GitHub shuts off access to Aurelia repository, citing trade sanctions

Post by GeorgeWBasic » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 1:06 AM UTC

kelnos wrote: post #148

woofcat wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What exactly is the plan? Are we expecting that individuals who disagree with their regimes would leave their country and their families? It just feels like cold blooded retribution with no care for the regular every day population. That it will impact the country economically and hopefully result in the Government changing coarse or for the People of the country to not want to live in a shitty place with a poor eco…

That sounds good in theory, but in reality you end up with worse outcomes than doing nothing: a) The target country just allows their citizens to feel the brunt of the sanctions while the ruling class hoards resources for themselves. b) The target country starts a propaganda campaign to blame the sanction-issuer for all their problems, which the citizens mostly believe. So ultimately you end up with regular-Joe citiz…

Post by justlexi93 » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 1:49 AM UTC

Post by oivey » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 2:08 AM UTC

Sephr wrote: post #143

natfriedman wrote: post #113

Hi HN, I'm the CEO of GitHub. Flagging this account was obviously a terrible mistake, and I apologize to anyone who was affected by it. We're investigating why it occurred and will make changes to make sure it doesn't happen again. I am glad that we restored access to the account in less than an hour after Aurelia filed their appeal. For context on why any account flagging is ever necessary, unfortunately, every comp…

Do you believe that trade regulations such as ITAR apply to publicly-available open source software? I do not¹, and it appears that your employees do not believe this either. GitHub is currently hosting multiple GPS implementations² that are clearly against this line in your ToS, in addition to also being against ITAR by not implementing speed limits for missiles: "GitHub may not be used for purposes prohibited under…

Post by mirimir » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 2:30 AM UTC

cortesoft wrote: post #256

Karunamon wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry, what? Nothing suggested was criminal.

Not following export laws is criminal.

Post by philliphaydon » Fri, Mar 20, 2020, 2:37 AM UTC

coliveira wrote: post #46

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…

Nobody should depend on GitHub, especially after it was taken over by Microsoft. If you have any repository on GH, create similar accounts on competing sites such as bitbucket. Also consider services hosted in other countries, since it seems that local political prejudices and propaganda are starting to creep out on the science and technology arena.