the_strange

They removed russian maintainers that are associated with sanctioned companies. Individual russian contributers were unaffected by this.

Free speech isn't a constitutional right in Australia

https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/rights-and-freedoms/freedom-information-opinion-and-expression

I am not very well versed in Australian law, but this indicates to me that free speech is indeed protected in Australia.

Lauren Southern was banned from the UK?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Southern

She's a far-right racist conspiracy theorist nutjob who was denied entry into the UK for spewing hatred. Her right to express herself ends where other people's rights for freedom, health and safety begin.

Last Jedi

That's cheating, none of that movie made any sense whatsoever.

Maintainers (not contributers or their contributions) associated with sanctioned russian companies were removed. The Linux foundation is a legal entity that has to comply with international sanctions.

If your university has a law faculty they might offer limited legal advice from current students for free or a reduced fee.

I don't have any confirmations of your points

The kernel and its changes are open source, you can just look at the changes that were made.

While I agree with the sentiment, the decision to remove these maintainers seems to have been purely legally based. It stands to reason that the Linux foundation will follow and remove sanctioned Israeli maintainers if they end up on a list of sanctioned companies/people.

Your words, not mine. If they were afraid of malicious code coming from these sources they would've removed them earlier and not only after their legal department recommend these maintainers be removed.

Open source doesn't mean that malicious code isn't impossible though. For a project as large as the Linux kernel it is unlikely, but see the xz-utils incident earlier this year for example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XZ_Utils_backdoor

Even in that case the app doesn't need to phone home. It doesn't even need an internet connection on its own. You'd have to download the update yourself and then use the app to apply the patch, which is less user friendly to not-so-tech-savy users but possible. Just send an email with the necessary information to users who have subscribed to receive these kind of updates.

In the UK, free speech is not possible either. See D-notices, and later super-injunctions to stop media and individuals reporting on facts.

Please provide examples.