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GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

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Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#241

Post by pastrami_panda »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #104
EdwinLarkin wrote: post #74

Entrusting 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…

> 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

Did you miss this a couple of weeks back?

https://www.eetimes.eu/eu-signs-e145bn-declaration-to-develo...

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#242

Post by darod »

Dirlewanger wrote: post #214
whack wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So true. It already doesn't work in politics. Only a matter of time till it's the same with big companies

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#243

Post by epc »

elmo2you wrote: post #199
cies wrote: post #71

Earlier 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 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,…

Given the pressure by the EU and China on US companies to enforce local laws globally (GDPR, RTBF, Taiwan), I don't see how Github, operating in the US, as a US company, has any chance absolving itself of enforcing US laws and regulations (though in this specific case they appear to have overreacted, likely due to regulatory enforcement via algorithm and not common sense).

If you expect US companies to respect GDPR and cookie banners and the right to be forgotten, globally; you cannot be surprised that they will respect and enforce US law globally as well.

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#245

Post by kavalg »

turbinerneiter wrote: post #235
sjagoe wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

GitLab, Gitea or others provide most, if not all, and in some cases even more features than GitHub. Theiy are fully or partially Open Source and they are easy to host. You need to compare the cost of self-hosting to the cost of SaaS - INCLUDING the risk of getting locked out. One downside of the SaaS model is that you are just a very small customer in the bigger scheme and they can't really justify spending money on…

WRT self hosting, GitLab could be painful, but Gitea is really easy to host and keep up to date.

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#246

Post by dweberz »

xvilka wrote: post #141

Such cases highlight the importance of improving IPFS and Federation protocols, for example for Gitea[1][2] or GitLab[3][4]. Or just sponsoring them[5]. The source code for ForgeFed[6][7] might be also of interest for improvement. [1] https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/1612 [2] https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/9045 [3] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/6468 [4] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/…

also radicle.xyz

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#247

Post by brmgb »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #160
brmgb wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US embargo prevents doing business with Iran. Providing service in Iran would be a violation of the embargo. 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. GitHub should get flak for that in the same way Paypal regularly get flak for randomly freezing accounts.

> GitHub should get flak for that in the same way Paypal regularly get flak for randomly freezing accounts. If GitHub freezes your account, this is obviously serious and can impact your business to a greater or lesser extent depending on what your business does. But the data is not lost, and you'll likely have a copy of at least some of it (the actual repos) and maybe all of it if you were being careful. If Paypal fr…

> If Paypal freeze your account then any money in it is simply lost (and your loss is Paypal's gain!).

While this is completely tangential to the current discussion, I feel compelled to inform you that that's not how it works. When Paypal freeze your account, your account is not deleted, you just can't do anything with it. The money on it obviously remains yours. You just have to convince them that your account should be unfrozen or wait the maximum duration you agreed to in Paypal ToS - 180 days - after which they have to hand it back to you.

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#248

Post by Santosh83 »

darkwater wrote: post #236

I really wonder why economical penalties enforced to a country through its citizens or people born there or with ancestors like the USA does with all of its embargos aren't considered just as terrorism. You are punishing other people for something they didn't do just to pressure on their governments. Just like terrorists injuring people. (Yeah I know terrorists usually kill people but I'm pretty sure many people died…

At this level "might makes right" is the only reality. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Oh yeah they went through UN for the sanctions... right... as if the UN isn't little better than a rubber stamp agency in these areas.

On the flip side the US can do little if someone like China or Russia decide to trade with and help out Iran. The problem is the software sector is heavily dominated by the US, so they can disproportionately affect Iran.

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#249

Post by chillfox »

sjagoe wrote: post #212
fibers wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maintaining a self hosted solution like GilLab takes less than a day of work a year, and it has more features than GitHub.

(I have been doing it for years)

Re: GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran

#250

Post by antihero »

x3c wrote: post #153
cies wrote: post #71

Earlier 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.

This particular case was overreach by Github and not the US Lawmakers. https://home.treasury.gov/policy-issues/financial-sanctions/... 118. I have a client that is in Iran to visit a relative. Do I need to restrict the account? A: 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. See FAQ 37. Source: https://twitter.com/Hamed/status/13…

Thing is, GitHub is a tool that facilitates distribution of IP. So if someone is logging into GitHub in Iran, whether they live there or not, they can use it to "export" code.
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