Asklemmy

43858 readers

1815 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
!lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

Did the recent Linux drama change your views on how you perceived Open Source projects? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 2 weeks ago by Artemis_Mystique@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

125 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I for one am going through quite a culture shock. I always assumed the nature of FOSS software made it immune to be confined within the policies of nations; I guess if one day the government of USA starts to think that its a security concers for china to use and contribute to core opensource software created by its citizens or based in their boundaries, they might strongarm FOSS communities and projects to make their software exclude them in someway or worse declare GPL software a threat to national security.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] QuillanFae@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I just wanted to say that I have the same questions, and it's a relief to see it posted by someone with more courage. I'm too ignorant to contribute to the discussion though. I don't know how a government or private entity could pressure a FOSS project in this way, unless that pressure was put on the project's git platform. At which point the repo just moves elsewhere.

[–] wewbull@feddit.uk 4 points 2 weeks ago

FOSS does not mean:

Community owned: Linux is owned by the Linux Foundation, a legal entity of the United States and subject to it's laws.
Obliged to accept all contributions: The owner is free to accept or reject contributions for any reason.

Nothing changed except some people are no longer responsible for maintaining parts of the source tree. Their delegated power to accept contributions was removed. They can still propose changes, but they will be reviewed by others who aren't subject aren't at risk of Russian state influence.

This isn't saying they've done anything wrong, or that they are currently under state influence, but now that they no longer have maintainer privileges the chance of the FSB knocking on their door has probably dropped 90%.