I'm an iranian-american and this saddens me deeply. When you travel to Iran you need to make sure you don't get arrested by iranian regime because they have a history of taking dual nationals as hostage. Then you open your laptop and suddenly you have taken down your company and potentially lost your job.
GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran
211–220 of 515 posts
Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Ironically, Git is a decentralized version control system. And Git is open source. Github is a US-registered company under MS. The US has a history of weaponizing its economic power. Stallman (RMS) was right once again.
I'm not a pro dev by any means but what is stopping orgs from simply self hosting such a thing? Git is merely version control which supposedly does not take a lot of resources so you can go ahead and buy a dedicated server and host it in your office. Is the question more so about expanded services like CI/CD that may take up more computational resources to continuously build binaries and other deliverables?
I would say it's less about the compute resources, and more about possibly needing a team dedicated to maintaining quite a lot of infrastructure to replace the features that GitHub has, which is far more extensive than just git hosting.
Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran
#213Can't really blame GitHub here... US laws are badly written.
When I worked for "mega bank" a few years ago, even for software purchasing (because we were Anglo-American), we needed an 'ECCN' - an export control number for everything. Thanks US gov. Initially it was funny. Then it wasn't for a very long time.
Is it an X-ray machine? Does it use crypto? Is it more than 231 dpi? Well you can't export it to Middleeastistan.
https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/licensing/commerce-control...
Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran
#214So many dimensions come to play here. 1. There's the obvious legal aspect i.e. how these laws are framed and interpreted. 2. Then there's the geopolitical aspect. Is it fair to impose sanctions on Iran. 3. There's another aspect around GitHub policy that asks if an entire organization be banned for the location of one team member. 4. Finally, there's the aspect of relinquishing control. Your app development is on the…
> You have relinquished so much control, why be surprised if that stares you back in the face? We live in a market-based economy with highly specialized division of labor. The idea of "keeping control" of all our necessities and dependencies, is an archaic one. The system generally works, because we create sensible laws that foster trust, vet for partners who are trustworthy, and name-and-shame entities that violate…
Don't be surprised when the "name-and-shame" doesn't work anymore.
Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran
#215Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would go quite a step further than that. If this was not an unfortunate incident/mistake, then GitHub/Microsoft has become quite the active enforcer of US (legal) foreign policy. If they do that within the US market, that might be justifiable. But in this particular case, GitHub appears to enforce US foreign policy on what appears to be a company on the EU market. Also in what to me appears to be a rather ruthless,…
...” , this action is arbitrarily discriminatory, and very likely constitutes inflicting serious damage on another company without a legal basis...” Isn’t that what YouTube and FaceBook do day in day out when their influencers run afoul of policy?
Add other Apple and Blizzard to the list.
Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ofc GH has to comply with US law, but you missed the question: does US law require blocking access to cover those who are not on the sanctions list? Or look at it another way: this is an Indian company. Does one employee opening their laptop in Iran make it an Iranian company under US law?
If the employee was Iranian, then yes, GitHub would be required to do this.
Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran
#218Entrusting your business to an american entity is the stupidest idea you could have thought about. Especially us europeans should not rely on American services at all.It's not worth it. American corporations are just as much a liability as their counterparts in China.
>Especially us europeans should not rely on American services at all.It's not worth it. Sure, please let me know how the EU plans to build Office 365, AWS, GitHub competitors of similar scale, quality and success. We have no private investors that would pony up enough money to go against US tech titans and fat chance the EU would ever fund such initiatives and if they would, the money would evaporate over night to co…
I think it's important to frame it correctly: US companies have been persistently acting illegally in Europe. Avoiding taxes (e.g. Amazon's Project Goldcrest) to undercut competitors, mishandling data for profit, and then abusing market dominant positions to prevent European competitors from rising up; forcing those potential competitors to sell to US firms.
You're right that it's probably too late to reverse all of this economic damage that the US has intentionally caused. It's a difficult problem for the world.
Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran
#219Let me see. You have a business in which you cannot control access to your Intellectual Property? And you take money from people for services? What can go wrong here?
I really don't get this. Git is free. Setting up dedicated server with redundancy backup is de facto the standard since SVN era. In this case I don't blame GitHub at all. It is responsibility of the business owner to make a judgement with all "bad case scenarios" in mind. In production the idea of trusting third party infrastructure without alternative is unprofessional.
Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
> GitHub should get flak for that in the same way Paypal regularly get flak for randomly freezing accounts. Random? I think the problem with Paypal was that they do not warn or provide reasons for freezing. GH's reasons are clear. > Blocking a whole European company not conducting business with Iran because one of its employee tried to login while there is not respecting the embargo, it's just overreach. Says who? Th…
> Says who? There is a law, the law is unclear and IHMO a bad law. Says the US Department of the Treasury, as mentioned in the Twitter thread further down: > 118. I have a client that is in Iran to visit a relative. Do I need to restrict the account? > No. As long as you are satisfied that the client is not ordinarily resident in Iran, then the account does not need to be restricted. from their "FAQs: Iran sanctions"…
And now is when GP should reply saying "oh gee, you are right and I was wrong. thanks for pointing that out."