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Thank you, GitHub

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Re: Thank you, GitHub

#351

Post by FpUser »

judge2020 wrote: post #307
ghuntley wrote: post #282

In case people missed it. There was two promotions today. A new CEO at GitHub and the person GitHub reports to a MSFT also got promoted. Here’s the internal msft email https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29098640 This person at MSFT who got promoted is the one that caused the problems in the dotnet community where features that had a go-live RTM license (as in merged and ready for long term support) were removed fro…

Despite Visual Studio being a paid product it's always slow and a pain to use. Maybe they should fix that instead of trying to gatekeep features. Don't forget https://github.com/dotnet/sdk/pull/22262

I use Visual Studio to develop software ( C++ ) for Windows and Linux targets. I do not find it slow and rather than being "pain" it is actually way above other development IDEs in my opinion.

Re: Thank you, GitHub

#352

Post by mschuster91 »

rvnx wrote: post #297
AriaMinaei wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iranian dev here. I can tell you if a company goes the extra mile to provide services to us, the reason is almost always that they just care. It's not a marketing tactic. You have to care if you go through all that trouble. And there is very little publicity to these acts. No one is going to notice it but us. They only do it out of the goodness of their hearts.

They also went the extra-mile to block Iranian developers, they didn't have to do so much police, and probably tried to buy their redemption. For example, in theory Hackernews should block Iranians, but they will probably pretend not to be aware and won't actively chase them.

> They also went the extra-mile to block Iranian developers, they didn't have to do so much police, and probably tried to buy their redemption.

US sanctions, even the threat thereof, are serious business. To this day, US nationals or US tax persons are having a really hard time finding a bank in Europe that is willing to deal with them because many banks don't want any exposure to the US FATCA they can avoid.

I had an ex-girlfriend who was born in Germany to US and Greek parents. Quite the shitshow with paperwork.

Re: Thank you, GitHub

#353

Post by pgeorgi »

rvnx wrote: post #297
AriaMinaei wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iranian dev here. I can tell you if a company goes the extra mile to provide services to us, the reason is almost always that they just care. It's not a marketing tactic. You have to care if you go through all that trouble. And there is very little publicity to these acts. No one is going to notice it but us. They only do it out of the goodness of their hearts.

They also went the extra-mile to block Iranian developers, they didn't have to do so much police, and probably tried to buy their redemption. For example, in theory Hackernews should block Iranians, but they will probably pretend not to be aware and won't actively chase them.

That works exactly as long as such an US-aligned company doesn't enter the spotlight in some sanctioned entity related trouble.

Had friends working export compliance for a larger US IT company, and they once (temporarily) blocked a larger shipment to the (British) Royal Air Force because some bozo abbreviated them as "RAF" - which, obviously!, refers to the (German) Red Army Faction, a left-extremist terrorist cell that wasn't relevant for more than 10 years at that point (and wouldn't know what to do with high performance computers, anyway).

Better safe than sorry, otherwise you mess up one day, come back to the HQ on the next and all that's left is a brand new parking lot.

Re: Thank you, GitHub

#354

Post by mschuster91 »

908B64B197 wrote: post #337
type_enthusiast wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the people of Iran can end these sanctions at any time Sorry to bite on this off-topic thing... but, _how_? Overthrowing their government? I guess that would be technically true, but "at any time" seems like a weird phrase to use for that.

Yes. Just look at Libya during the Arab Spring. Democracy is never given, it is earned.

> Just look at Libya during the Arab Spring.

Iran at least has some sort of functioning government entity (which I, to be clear, absolutely despise), Libya collapsed completely as a result of Ghaddafi's (well deserved) downfall and it will likely be a hotbed of Islamist terrorism and instability for decades to come. I don't see any nation or block of nations willing to step up and do nation rebuilding in once-beautiful Libya outside of the EU financing terrorists aka the so-called "coast guard" to torture migrants - what makes you think any kind of revolution in Iran would be assisted by anyone?

The US even abandoned the Kurds ffs.

Re: Thank you, GitHub

#355

Post by mschuster91 »

devoutsalsa wrote: post #346
ya3r wrote: post #220

Nat was a great CEO. The best that could have happened to Github after the acquisition IMO. The one time that I won't forget about Github under Nat, was when they stood up for Iranian developers [1]. They went the extra distance to get a permission/license from the US government specially to offer full Github to developers from Iran. Many other companies didn't do something similar. [1]: https://github.blog/2021-01-0…

I wonder if services of non-Iranians ever get canceled if they travel to Iran for vacation or business. Has anyone heard of that happening?

