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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”

#61

Post by duxup »

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'm fairly certain you could publish the kind of speech you are referencing in the US or any other nation with similar sanctions right now with no problems.

Not so much free speech in Russia.

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

#63

Post by [deleted] »

ShinTakuya wrote: post #44
dogma1138 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

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

#64

Post by realusername »

gruez wrote: post #46
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

I like Gitlab but that's not exactly what I have in mind, I think about something more similar to torrents. The problem with everyone having their own instance without discoverability & interoperability between them is that you lose most of the value of Github.

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

#65

Post by gotts »

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.

What's the alternative?

Keeping the status quo and pretending like nothing significant happened when some country decides to annex another country's soil in 21th century?

In that case loosing moral ground would alienate people from US/West even more.

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

#66

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

fredthomsen wrote: post #42
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.

It’s hard to prove causation, but South Africa only started making real progress towards ending apartheid after broad sanctions started getting passed.

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

#67

Post by jotm »

my_first_acct wrote: post #57
option wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually been to Crimea? Because I had and still have lots of relatives there (I am originally from Ukraine). I have zero doubt that overwhelming majority of people there (easily over 70%) want to be with Russia instead of Ukraine

I think your numbers are probably correct. I don't happen to know another number: how many people in Chechnya would rather be independent than part of Russia. But it doesn't matter; the Russian government is very selective about how it applies the "right to self-determination". The Russian government is likewise selective in its interpretation of the Budapest agreement (1994) [1], in which Russia guaranteed Ukraine's…

Bucharest and Budapest are two different cities :)

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

#68

Post by moksly »

dngray wrote: post #50
moksly wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I’m Danish and in our very recent election we voted the authoritarians and populists out, by a large margin. Margrete Vestager is from a very liberal (as in free) Danish party, and she’s pushing some of the toughest regulations on big tech companies that we’ve seen in years.

So I’m not convinced it’s really authoritarian. We have a big scandal right now in Denmark, because a company secretly sold jet-fuel to Russians and that’s been illegal since sometime during the Cold War. Because other industries have been regulated on what they could trade with our “enemies” for decades. The tech sector somehow snuck under the radar on this, but that sneaking has certainly ended, and it’s now being regulated like any other industry.

I mean I could certainly be wrong, but I really do see it as governments being governments. When I was a child there weren’t seatbelts or airbags in cars. Automakers didn’t suddenly start putting them there because it was the right thing to do, or because it’s sell more cars. They did it because regulation forced them to do it and then they later turned safety into a marketing point.

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

#69

Post by ralph84 »

dngray wrote: post #50
moksly wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Only problem with your theory is that the number of fully-embargoed countries by the US has decreased over the last 20 years, and all of the still-embargoed countries except for Crimea have been on the list for longer than 20 years.

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

#70

Post by option »

my_first_acct wrote: post #57
option wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually been to Crimea? Because I had and still have lots of relatives there (I am originally from Ukraine). I have zero doubt that overwhelming majority of people there (easily over 70%) want to be with Russia instead of Ukraine

I think your numbers are probably correct. I don't happen to know another number: how many people in Chechnya would rather be independent than part of Russia. But it doesn't matter; the Russian government is very selective about how it applies the "right to self-determination". The Russian government is likewise selective in its interpretation of the Budapest agreement (1994) [1], in which Russia guaranteed Ukraine's…

I agree with what you said. But this means that US/West sanctions people for their democratic choice.

We should instead sanction people associated with Russia’s totalitarian government.

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