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GitHub shuts off access to Aurelia repository, citing trade sanctions

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Re: GitHub shuts off access to Aurelia repository, citing trade sanctions

#31

Post by save_ferris »

dwohnitmok wrote: post #8
ISL wrote: post #6

What is Aurelia? Why would it be sanctioned?

It looks like a JS frontend framework. I've never used it. I have no idea why it would be sanctioned. Bizarrely Aurelia 1.0 at https://github.com/aurelia/framework has a banner across its top indicating trade sanctions, but the new version Aurelia 2.0 doesn't https://github.com/aurelia/aurelia . Aurelia's developers suspect it's because they have contributors from sanctioned countries. That's the first I've ever hear…

My first question is: how does Github know that certain committers are from sanctioned countries? Do they have Github profiles showing they're from sanctioned countries?

Given the number of huge FOSS projects on Github, it's feasible to imagine that many major repos have code contributed by people from sanctioned countries.

I have no idea what their motive is, but it smells really political to me. I could see Github's argument if they violated labor laws by hiring or contracting with individuals illegally, but that doesn't sound like what happened here.

Re: GitHub shuts off access to Aurelia repository, citing trade sanctions

#33

Post by klohto »

oefrha wrote: post #26
kylecordes wrote: post #21

What a debacle. If GitHub believes this is necessary to comply with sanctions, they should provide a "rather than shut me down, please block contributions that GitHub would consider sanctioned” switch.

Can’t speak for others, but I for one wouldn’t want this switch, and would be offended by it. I would defend people’s rights to contribute to open source regardless of their nationalities by taking my project elsewhere.

Then take the project elsewhere but the leave the switch

Re: GitHub shuts off access to Aurelia repository, citing trade sanctions

#34

Post by chatmasta »

enriquto wrote: post #15
chatmasta wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitLab is fantastic, but GitHub has the most eyeballs and best discoverability features. As long as that remains true, GitHub will remain a better place to launch an open source product than alternatives.

You can use any old git repo as your main source, and "dump" every commit into github for visibility. Any issues and pull request into the github site are replied by an automatic answer to use some other site.

Not a bad idea. But I haven’t seen it work in practice with strong usability. The fact of the matter is, if you ask developers where they discovered software, “GitHub” would rank higher than GitLab.

This is due not only to higher traffic numbers, but also more features revolving around discoverability. GitLab could build those features too, but it’s difficult to overcome the network effect driving GitHub’s momentum. It’s especially hard because even the people who did migrate to GitLab mostly did so for the free private projects and CI. It’s unlikely many will move public repositories to GitLab now that GitHub nears feature parity in CI.

Re: GitHub shuts off access to Aurelia repository, citing trade sanctions

#36

Post by echelon »

chatmasta wrote: post #3
firloop wrote: post #2

This is pure speculation, but it seems that GitHub's ownership by Microsoft causes them to be significantly more strict with the types of content that they are comfortable hosting. Expect this to continue as they expand up and down the stack; once their npm acquisition closes you'll see this there too. I think this should be a wake-up call to anyone staking their open source project on GitHub — if I let someone from…

GitLab is fantastic, but GitHub has the most eyeballs and best discoverability features. As long as that remains true, GitHub will remain a better place to launch an open source product than alternatives.

> GitHub has the most eyeballs

You're being downvoted for a true statement.

There is a lot of GitLab zealousness at HN. Please don't downvote simply because you disagree over product favoritism and outlook. Offer a refutation.

Re: GitHub shuts off access to Aurelia repository, citing trade sanctions

#38

Post by vetinari »

tw04 wrote: post #22
firloop wrote: post #2

This is pure speculation, but it seems that GitHub's ownership by Microsoft causes them to be significantly more strict with the types of content that they are comfortable hosting. Expect this to continue as they expand up and down the stack; once their npm acquisition closes you'll see this there too. I think this should be a wake-up call to anyone staking their open source project on GitHub — if I let someone from…

I'm not sure why you'd lay the blame at Microsoft's feet. You could self-host and your ISP would still take you down if you were violating US sanctions in most parts of the world. If they did this by accident, and you've got some proof the decisions was made by someone that's actually FROM Microsoft and not a legacy Github employee, by all means present it. Otherwise you're just gas-lighting.

> your ISP would still take you down if you were violating US sanctions in most parts of the world

No, they would not.

These are US sanctions, not most parts of the world sanctions. You could have problems with companies in the jurisdiction of US, but most parts of the world are not it.

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