It is not a mischaracterization though. Open source projects can be forced to stop accepting contributions from employees of sanctioned companies, which would include Tencent employees if sanctioned. Anyways, Tencent is not being sanctioned here, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.
Also, Linus was definitely forced to kick the Russian maintainers out by USA sanctions.
It is not a mischaracterization though. Open source projects can be forced to stop accepting contributions from employees of sanctioned companies, which would include Tencent employees if sanctioned. Anyways, Tencent is not being sanctioned here, so I guess it doesn’t really matter.
Also, Linus was definitely forced to kick the Russian maintainers out by USA sanctions.