This is because of western sanctions. Chinese contributors are much more numerous and more important than any Russians ever were; and they’re also not a sanctioned country, so I highly doubt it
EDIT: As an Iranian, however, there is not much time left before us Iranians in the FOSS world are going to be banned from everywhere, although some measure against us has already been taken (Microsoft banned the shit out of Iranians when they took over GitHub)
For example, one of the most widely used libraries in the world is written by an Iranian who works (worked?) at Google by the name of Behdad Espahbod (HarfBuzz glyph processor library)
This is because of western sanctions. Chinese contributors are much more numerous and more important than any Russians ever were; and they’re also not a sanctioned country, so I highly doubt it
Uh they are sanctioned with more being added literally every year and once the US kicks off the planned war and decoupling against them in the next 4-5 years they’re going to throw down a wall of sanctions just like the one they threw on Russia and I bet you that Linus will cite legal once again in an opaque decision to remove them while crying about how evil the Chinese government is for oppression of Uyghurs, for reclaiming Taiwan after it declared independence at American urging and offered to host American nukes, etc, etc.
Oh they’ll let some back in, after they’ve signed a pledge that they are not associated with the Chinese military in any way (working for a company that supplies systems that are used by another company in a product that sells to the military counts), that they denounce their government and the communist party, that they are not Uyghurs or in Xin’jiang or associated with companies in Xin’jiang (as all enlightened westerners know all Uyghurs that were not killed in the totally real genocide are slaves so it’s not acceptable to use their work) and so on and so forth. Which will mean a shocking amount of their devs will be out and Linus will shrug and claim they made a choice to not take the simple step of siding with the west against their own people and therefore got what they got.
They of course hope to use such sanctions to force companies to gut-punch and weaken the Chinese military and state but having them choose to decouple from the west instead is also perfectly acceptable.
The west is pulling all its might to it, while it still has strength to do so. It will cut out Chinese developers but that doesn’t matter. If Linux desktop crashes and burns no matter because they only really need it for servers and Red Hat and other alphabet agency adjacent companies will keep those distros humming along on approved Intel/AMD/western hardware configurations.
They aim to then cut out China from Linux and hope the whole thing collapses and cannot be used for their own hardware meaning they’ll have to support a hard-forked kernel which many western planners doubtless think they won’t be able to do or it will at least hinder them badly for some time and more important draw a strong digital divide, a digital iron curtain between western Linux and users thereof and Chinese/Russian Linux and users thereof.
The planners of these things don’t care about some minor consequences, they’re in a life or death struggle, winner takes all, west comes out on top for another century+ of dominance and exploitation with western capital at the helm and white supremacy triumphing OR the multi-polar world emerges victorious and western hegemony and power collapses and with it their DoTB and their entire way of life and privilege.
Reshoring includes reshoring software jobs and if it’s important their thinking is someone will get paid to do it by some company, if it’s not paid for it clearly wasn’t important. This could cause problems for western corporations but it would likely be a down the road thing and most likely Valve or others would desperately try and keep Linux afloat just to have an alternative to Microsoft so they’re not destroyed by Windows locking down sales and apps via Windows store sales.
When chinese maintainers will get removed?
This is because of western sanctions. Chinese contributors are much more numerous and more important than any Russians ever were; and they’re also not a sanctioned country, so I highly doubt it
EDIT: As an Iranian, however, there is not much time left before us Iranians in the FOSS world are going to be banned from everywhere, although some measure against us has already been taken (Microsoft banned the shit out of Iranians when they took over GitHub)
For example, one of the most widely used libraries in the world is written by an Iranian who works (worked?) at Google by the name of Behdad Espahbod (HarfBuzz glyph processor library)
Uh they are sanctioned with more being added literally every year and once the US kicks off the planned war and decoupling against them in the next 4-5 years they’re going to throw down a wall of sanctions just like the one they threw on Russia and I bet you that Linus will cite legal once again in an opaque decision to remove them while crying about how evil the Chinese government is for oppression of Uyghurs, for reclaiming Taiwan after it declared independence at American urging and offered to host American nukes, etc, etc.
Oh they’ll let some back in, after they’ve signed a pledge that they are not associated with the Chinese military in any way (working for a company that supplies systems that are used by another company in a product that sells to the military counts), that they denounce their government and the communist party, that they are not Uyghurs or in Xin’jiang or associated with companies in Xin’jiang (as all enlightened westerners know all Uyghurs that were not killed in the totally real genocide are slaves so it’s not acceptable to use their work) and so on and so forth. Which will mean a shocking amount of their devs will be out and Linus will shrug and claim they made a choice to not take the simple step of siding with the west against their own people and therefore got what they got.
They of course hope to use such sanctions to force companies to gut-punch and weaken the Chinese military and state but having them choose to decouple from the west instead is also perfectly acceptable.
The west is pulling all its might to it, while it still has strength to do so. It will cut out Chinese developers but that doesn’t matter. If Linux desktop crashes and burns no matter because they only really need it for servers and Red Hat and other alphabet agency adjacent companies will keep those distros humming along on approved Intel/AMD/western hardware configurations.
They aim to then cut out China from Linux and hope the whole thing collapses and cannot be used for their own hardware meaning they’ll have to support a hard-forked kernel which many western planners doubtless think they won’t be able to do or it will at least hinder them badly for some time and more important draw a strong digital divide, a digital iron curtain between western Linux and users thereof and Chinese/Russian Linux and users thereof.
The planners of these things don’t care about some minor consequences, they’re in a life or death struggle, winner takes all, west comes out on top for another century+ of dominance and exploitation with western capital at the helm and white supremacy triumphing OR the multi-polar world emerges victorious and western hegemony and power collapses and with it their DoTB and their entire way of life and privilege.
Reshoring includes reshoring software jobs and if it’s important their thinking is someone will get paid to do it by some company, if it’s not paid for it clearly wasn’t important. This could cause problems for western corporations but it would likely be a down the road thing and most likely Valve or others would desperately try and keep Linux afloat just to have an alternative to Microsoft so they’re not destroyed by Windows locking down sales and apps via Windows store sales.