China’s demand that the public sector step up use of domestic semiconductors can best be seen within Huawei’s Qingyun L540 laptop.
The “safe and reliable” device features a self-designed processor and a Chinese-made operating system, having stripped out foreign-made components and software as much as possible.
The computer, which is being snapped up by governments and state groups across the country, has become the signature model of China’s localization campaign known as Xinchuang, or “IT application innovation.”
IANAL, but current case law indicates source code is considered protected speech https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernstein_v._United_States
I assumed that Linux was not really under the control of the US, but I guess the Foundation is incoporated in the US as a 501©(6) and the kernel org itself is a 501©(3), so that does give Congress more levers on the kernel than I expected.
Not to mention that most (all?) of the major corporate funders of the kernel are US-based…
I really hope the kernel doesnt get (geo)politicized.
Edit: based on @RobotToaster’s link, yeah it looks like every major “employer” contributor to the kernel other than Huawei, Linaro, Arm, and Suse are American. Arm is probably working mostly on support for its architecture, so I guess it’s Linaro (UK) and Suse(DE).
That’s not to downplay the role of independent contributors, but it seems like a good indicator of the “power of the purse strings”.
Edit 2: here’s a more recent set of development statistics from LWN. Looks like the ordering has changed quite a bit since 2022, or it varies a lot with each kernel version