The reasons for the ban are: People removed from the list of Linux maintainers work directly or indirectly for companies that have been sanctioned by the United States – called the SDN list (Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons) . James Bottomley confirmed this in the mailing list in response to the departure of one of those affected. Apart from the reasons, he also apologizes for the manner of communication, thanks them for their cooperation and offers to include their names in the credit file.
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employer directly or indirectly
In particular, former escorts work for sanctioned Russian companies or companies owned or controlled by them. Clearly, this is not the usual skepticism of Russian developers, as some critics have portrayed it. bottomly tell in your post Furthermore, what is meant by “sufficient documentation” that will allow affected people to return: they must prove that their employer is not on the SDN list of approved companies.
Bottomley also addresses the question of what US sanctions have to do with Linux: the entire Linux infrastructure is in the US and many maintainers are in the US, so US law cannot be ignored. The hope is that this move will allow the United States Department of the Treasury – which is responsible for the sanctions – to be satisfied and will not need to remove any existing patches.
In one more post Bottomley also explained why these replies only came after the maintainers were removed: lawyers are still working on guidelines for how the project will deal with restrictions in the future. His view, which is clearly not that of a lawyer, is that only the SDN list is decisive for the list of maintainers. This is also important because other people or companies like Huawei contribute to Linux and are also subject to restrictions – although they are not on the SDN list and have not yet been removed from the list of maintainers. appear to Here are the details about the affected companies,
no linux restrictions
There is still no word on whether affected people are allowed to continue submitting patches. However, it is questionable whether this question is even a question at all: a maintainer’s status is not a prerequisite for Linux development – ​​rather, maintainers decide the rules based on what constitutes part of Linux, especially in their region. . However, changes and new features can be introduced independently, so maintainers are more of a point of contact for developers. Accordingly, most Linux developers are not in maintainer positions.
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