“My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

Post by leereeves » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 2:20 AM UTC

CalChris wrote: post #58

ShinTakuya wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like what's going in Crimea either, and I support most sanctions against it, but I also don't understand why they should be excluded from open source software participation. On an idealogical basis I reject the idea of OSS being politicised. Otherwise, where do we stop?

Whether it is open source or not, GitHub is an American corporation (owned by Microsoft) and what it does is commercial activity. This isn't a free speech issue. It's not even a corporate free speech issue. This is commercial activity. Whether this is good policy or not, is another matter but it isn't a free speech matter.

Post by hihi123 » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 2:22 AM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #106

hihi123 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you referring to Crimea as a victim? Their desire to leave the Ukraine has been well-documented since the beginning. See this amusing article from 1994 in the NYT for an example [1]: > A separatist candidate who wants Crimea to leave Ukraine and integrate with Russia won more than 70 percent of the vote today in run-off presidential elections, preliminary results showed. His victory sets the stage for a direc…

If, as you say, people want to be part of Russia, what is the difference? Do they need to be punished for wanting to be part of another country?

Post by kragen » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 2:26 AM UTC

pvg wrote: post #92

kragen wrote: post #6

During 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…

It seems like the US has become what the USSR was Not it doesn't, unless you want it to seem that way. but then, for the first couple of decades, neither did the USSR. The USSR very much had these within the first years, not decades. One of the most famous germinal camps: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solovki_prison_camp Learn from history. We should, but it's useful to get the history right first.

Post by ralph84 » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 2:28 AM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #99

ralph84 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only problem with your theory is that the number of fully-embargoed countries by the US has decreased over the last 20 years, and all of the still-embargoed countries except for Crimea have been on the list for longer than 20 years.

We started the sanctions on Venezuela in 2014. Why bother posting such obvious nonsense?

Post by programmarchy » Fri, Jul 26, 2019, 2:30 AM UTC

dngray wrote: post #81

moksly wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m Danish and in our very recent election we voted the authoritarians and populists out, by a large margin. Margrete Vestager is from a very liberal (as in free) Danish party, and she’s pushing some of the toughest regulations on big tech companies that we’ve seen in years. So I’m not convinced it’s really authoritarian. We have a big scandal right now in Denmark, because a company secretly sold jet-fuel to Russians…

> Margrete Vestager is from a very liberal (as in free) party, and she’s pushing some of the toughest regulations on big tech companies that we’ve seen in years. Then it's the illusion of freedom. Free when they declare freedom, but not when they don't. Code doesn't have color, race or politics. It is something that brings us together and we have common ground over. We argue over whether it is good code or bad code.…