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Cover photo: Linus Torvalds
On Wednesday, Linus Torvalds, the creator of the Linux operating system, confirmed the removal of close to a dozen Russian-affiliated maintainers — key developers responsible for overseeing a specific area of the Linux kernel — from the project.
On Oct. 18, Linux kernel developer Greg Kroah-Hartman announced the changes via the Linux kernel mailing list, noting that several developers listed in the MAINTAINERS file had been dropped. His explanation was brief: “Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements. They can come back in the future if sufficient documentation is provided.”
The decision sparked questions from the open-source software community. Members sought more details concerning the removal, especially as the affected names appeared to be Russian, with most tied to Russian (.ru) email addresses. Russia is currently under U.S. government sanctions, linked to its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
Geert Uytterhoeven, a major Linux kernel developer, responded to the edit by saying Kroah-Hartman's explanation for the move was “very vague”:
“This is very vague… What are ‘various compliance requirements’? What does ‘sufficient documentation’ mean? I can guess, but I think it's better to spell out the rules, as Linux kernel development is done ‘in the open.’ I am also afraid this is opening the door for further (ab)use.”
Torvalds responded to questions late on Wednesday:
“Ok, lots of Russian trolls out and about.
It's entirely clear why the change was done, it's not getting reverted, and using multiple random anonymous accounts to try to ‘grass root’ it by Russian troll factories isn't going to change anything.
And FYI for the actual innocent bystanders who aren't troll farm accounts — the ‘various compliance requirements’ are not just a US thing.
If you haven't heard of Russian sanctions yet, you should try to read the news some day. And by ‘news,’ I don't mean Russian state-sponsored spam.
As to sending me a revert patch — please use whatever mush you call brains. I'm Finnish. Did you think I'd be *supporting* Russian aggression? Apparently it's not just lack of real news, it's lack of history knowledge too.”
In June 2024, the U.S. imposed sanctions on the sale and provision of IT services and software to Russia. These sanctions came into effect in September, leading services including Miro, ClickUp, Coda, Wix, and Hubspot to announce that they would no longer serve Russian customers (although the sanctions package itself did not explicitly require such a step).
While Linux itself is not a commercial entity — being managed by The Linux Foundation, a nonprofit based in the U.S. — and its contributors come from all over the world, Torvalds, as well as the operating system’s other key developers, may have felt compelled to participate in the sanctions in some form.
Linux is an open-source operating system that serves as the foundation for various other operating systems, including popular distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, and CentOS. It was created by Linus Torvalds, a Finnish software engineer, in 1991. Torvalds initially developed Linux as a personal project while he was a student at the University of Helsinki.