Yes, there were occasional reports of people traveling to Iran, Cuba or North Korea who then happened to have their accounts blocked out.

Re: Thank you, GitHub

#356

Post by IlliOnato »

rvnx wrote: post #297
AriaMinaei wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iranian dev here. I can tell you if a company goes the extra mile to provide services to us, the reason is almost always that they just care. It's not a marketing tactic. You have to care if you go through all that trouble. And there is very little publicity to these acts. No one is going to notice it but us. They only do it out of the goodness of their hearts.

They also went the extra-mile to block Iranian developers, they didn't have to do so much police, and probably tried to buy their redemption. For example, in theory Hackernews should block Iranians, but they will probably pretend not to be aware and won't actively chase them.

And if GitHub did not block Iranian developers _before_ it obtained the exemption, it would be in violation of sanctions, which carries both criminal and pretty much unlimited financial charges.

I don't know whether HN violates sanctions, but comparing to GitHub HN is very, very small fish. The chances that GitHub would swim under the radar were pretty slim.

Really, "this company obeys the law, so it is evil" is lame.

Re: Thank you, GitHub

#357

Post by bmitc »

m0zg wrote: post #131
outside1234 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This one does seem to be different. Github is held at arms length from the rest of Microsoft (like LinkedIn) such that all of this sort of interference can't happen currently. It will be interesting to see if they can keep that up. It is clearly an advantage to have an organization that can think "developers first" and not Azure, Windows, or whatever first.

We'll see soon enough. If this is what's going on, the process rarely takes more than a year, year and a half.

Microsoft acquired GitHub around two and a half years ago. GitHub has improved greatly over that period. This CEO was already a Microsoft employee when the acquisition occurred.

Re: Thank you, GitHub

#358

Post by outside1234 »

ghuntley wrote: post #282

In case people missed it. There was two promotions today. A new CEO at GitHub and the person GitHub reports to a MSFT also got promoted. Here’s the internal msft email https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29098640 This person at MSFT who got promoted is the one that caused the problems in the dotnet community where features that had a go-live RTM license (as in merged and ready for long term support) were removed fro…

He previously worked under Scott Guthrie who manages all of Azure, so if anything, this breaks up any connection between Github and Azure.

Re: Thank you, GitHub

#359

Post by breakfastduck »

cbatr wrote: post #309
sillysaurusx wrote: post #221

Most people probably say this just to be like “I know Nat, look at me.” I don’t know how to phrase this to avoid that: Nat is an incredible person. I’ve been lucky to get to know him over the past couple months. Not only is he super chill, but he’s also not afraid to ask basic questions. Many of you might roll your eyes at that, but it’s a real problem: when you’re organizing something, you feel pressured to know eve…

He (unless someone impersonated him) made some quite undiplomatic remarks regarding CoPilot here on HN. As an OSS author, I was offended by those remarks.

I would much rather CEOs of large tech companies would post on HN with their (possibly disagreeable) opinion regardless.

You got a real opinion. The fact it offended you shows that at least.

Re: Thank you, GitHub

#360

Post by zerkten »

mschuster91 wrote: post #352
rvnx wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also went the extra-mile to block Iranian developers, they didn't have to do so much police, and probably tried to buy their redemption. For example, in theory Hackernews should block Iranians, but they will probably pretend not to be aware and won't actively chase them.

> They also went the extra-mile to block Iranian developers, they didn't have to do so much police, and probably tried to buy their redemption. US sanctions, even the threat thereof, are serious business . To this day, US nationals or US tax persons are having a really hard time finding a bank in Europe that is willing to deal with them because many banks don't want any exposure to the US FATCA they can avoid. I had…

I'm curious how they discover this if they are trying to stay so distant from US authorities. If you have EU citizenship which is what I assume here then presenting the Greek passport and supporting local documents isn't enough? Or, is it the case that something local like a missing local tax number, or even an accent telegraphed the situation.

With the US, it feels like everything is much more uniform with the tie back to a federal social security number. The SSN is universally requested for many types of financial and insurance setups.

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