In my last article WP Engine Vs Automattic!, I expressed discontent with the monopoly of directives against a company, WP Engine while writing an article on a WordPress run website. As an analogy, I used GNU/Linux philosophy to treat open-source as is. All this goes to trash when I hear Linus Torvalds (the creator of the Linux kernel) advocate for the ban on certain Russian developers. He says he is Finnish and so he is against Russian interference.

The tech industry already exercised their soft power of sanctions last year and year before on the Russian entities and I didn’t have any issues as they were or are still private organizations. GitHub has banned Russian accounts and similarly several privately owned projects have exercised the sanctions willy-nilly on nearly everything. And, that’s their prerogative to do so since they are privately owned.

But, when I see an open-source tool advocating for it, it means something entirely different. You ought to have a standard policy regarding open-source and its maintenance that deals specifically with the open-source code. Any contributions towards it should be deemed inappropriate only when the contribution is harmful for the code project or public in general.

If Russian developers are banned due to their associations with the banned organizations, it should be dealt with in the same way. We all know that the Five Eyes countries have exercised their ban according to their will and not in accordance with the welfare of the people. I believe that when an open-source project tries to execute those sanctions, it is indeed trying to manipulate the core philosophy. So, whether it is Matt Mullenweg or Linus Torvalds who are playing gods to an open-source project, it is wrong in its core sense. They should either deem their projects closed-source or refrain themselves from taking such illogical steps.

In this new era of imposed Cold War, I’m not sure where the open-source community is headed and is indeed looking only to make profits in accordance with the US laws. Only time will tell whether these projects will cease to exist entirely or will limit themselves to a particular favorite of some governments. Till then, we should just keep our fingers crossed and hope for a world where our voices and contributions are not pinned down due to some politically motivated sanctions.

Disclaimer: The economic and several other sanctions imposed by the US and its allies are the prerogative of their respective governments. I have issues only when it affects common people who have zero control over it. The hypocrisy can be seen when China has been given a freehand whereas Belarus has been heavily sanctioned.