source.
LikeLike
And this is why i am also using openbsd… mind you OPEN not free.
As for libre kernel and machines i don’t get it. There are affordable sollution that can work with libre kernel. I.e old thinkpads x220, x230 e.t.c work fine with distros such as dragora or parabola. OK they are not 100% libre but even talos II is not 100% libre too.
LikeLike
but openbsd and freebsd depend on linux drm for hardware support as openbsd synced with 6.12 and freebsd has as for 5.10, 5.15, 6.1, 6.6 and so you get hardware support
LikeLike