Thanks for your reply! Linus didn’t only call out people posting flame replies, but also folks interested in a serious discussion on that topic, who also contributed to the kernel before (see PeterCxy’s blog: https://typeblog.net/55833/getting-called-paid-actor-by-linus-torvalds). Most people simply wanted to know specifically which compliance requirement lead to the removal of russian maintainers. Linus never responded to these questions and called out people asking for that as russian trolls. AFAIK we still don’t know the exact reasons for the removal, which is just intransparent.

IMO By not answering these reasonable questions and calling people out as russian trolls, Linus did exactly what russian trolls want: cause disarray in the kernel community.

Get your head examined. And get the fuck out of here with this shit.

Yes, language like this is clearly unacceptable in a productive discussion.

Offtopic, but this reminded me that the Linux kernel has a CoC. Aren’t the recent comments by Linus on the removal of russian maintainers, where he called several kernel developers paid actors, a CoC violation as well? Or have these comments w.r.t. to the CoC already been discussed?