Re: Linux 2.2.20pre10

Thomas Hood
2001-10-23T03:46:08Z

In your letter you describe Alan as an "official" maintainer
of the stable kernel, but there isn't such a thing. Alan
is a volunteer who works his butt off integrating patches
from other volunteers in order to produce a useful series of
Linux kernels. He has apparently decided, however, to limit
his volunteer contributions to those that aren't liable to
land him in jail sometime in the future.

You seem to think that Alan is just being paranoid or petty,
but you are wrong. U.S. law makes OSS coding legally risky.
Alan's duties require him to handle a lot of code, which
increases his exposure to the risk. Furthermore, his
position in the community makes him an attractive target for
any entity that decides to attack the open source software
community with legal weapons. Remember Sklyarov.

--
Thomas Hood

> Mr. Cox,
>
> I understand your concern for your own safety, though I disagree with
> your evaluation of the danger in this case.
>
> However, I think it's fair to say that the production and distribution
> of complete changelogs, such that all users have access to them, is an
> important part of the job of being the official maintainer for a
> project, especially such an important project as the stable branch of
> the Linux kernel.
>
> So it sounds to me like what you're really saying is that you are
> unwilling to take the risks that, under the current circumstances, you
> perceive as an unavoidable part of the task of maintaining the kernel.
>
> I don't buy the argument you seem to be implying, that you can fulfil
> your responsibilities as kernel maintainer by making this information
> available in such a way that US residents cannot obtain it. From the
> statistics I've seen in the past, a high percentage of Linux users are
> US residents. It is surely unreasonable to suggest that withholding
> information from all those people is compatible with being the official
> kernel maintainer.
>
> You are aware, no doubt, that Linus Torvalds is currently resident in
> the US. If you are unable to give him complete changelogs and
> explanations of the patches you submit to him, I can't imagine how you
> could continue to perform effectively as a Linux kernel developer.
>
> Perhaps you should step down. This would not only be the honest and
> honorable thing to do, if you truly believe that distributing changelogs
> to the US would place you in legal jeopardy, but it would also be a far
> more dramatic act of protest than merely censoring changelogs.
>
> Respectfully,
>
> Craig Dickson
--
Thomas Hood
(Don't reply to the From: address but to jdthood_AT_mail.com)