Greg Kroah-Hartman, the second-in-command at Linux after Linus Torvalds, has released a patch that removes a dozen leading developers from the kernel who are Russian or somehow connected to Russia. Most of them have email addresses in the .ru zone. This was reported by Phoronix.
This applies to the developers of Acer Aspire 1 EC drivers, Cirrus Logic CLPS711X ARM architecture, Baikal-T1 PVT hardware monitor driver, Libata PATA drivers, Libata SATA AHCI Synopsys DWC controller drivers, ASCOT2E media drivers, Baikal-T1 MIPS platform driver, NTB IDT driver, PPTP driver, Renesas R-Car SATA driver, Renesas Super-H Ethernet driver, and UFS file system. Only the support records are removed, not the drivers themselves.
“Remove some entries due to various compliance requirements. They can come back in the future if sufficient documentation is provided,” Greg Kroah-Hartman commented succinctly.
After this patch, the Linux community began to wonder why these developers were removed. Some of them suggested rolling back the patch or explaining the new "compliance requirements" in more detail.
To this, Linus Torvalds suggested that users should take an interest in what is happening in the world and read the news to understand why it was done.
"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." Linus Torvalds writes.