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GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

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Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#252

Crimea: Illegal occupation by Russia. Ethnic cleansing. Syria: Using chemical weapons, sponsoring terrorism Iran: Assisting Syria; Actively developing nukes they say they will use, nuclear proliferation, biggest sponsor of terrorism, .... On the other hand, some people can't use an internet service. Oh! The inhumanity! Get a sense of proportion.

Why isn't Russia blocked, then..?

Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#253
post #241
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It had been Turkish before it was Russian. Should we go on? Besides, the indigenous population (Crimean Tatars) and the Ukrainians in Crimea never thought of Ukraine as a foreign country.

Let's not confuse events of the 18th century and the modern history. Crimea was called Crimean Khanate at that time and the backbone of its economy was the slave trade. As a major slave trade hub it has seen many hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians captured by Crimean Tatars and sold to Turkey until Catherine the Great's counter-terrorist operation finally put an end to it in 1783 :) This dramatic histor…

> Let's not confuse events of 18th century and the modern history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deportation_of_the_Crimean_Tat...

Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#254
Assuming that this is a Cuba, Iran or Syria problem is misleading, even though it renders most of things that I've made in my free time useless.

Having free access to open source code is important. As a developer I'd try to self-host more and try decentralized solutions instead of relying on corporate entites to protect my interests.

Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#255
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a pretty gross generalisation of the people and issues at stake. "We" the individual freedom loving, contributors. "They", the rogue nations using open source software to oppress and enslave. Honestly it boggles my mind how easily you slipped into that mentality in response to the comment you replied to - a comment describing people caught in the crossfire, affected by the choices of nations at war, individua…

If an individual feels wrongly and disproportionately impacted by US sanctions they can apply to the SEC for a waiver. A small, lonely dev will probably be ok. But the issue isn't with one dev who gets caught in the crossfire. You want to stop fighting a blazing inferno to mount a rescue operation because there's one kitten in the burning apartment building. Individual liberties cannot be realized without sanctions a…

> Individual liberties cannot be realized without sanctions and foreign policy.

[Citation needed]. It is not as if sanctions have a stellar record when it comes to promoting individual liberties. Rather the opposite - they entrench the powers that be and give them an opponent that are not themselves that they can blame the hardship of the people on.

Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#256
post #11

We made it point now to avoid all US-based services. While we're not affected by the sanctions yet, it seems like it is a possibility in the future. There's really not a lot of reasons to use Gitlab or Github or Slack or a number of other services. They're not exceptional in any way and can be replaced by other open-source or commercial projects.

Even further. Wondered why there are no single Stallman reference here and in the previous discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20531039

Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irans government is pretty backwards. The Iranian society is and was much more open a few decades ago. Truly a sad story of development in the completely wrong direction.

Have you seen the US lately? We're en route to undoing Roe v Wade, the Civil Rights Act, years of progress on other matters, etc, and we've already basically given up on functional democracy by allowing corporations to spend as much as they want on candidates. What do they say about those in glass houses...?

In the US the backlash is unfortunate but explainable. While conservatives could probably have been convinced with data that liberation did in fact not increase abortion cases and showing that prohibition doesn't stop them either while just increasing suffering, a lot of liberal proponents put some twitter nut jobs at the forefront of the discussion. Or maybe conservative media just put them in the spotlight. That is my impression at least. The result is predictably bad. I don't know how that abortion topic came up in the first place, but here we are.

Money in politics is a serious problem. Obama was very honest about that. While basically being bankrolled by citybank, he made that fact clear multiple times and basically asked for people holding their representatives accountable. Obviously that doesn't seem so easy.

But all that doesn't really compare to the theocratic rules the Iranian regime implemented. That is on a whole other level.

Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#258
post #62
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure ? Quoted from GitHub CEO Nat Friedman on Twitter: > The restrictions are based on place of residence and location, not on nationality or heritage. If someone was flagged in error, they can fill out a form to get the restrictions lifted on their account within hours.

> Any company or national of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria, and the Crimea region. Export licensing of commodities or services intended for these countries is presumed denied; Wording like this appears on the treasury documents, Google cloud and Oracles official documentation on sanctions. I'll just link the Oracle one because ironically the one that google uses is really difficult to find: http://www.oracle.…

By that wording, who is a national of the Crimea region? Did they mean residents?

Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you seen the US lately? We're en route to undoing Roe v Wade, the Civil Rights Act, years of progress on other matters, etc, and we've already basically given up on functional democracy by allowing corporations to spend as much as they want on candidates. What do they say about those in glass houses...?

The female lawyer who defended a woman who refused to wear a hijab was sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes. [1] Homosexuality is punishable by death. [2] Please don't act like the problems you see in the U.S are the same problems they have in Iran. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/she-... [2] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/06/14/countries-wh...

Sure, we're not as bad as them. We do most of our state-sponsored murder and oppression outside of the country. Yet, we do have infants in concentration camps / prisons / whatever you'd like to call them. Black lives matter has been and remains a relevant calling because our police are not held accountable for extrajudicial killings of black people (or any people, for that matter). And we still have many in prison for crimes like... smoking a plant, or just jailed with little evidence by a broken system. These situations are approximately as absurd and oppressive as what you've mentioned, though it's best not to get out measuring sticks for levels of oppression.

Re: GitHub confirms it has blocked developers in Iran, Syria and Crimea

#260
post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as the government just calls people names instead of invading them, I am completely fine with that. Progress, I guess.

Because the US government hasn't invaded other countries...? Of course they call it something different, but they do tend to start wars periodically. For flimsy reasons.

Not lately at least. While I think Lybia was a big mistake, I tend to blame France more than the US. Iraq, Uganda, Somalia and Yemen are the wars the US is involved in to my knowledge, some of them not actively anymore. Say what you will about Trump. Him not starting wars seem to be an exception, although I don't think Obama is responsible for the Lybia situation. Politically perhaps as he omitted congress, but I still wouldn't call it a war that he started.

Hell, Gaddafi was air-striking civilians. The African Union was against foreign intervention and today civilians probably suffer more than under the regime of Gaddafi. Hard so say what would have been the right thing to do. We still feel the repercussions of that...

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