Spoiling Linux Kernel with "sanctioned" code

> unless the contributor can verify they're not working in a sanctioned company of said country

How does one prove a negative?

> Logic is not subject to sanctions

... and vice versa.

I suppose it's not about patents or copyright but rather the fear that a re-submitted patch can't be trusted because the original patch is considered not trustworthy, or that the resubmission is carried out by the sanction person itself or a friend under an email address that doesn't fall under the sanctions. Either way, it could be seen as a liability.

Suppose the issue was an incorrect constant used, e.g. a change from a 0 to a 1.

As long as somebody verifies that is the correct thing to do and submits a patch, I can't see anybody would complain about that. How else would you fix it?

But that's not what the article is complaining about. From their description, they removed a simple workaround, introduced a whole different approach to sending a message, relying instead on a watchdog timer. That's not a trivial refactor, and there could easily be a bug hidden in the change, intentional or not. That is the real issue.

Aside from anything else, the author was complaining about something going from no delay to having a 1ms delay, which broke his device. His solution was to rewrite it such that there was a variable delay, from 0ms to 275ms. That sounds even less desirable. A quarter of a second delay could easily be enough to cause data corruption on a drive after unmounting and before unplugging, if its logic on how to ensure data was flushed relied on that feature.

Such a major change needs extensive testing on basically most USB devices before it's randomly integrated into the kernel, especially when the fix it's undoing is over 20 years old, so the hardware it affects must be even older than that (and nobody else has used it in the last 20 years) and so most of the maintainers won't even be able to test whether the fix works anyway. It's just a big change explained away by a "trust me bro".

> So here’s the thing ...

That was very much not the thing. He's raising an interesting point, if true. Namely that sanctioned countries could severely damage the progress of Linux by supplying good patches.

Greg K-H is one of the original author of OHCI implementation, and the current USB subsystem maintainer. Another USB subsystem maintainer told me he won't merge the code without Greg's approval (he's OK with my code and reviewed it, as you can see in the mail list).

This is not the first case anyway.

>author doesn’t get to contribute to the Linux kernel because their government

I guess you're missing the point: nobody has asked me anything. The whole assumption that I'm Russian, from Russia, and a possibly designated, comes from using my .ru email.

I used to have .cn and .be domains as well during my life, should have been Chinese or Belgian to send kernel patches :D

It's even worse: the same logic is already starting to fracture the internet at large.

OpenSuse is (or will be) "Euro-Linux".

This is a great thing for innovation though? Nations/blocs protecting their tech interests will result in more jobs to go round in the industry, more unique ideas, and less centalisation, surely?

The globalised, hyper-centralised world is a bit boring, tbh.

I watch american politics with great interests to see if their will overthrow their own tyrant. That would be interesting though I am not sure if good for the rest of the world.

Nobody can know for certain ahead of time if someone they are voting for will turn authoritarian or not after they are in power.

  During the 2010 presidential election campaign, Party of Regions leader and candidate Viktor Yanukovych stated that the current level of Ukraine's cooperation with NATO was sufficient and that the question of the country's accession to the alliance was therefore not urgent. On 14 February 2010, Yanukovych said that Ukraine's relations with NATO were currently "well-defined", and that there was "no question of Ukraine joining NATO". 

  In February 2014, during Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, president Yanukovych fled the capital despite signing an agreement with the opposition. Parliament voted to remove Yanukovych from his post and schedule new elections, while an interim government was set up. 

  Ukraine's interim Yatsenyuk government took office on 26 February. The new government said that it did not intend to make Ukraine a member of NATO.

  In late February and early March 2014, Russian soldiers without insignia occupied Crimea.

    On 9 February 2021, the prime minister of Ukraine, Denys Shmyhal, stated that he hoped that Ukraine would be able to receive an action plan for NATO membership at the same time as Georgia


    On 7 April 2021, after the start of the build-up of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border

Why should it be? It has low rating (yet).

It is on the front page.

I’m gonna hazard a guess and say that I don’t think the author has any troops anywhere, let alone in Ukraine.

A person is not responsible for the actions of their government. All governments wage war and cause suffering.

I have many close friends who are Russian by nationality. Russian by crime of accident of birth. So many of my friends in this situation abhor the actions of their government.

The Mentor stated it best. Phrack 7, 1986:

"We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're the criminals."

So should we stop talking to Americans, Israeli or Iranians then?

So does that mean my girlfriend is also to blame for the war just because she happened to be born in Russia? She’s against Putin herself, but there’s not much she can do about it because, as a trans woman, she’s persecuted by that shitty state simply for existing. If she protested, they’d kill her. Why should she now be barred from at least pursuing her hobby and submitting patches for software projects?

…and that’s an attack vector because?

There’s literally nothing stopping them from fixing the bug in either this case or the hypothetical. The maintainer just doesn’t respond to email from .ru domains. He could still choose to take the patch. He may just have decided not to accept this patch because changing something quite obscure to fix a weird printer used by one guy is likely to cause more problems than it solves. We don’t know because he didn’t respond.

That certainly doesn’t mean he wouldn’t fix a serious bug just because he heard about it from a .ru address.

Why would there, it doesn't sound like a security issue?

The patch removes this latency and improves transfer speed, without any drawbacks.

I still have a MB with just a USB 1.1 controller. I would hate it if the USB stopped working after this fix. I think a config option for the delay would be best.