(this post obviously assumes the recent removal of russian devs due to sanctions is bad; no need to comment if you disagree)
a lot of people i know are considering jumping ship to some bsd after the recent MAINTAINERS debacle, but i’m skeptical it would make any difference. afaik, they’re just as us-centric as linux if not more (it’s the berkeley software distribution, after all). also, my biggest gripe about the bsds and the main reason i’ve never had any interest in them is their permissive licensing. permissive licenses suck
would there be any difference wrt sanctions in the bsds or moving away from linux to *bsd bc of that would be pointless?
If it turns out to actually be a problem, people can just fork Linux itself.
It may happen
At this point it looks like the problem has to be absolutely horrendous for people to think of a fork seriously. It doesn’t look bad for geopolitical actors at all ngl.
That is the true beauty of FOSS technology. Even if it fractures into regional forks, Linux code is open and free (as in freedom), so each fork can just copy-paste and compile the changes made in others if they advance the tech forward, no direct cooperation is actually needed (if everyone keeps publishing its works).