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“My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

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Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#41

Post by chr1 »

avocado4 wrote: post #24
dvt wrote: post #3

I'm sure HN will try throwing some shade here, but just about everyone has sanctioned Crimea, including Canada[1], the EU[2], and Ukraine itself. MasterCard, Visa, Discover, PayPal, etc., etc. also don't work in Crimea. [1] https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_re... [2] https://europa.eu/newsroom/highlights/special-coverage/eu-sa...

Why do they sanction Crimea (victim) instead of Russia?

Maybe because people setting sanctions know that Crimea is not a victim, and most of its population supported joining Russia, and hope that making their life harder may reduce the support.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#42

Post by fredthomsen »

option wrote: post #21

sanctions like these only alienate (otherwise mostly pro-democracy) people from US/West. Do impose sanctions on individuals who are associated with the rules of undemocratic regimes. But punishing whole populations (especially if they don’t have a democratic voice in the matter) is dumb and immoral.

This. The ruling class in the countries can still get the products and services they want. Can someone actually point to a case where broad sanctions like this has made a difference? Cuba has survived these sanctions for decades. When politians like Marco Rubio says the regime is about to break if we keep the pressure on, I just laugh.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#43

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

baddox wrote: post #28
dvt wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it just makes it a geopolitical reality that you have to somehow punish Russia when it mobilizes ground forces and forcibly annexes pieces of land. Don't forget that Russian-backed insurgents literally shot a passenger plane out of the sky[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia_Airlines_Flight_17

Something tells me Russia is not particularly bothered by the inability of people in Crimea to use GitHub.

Of course. Nobody is particularly bothered by the loss of one company's services. It's the totality of the effect that you're looking for.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#44

Post by ShinTakuya »

dogma1138 wrote: post #35
avocado4 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do they sanction Crimea (victim) instead of Russia?

Because Crimea is a defacto Russian state now and for the most part a large portion of the population and the current government is participating in it. The sanctions are for the most part per the request of the Ukrainian government. If Catalonia becomes a separatist state tomorrow and Spain and its allies sanction it everyone in it will be under sanctions regardless of who or what they support. This is what happens…

I don't like what's going in Crimea either, and I support most sanctions against it, but I also don't understand why they should be excluded from open source software participation. On an idealogical basis I reject the idea of OSS being politicised. Otherwise, where do we stop?

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#45

Post by 8note »

kragen wrote: post #6

During the Cold War, the primary thing that distinguished the US side from the USSR side was that, while speech by USSR people and people sympathetic to the USSR (like, say, CPUSA) was published in the US, publishing speech sympathetic to the US in the USSR would get you arrested. It seems like the US has become what the USSR was: companies who publish speech from people in Iran or Crimea are now violating the law by…

I think you could consider the incarcerated victims of the drug war as political dissidents. The laws exist to make sure black people couldn't vote against Nixon, which I'd say is a political imprisonment

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#46

Post by gruez »

realusername wrote: post #10

That's exactly the reason why we need to decentralise Github, that's way too much power for a corporation.

Yeah, let's fork the client and make it decentralized[1], and write an open source version of the server[2] so people can host their own instances!

[1] https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Distributed-Git-Distributed-W...

[2] https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#47

Post by rcfox »

dvt wrote: post #3

I'm sure HN will try throwing some shade here, but just about everyone has sanctioned Crimea, including Canada[1], the EU[2], and Ukraine itself. MasterCard, Visa, Discover, PayPal, etc., etc. also don't work in Crimea. [1] https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_re... [2] https://europa.eu/newsroom/highlights/special-coverage/eu-sa...

FYI: It's just "Ukraine", not "the Ukraine".

"The Ukraine" referred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the Soviet Union.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#48

Post by wongarsu »

option wrote: post #21

sanctions like these only alienate (otherwise mostly pro-democracy) people from US/West. Do impose sanctions on individuals who are associated with the rules of undemocratic regimes. But punishing whole populations (especially if they don’t have a democratic voice in the matter) is dumb and immoral.

I agree. Back during the cold war we used to run radio stations broadcasting into enemy territory to create sympathy and show that we are humans too. Today we seem to be doing the opposite.

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#49

Post by dvt »

rcfox wrote: post #47
dvt wrote: post #3

I'm sure HN will try throwing some shade here, but just about everyone has sanctioned Crimea, including Canada[1], the EU[2], and Ukraine itself. MasterCard, Visa, Discover, PayPal, etc., etc. also don't work in Crimea. [1] https://www.international.gc.ca/world-monde/international_re... [2] https://europa.eu/newsroom/highlights/special-coverage/eu-sa...

FYI: It's just "Ukraine", not "the Ukraine". "The Ukraine" referred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the Soviet Union.

Fixed -- had no idea, thanks for the heads-up!

Re: “My GitHub account has been restricted due to US sanctions as I live in Crimea”

#50

Post by dngray »

moksly wrote: post #40
dngray wrote: post #26

I'm from a US-friendly nation but I get terribly sad when I hear things like this. Contribution to the free software world should transcend where someone is from whether it be China, Russia, Iran or whatever new "enemy" our leaders decide. As much as I dislike Facebook for privacy related reasons, maybe it's time that more tech companies setup a Tor Hidden Service and not ask where people are from. Could this be used…

Would that really change anything? I think what we’re seeing is the inevitable result of the internet and tech companies becoming the most important aspect of modern civilisation. We’re not a bunch of hippie geeks fooling around with open tech anymore while the political level largely ignores us. With almost everyone in the world using the internet for hours a day, regulation was simply bound to come. Not knowing whe…

> Would that really change anything? I think what we’re seeing is the inevitable result of the internet and tech companies becoming the most important aspect of modern civilisation.

I think what we are seeing is the implementation of authoritarian governments, something that has been on the increase nearly everywhere, in the last 20 years.

People have in the developed world had it, too good for too long. Complacency and populism is what led to this.

We voted in "strong leaders" and this is what we're gonna get, strong policies that might not really be all that smart.

What these policies forget is a lot of general citizens don't have much choice over the regime that leads them. They are just often people doing their thing.

Free software is actually something which brings us together, as it's about what we do and have in common, rather than race, religion or politics. I think that's why it feels so awful.

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