The Russian Ministry of Digital Development has sprung into action with plans to create its own Linux community. Admitting that the decision was precipitated by the recent expelling of 11 Russian developers involved in the development of the Linux kernel, the Ministry slammed the “act of discrimination” against Russians and underlined the need to “build our own alternative structure,” in a statement given to RBC.ru.
Linus Torvalds was very forthright in his explanation for the dismissal of the dozen or so Russian kernel driver maintainers last month. In brief, the creator and lead developer of the Linux kernel stated that the dismissals were simply made in line with the policy of sanctions on the Russian aggressors in the Ukraine war.
Moreover, Torvalds didn’t pull any punches when he said “lots of Russian trolls” were working to make the recent decision look unpopular. Torvalds directly accused Russia of wielding its army of social media bots in an attempt to fake a grassroots campaign and reverse the Russian maintainer cull.
The Russian Ministry of Digital Development’s decision may look like a knee-jerk reaction, as it has come so quickly in the wake of the maintainer expulsion, and specific details and implementation plans are thin on the ground. However, some think the new community of Linux developers in Russia could take cues from the recently established alliance of RISC-V developers in the country.
The source report also pondered over the impacts of the suspension of Russian contributions to the Linux kernel, with quotes from various Russian tech luminaries.
One notable software business professional interviewed by RBC thought that the West’s decision would “adversely affect the life of the developer community, mutual trust within it, and therefore the quality of the product.” However, the same person also reasoned that “nothing critical will happen,” as Russian patches will continue to be accepted and Russian forks may arise.
Another Russian expert pondered over the potential increased difficulty in tracking updates in the repositories of other projects to port them to domestic distributions.
Probably the next important step for the Ministry is to create a fork of the Linux kernel, as there “cannot be a community without a product,” it was reasoned. The problem with this, admitted another Russian tech exec, was that such a task may be too ambitious for the country. However, some help to establish a new Russian Linux community could come from devs from “countries that are ready to work with us,” mused the Ministry representative. So, let’s wait and see how this develops, and see whether talk of a sovereign Linux community in Russia is just hot air.