The exclusion of 11 developers from Russia from the list of Linux kernel maintainers was a consequence of compliance requirements regarding interaction with the international community in the current geopolitical situation. Among those removed from the list of maintainers were employees of Russian companies such as SberDevices, "Open Mobile Platform" (developer of the "Aurora" OS), NetUp, and Metrotek.
The change was made by Greg Kroah-Hartman, the developer responsible for maintaining the stable branch of the Linux kernel, who cited legal requirements as the reason for this decision. All 11 Russian developers worked under the ".ru" domain.
Representatives of Russian companies expressed dissatisfaction with this decision, considering it a violation of the principles of meritocracy, according to which competent specialists should determine the development of open source software. The company "Open Mobile Platform" noted that they use a fork of the Linux kernel and send their modifications to the main branch later, and therefore the change in the list of maintainers will not have a direct impact on their work.
Experts believe that developers from Russia will be able to continue contributing their changes to the kernel, although they will now act as ordinary contributors rather than maintainers. The exclusion may affect the workflow, but a critical impact on the ability to propose changes for inclusion in the main branch is not expected.
Later, Linux creator Linus Torvalds confirmed that the decision to exclude Russian developers from the list of Linux kernel maintainers was made on the instructions of lawyers and was related to legal requirements that concern not only the United States. Torvalds also expressed dissatisfaction with the reaction to this decision.
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