Re: linux: Goodbye from a Linux community volunteer

James Bottomley
2024-10-24T14:50:26Z

On Thu, 2024-10-24 at 07:27 +0300, Serge Semin wrote:
> Hello Linux-kernel community,
>
> I am sure you have already heard the news caused by the recent Greg'
> commit 6e90b675cf942e ("MAINTAINERS: Remove some entries due to
> various compliance requirements."). As you may have noticed the
> change concerned some of the Ru-related developers removal from the
> list of the official kernel maintainers, including me.
>
> The community members rightly noted that the _quite_ short commit log
> contained very vague terms with no explicit change justification. No
> matter how hard I tried to get more details about the reason, alas
> the senior maintainer I was discussing the matter with haven't given
> an explanation to what compliance requirements that was.

Please accept all of our apologies for the way this was handled. A
summary of the legal advice the kernel is operating under is

If your company is on the U.S. OFAC SDN lists, subject to an OFAC
sanctions program, or owned/controlled by a company on the list, our
ability to collaborate with you will be subject to restrictions, and
you cannot be in the MAINTAINERS file.

Anyone who wishes to can query the list here:

https://sanctionssearch.ofac.treas.gov/

In your specific case, the problem is your employer is on that list.
If there's been a mistake and your employer isn't on the list, that's
the documentation Greg is looking for.

I would also like to thank you for all your past contributions and if
you (or anyone else) would like an entry in the credit file, I'm happy
to shepherd it for you if you send me what you'd like.

Again, we're really sorry it's come to this, but all of the Linux
infrastructure and a lot of its maintainers are in the US and we can't
ignore the requirements of US law. We are hoping that this action
alone will be sufficient to satisfy the US Treasury department in
charge of sanctions and we won't also have to remove any existing
patches.

Regards,

James Bottomley