That's exactly the reason why we need to decentralise Github, that's way too much power for a corporation.
What does “decentralize Github” mean?
For me, that means having all the features of Github available in p2p.
“My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”
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Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”
#32Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does that make it better?
No, it just makes it a geopolitical reality that you have to somehow punish Russia when it mobilizes ground forces and forcibly annexes pieces of land. Don't forget that Russian-backed insurgents literally shot a passenger plane out of the sky[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
I agree with the idea, but wonder if that really hurts the right people. People in Crimea get both annexed and punished on global market. Russia gets access to what it wanted and gets no real punishment.
Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does that make it better?
No, it just makes it a geopolitical reality that you have to somehow punish Russia when it mobilizes ground forces and forcibly annexes pieces of land. Don't forget that Russian-backed insurgents literally shot a passenger plane out of the sky[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17
Have you actually been to Crimea? Because I had and still have lots of relatives there (I am originally from Ukraine).
I have zero doubt that overwhelming majority of people there (easily over 70%) want to be with Russia instead of Ukraine
Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”
#35I'm sure HN will try throwing some shade here, but just about everyone has sanctioned Crimea, including Canada[1], the EU[2], and Ukraine itself. MasterCard, Visa, Discover, PayPal, etc., etc. also don't work in Crimea. [1] https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_re... [2] https://europa.eu/newsroom/highlights/special-coverage/eu-sa...
Why do they sanction Crimea (victim) instead of Russia?
Because Crimea is a defacto Russian state now and for the most part a large portion of the population and the current government is participating in it.
The sanctions are for the most part per the request of the Ukrainian government.
If Catalonia becomes a separatist state tomorrow and Spain and its allies sanction it everyone in it will be under sanctions regardless of who or what they support.
This is what happens when your sanctions are geographical in nature.
No one has the capability to validate if a person in Crimea is a Russian supporter or not.
The idea behind the sanctions is in the end to make the life of the populous sufficiently difficult so they will rebel.
Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”
#36That's exactly the reason why we need to decentralise Github, that's way too much power for a corporation.
git is already decentralized. You can use it easily without github. This restriction is from the U.S. Government, not a "corporation."
Why do we always have a comment like this completely missing the point about Github? If git was synonymous of Github, Microsoft would not have spent 7 billion to buy it, there's a lot of features on top of git. And for me, whether it's a decision of the US government or Github does not matter much.
Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”
#37During the Cold War, the primary thing that distinguished the US side from the USSR side was that, while speech by USSR people and people sympathetic to the USSR (like, say, CPUSA) was published in the US, publishing speech sympathetic to the US in the USSR would get you arrested. It seems like the US has become what the USSR was: companies who publish speech from people in Iran or Crimea are now violating the law by…
Surely you can see the difference between blocking someone from publishing Chomsky and forbidding US companies from "doing business" in those places. Meanwhile for decades I remember many software EULAs saying things vaguely equivalent to "don't use this software in Cuba", etc. That is what I would compare this to.
Github is essentially a public library for computer code, but they happen to make money. I'm not sure I can see the difference between publishing and "doing business" in this case.
Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”
#38Sadly, US companies are more and more unreliable, but not for technical reason, not for economical/business reasons, but for political reasons. Sadly, it looks, more and more, like "America First" will shift to "America Alone". Hopefully, it will require other countries/organisations to build alternatives and not rely on the US. These new players will grow stronger, on their own market, building their success on US d…
That makes the assumption that these alternatives would give up access to the US market in order to serve sanctioned markets like Crimea, North Korea, or Iran.
Like "open source" alternatives, you mean ? ;-)
On my toy android app, I'm trying to avoid anything Google-licensed: replacing Maps by OSM for example. Just a small step... but a new mindset.
Problem is: today the US sanctionned some well-known "bad" actors (under UN scrutiny) but will sanction EU too... just because of business or strategical interest (and without any UN consensus).
Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surely you can see the difference between blocking someone from publishing Chomsky and forbidding US companies from "doing business" in those places. Meanwhile for decades I remember many software EULAs saying things vaguely equivalent to "don't use this software in Cuba", etc. That is what I would compare this to.
Github is essentially a public library for computer code, but they happen to make money. I'm not sure I can see the difference between publishing and "doing business" in this case.
I don't know either, and I am no expert, but it sounds like Github/Microsoft lawyers may have decided it on one side or the other.
I put it in quotation marks because it is my laymen's understanding of what the sanctions are intended to cover. I could be wrong and the actual boundaries could be subject to debate and disagreement.
Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”
#40I'm from a US-friendly nation but I get terribly sad when I hear things like this. Contribution to the free software world should transcend where someone is from whether it be China, Russia, Iran or whatever new "enemy" our leaders decide. As much as I dislike Facebook for privacy related reasons, maybe it's time that more tech companies setup a Tor Hidden Service and not ask where people are from. Could this be used…
Would that really change anything? I think what we’re seeing is the inevitable result of the internet and tech companies becoming the most important aspect of modern civilisation. We’re not a bunch of hippie geeks fooling around with open tech anymore while the political level largely ignores us. With almost everyone in the world using the internet for hours a day, regulation was simply bound to come.
Not knowing where your customers come from isn’t going to make the regulation go away, but it might make your entire company illegal.
It’s not something I think is good by the way, but the regulation and legislation is likely going to get more and more restrictive as our governments catch up.