This isn’t about them being kicked out, this is about the fact we don’t know the process that resulted in this. Was this a decision Linus made after a night coding and thinking about the world? Was the foundation ordered to do it?

It lacks transparency into the process even if the outcome is fine and the way it was done doesn’t feel transparent, even if it makes sense not to include Russian coders in the project.

These projects are so big and complex that even with open-code a malicious actor is sometimes able to insert damaging code. Who suddenly made this decision? Did the US government order them to do this? If the US government can order them to do this, can they order the elevated coding status of a “benevolent” contributor on the US government payroll who is then ordered to put in a very hard to detect exploit? Open code doesn’t mean exploit free, it means exploits are more likely to be patched.

You don’t get it. It’s the lack of transparency about kicking these people out, not the kicking these people out, that is the problem. Who made the decision?

It makes sense to sanction Russia for being an ass but the way this was done doesn’t feel open, and many people sense it.

It would be much better if the company were not in a place in which gag orders can be issued, leaving questions as to transparency.

As it stands now, it isn’t clear if Linus is just “grouchy” about this with a unique personality or if the foundation got a NSL and can’t say anything. And that leads to questions about whether there were other NSLs other than this one and if it’s had an impact on the code.

Exploits are so hard to detect sometimes if done well and often although they get patched… eventually… the damage is done prior to the patch. The US government, despite doing lots of good things, engages in torture. And even if the US government is the “good guy,” this leads to less trust in the open-source ecosystem, no matter what the justification.

But seriously, Linus’s comment regarding this was… just… I have no words… he basically put every Russian in the same basket, called them trolls

There are a huge number of online Russian trolls. That part of his response was not hyperbolic. They do have troll factories there to influence public opinion.

The problem is this still leads to questions about transparency about the project in general and how this decision was made and whether it was made by those involved in the project or was an order from the US government.

Yes, this is exactly my same thoughts.

This is terrifying.

I don’t like what the Russian government is doing and Putin is cruel and evil, albeit intelligent (which makes him even more terrible).

That being said, in the US, government agencies can order a company to do certain things, put in certain code, or whatever and then issue a gag order as part of that preventing disclosure. And although there’s a limit to how much that can screw over open-source software users, we do not know what exploits nation-states have, we don’t know what backdoors are in different chipsets or closed-source firmware.

If a developer writing open source code can be blacklisted so easily without transparency into the process, it suggests the company is being ordered to do certain things and not disclose them by the US government, which is a government that still engages in torture.

Notice how they are not coming out and saying “We were not ordered to do this by any government agency.”

Could the foundation be forced to elevate a developer with government ties who then is able to “accidentally” put in an extremely hard to detect exploit into linux that won’t be detected at first and only patched later?

I really wish companies associated with linux were not in a country that lacked transparency with government regulations and in which gag orders were not possible.

Finally! Someone who understands! If it’s not something we can understand, it’s not really math.

We need to decide democratically what science is, with everyone getting a fair vote, so wasteful science like this can finally be stopped.

I don’t understand this and therefore it’s stupid and pointless. Fuck you math elitist assholes with your so-called “large” prime numbers spending billions of dollars that could be used to make my life better. I don’t comprehend this at all and there it does not matter. The end.

Oh my gosh I need this now.

Fedora? 🤢 jk

Also what the fuck is a tiling window manager? I want it!

I’m sorry, can you clarify what you wrote? I read it but then got distracted by my cursor moving on its own while I was reading an article about xzutils. Perhaps I should read it again since it made no sense the first time.

I’m so happy.

But also liked when linux felt like a secret.

Microsoft finally did something right: they made their shitty product shitty enough for people to realize it.

I don’t know what this post means… but I want to learn.

Are you Vegan and moved to Europe and now do CrossFit?

That actually sounds like fun.

Especially the linux part.

Did you flee from a country that was awful and move to somewhere in Europe?

There’s no reason to run Windows unless there’s specific software that won’t run in a virtual highly contained environment of Windows within Linux.

Friends don’t let friends use windows.

I have down-voted this because in a worst case scenario, they should move to a less appealing version of Linux, like Arch

(waiting for my down-votes)

There needs to be a way to have an inclusive corporate culture that celebrates cultures and backgrounds but also allows brutal honesty about products without people being afraid of accidentally offending others or being too indifferent to the corporation’s success to speak up.

A lot of it probably relates to how often people are fired and how short tenures are with companies. If you have a short tenure with a company or are expecting to, does it matter if Company A does well instead of Company B or Company C? It probably doesn’t, and with social media capturing one wrong offensive faux paus for eternity (by which I mean until the planet becomes uninhabitable 300 years from now), workers have every incentive to let disasters like this go to market.

I am judging Microsoft employees but likely would have said nothing if I were there too. With all the layoffs in tech, why risk it to say something controversial? Even my initial post on this got down-voted into the depths of an abyss just for mentioning that men and women see pornography in different ways sometimes, which should hardly be controversial. I don’t know whether the votes were from men or women, but actually I imagine more women than men down-voted it, and even this guess will probably lead to additional down-votes.

I dislike people like Elon Musk for his cruelty towards transgender people (despite his admirable intelligence), and I dislike Donald Trump for his cruelty towards those who are different in any way, but I also feel like people should be able to have discussions about actual uncomfortable subjects without it being automatically offensive. The fact I was so heavily down-voted immediately tends to illustrate my point.

The point of the first two sentences is that because there is a large gender divide on whether porn is acceptable, a lot of times men and women don’t discuss porn because the subject will lead to conflict. This isn’t true of all members of both genders. Since corporations often have a mix of genders, bringing up the topic of porn and how a feature could alienate porn viewers would be an uncomfortable topic that would be easier to avoid because men and women find the topic uncomfortable often for different reasons. In Microsoft’s case, it seems like no one at Microsoft brought up how male porn watchers might not like AI watching their pornhub history and recording it to a file, despite it seeming like it would be an obvious concern to any male at Microsoft who watches porn, and likely many do. These means their corporate culture is so selfish on their own career protection and focused on not offending others that they let a really bad feature that many hate go to market instead of talking openly how this would be a disaster out of fear that it could cause workplace conflict.

So instead of saving millions of dollars in costs and damage to the brand, everyone at Microsoft aware of this problem just said nothing. That’s a terrible corporate culture. If a product isn’t going to work, even uncomfortable discussions should be had if it saves millions.

My point overall was that it’s shocking this made it into the product. It’s such a bad idea for a feature on multiple levels, that it seems like employees did not openly talk about this.

My other point was that if Microsoft employees didn’t drop the ball, then this feature may have been forced into the project by a government order of some kind, which can and does happen in closed source software. Although hidden backdoors are often secret, the government could equally compel a large unlocked window at the front be added as well.

people hated that post too 😭

lol, you’re the only one who liked my post apparently. everyone else hates it!