The Linux Foundation on global regulations and sanctions

The Linux Foundation has published itslong-awaited article on international sanctions and open-sourcedevelopment. This is the reasoning that went into the removal of a group of Russian kernelmaintainers in October.

It is disappointing that the open source community cannot operateindependently of international sanctions programs, but thesesanctions are the law of each country and are not optional. Manydevelopers work on open source projects in their spare time, or forfun. Dealing with U.S. and international sanctions was unlikely onthe list of things that most (or very likely any) open sourcedevelopers thought they were signing up for. We hope that in timerelevant authorities will clarify that open source and standardsactivities may continue unabated. Until that time, however, withthe direct and indirect sponsorship of developers by companies, theintersection of sanctions on corporate entities leaves us in aplace where we cannot ignore the potential risks.