Statement on the Solidarity of the Free and Open Source Software Community -- One Among Us Free and Open Source Software Group (Group 06) & Project Trans
On October 18, 2024, Greg Kroah-Hartman, a Linux Foundation fellow and a senior kernel maintainer, submitted a document change patch to the Linux kernel without any detailed explanation or prior public discussion, removing several maintainers, most of whose top-level email domains were.ru. A few days later, this patch, handled by Linus Torvalds, quietly made its way into the next release candidate, 6.12-rc4.
On October 23, Kexy Biscuit, a contributor from the AOSC (Anthon Open Source Community), pointed out several questionable details about this incident, including a lack of transparency, and expressed concerns about the potential impact on kernel security if such unaudited changes were allowed. Kexy decided to submit a revert patch to the previous change. Instead of transparency, Linus Torvalds responded with personal attacks and name-calling. Several contributors, including members of the AOSC, were referred to as "paid actors" and "Russian trolls."
As of the time of publication, Linus Torvalds has not responded to his violation of the kernel code of conduct. As the earliest author and maintainer of the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds holds significant influence and responsibility. Making changes to this open source project under the pretext of "legal compliance" does not justify the absence of effective communication and the lack of transparency. Not providing a direct explanation while suppressing opposition and reasonable questions through personal attacks sends a chilling signal to all contributors: even reasonable questions made in good faith may draw baseless attacks and smears. This will inevitably suffocate the healthy development of the community, hurt contributors' confidence in the long term and ultimately damage the prosperity of the Linux kernel and the entire open source ecosystem.
We support the following demand composed by Peter Cai:
- Linus Torvalds should issue an apology letter to all open source/free software contributors who were unjustly attacked as "Russian trolls" based on unfounded suspicion;
- Linus Torvalds should unconditionally retract the personal attacks on the revert patch submitter, Kexy Biscuit, and acknowledge that the members of AOSC.io (Anthon Open Source Community) are not "state-funded actors";
- The above apology statement should be made public as soon as possible and used as a precedent in the future when necessary compliance requirements arise;
- Personal attacks based on unfounded assumptions should not be tolerated.
As organizations and projects serving the East Asian transgender and gender-diverse community, we have always supported the development of open source and free software through our personal and collective practices. Even if the removal of individual maintainers was based on compliance considerations, this cannot be used as an excuse to trample on the spirit of open source and suppress opposition. "Complying with orders" does not mean "being ethical," especially when the orders themselves carry discriminatory and unjust implications. We call on the Linux kernel community and the Linux Foundation to establish clear and transparent processes for handling similar situations should they occur again in the future, respecting the rights of all contributors and ensuring that any related decisions are made through sufficient discussion and review.