So basically this comes down to certain countries being able to sort of “claim” or “own” Linux. These are unilateral sanctions not backed by the UN if I recall well.
So what will happen when the countries where these maintainers reside legally require them to put backdoors in the kernel, for example? Same issue imho, and now the precedent is there.
This could have major ramifications going forward. Could we see a major fork happening potentially drawing away a lot of contributors from other countries? Tricky.
Interesting fact: Germany was sanctioned by the US in the recent past. Not to say it is exactly the same, just saying it comes very very close.