People are upset because no reference to exactly which compliance
requirement resulted in the removal of these maintainers. No
open-source project can live outside of a political entity, but that is
not the reason why “obviously” can be used to write off such a change.
Even just stating “we were contacted by <…> but details are under NDA”
is a much better response than “due to various compliance
requirements”. No one is saying the LF or the Linux kernel should be
outside of politics. That’s impossible. But it is possible to run the
project based on transparency and honesty instead of “why can’t you
see the obvious”.
I hope that either this comment wasn’t written by the real Linus
Torvalds, or that Linus was not under his best judgement when this email
was sent. Because just like anyone who reads the news would know about
Russian aggression, anyone who knows anything about politics should also
be able to understand that individuals and their states are different
concepts.