What It Means When All Russians Get Banned From All Free Software
THERE has been a lot of discussion about this topic lately and this past week focus shifted to Linux and the Linux Foundation not because something unprecedented happened; Microsoft already banned Russians from their own Linux projects in GitHub. So there is precedence already and it's about a year old.
2 days ago the following was published:
In IRC, psydruid explained to us that "it's about an event to discuss free software and if computer users of such software are free themselves in a wider context, but probably prompted by the ban on Russian contributors for the Linux kernel"
The FSF has long attempted to suppress the issue of Russians in Free software. It's an inconvenient topic to discuss openly.
Techrights has consistently condemned the Russian invasion (it does so several times per day when curating Daily Links), but collective punishment is a bad thing and that also sets a dangerous precedent; what country next? Richard Stallman is talking in Peru this week (his homepage still lists 7 talks there; the last one is next Thursday at Universidad Nacional de San Marcos, Lima). Stallman is hardly a US 'establishment puppet' and he gave a talk in Russia some years ago. He also gave a talk in Kiev months before Russia invaded Ukraine. He's trying to be sort of neutral when discussing software because Free software that discriminates based on nationalities isn't really free.
It's very easy to ban those whom you dislike or distrust; but banning over 100 million people (from the largest country on the planet) would damage the concept of Software Freedom. However, that's what people who try to dethrone Dr. Stallman desperately crave. █