Here's something you may never have to see in your lifetime:
This is not something new to me and many others. In fact these sort of discriminations have happened to me so much that I'm very sad to have gotten used to it. Let me catch you up on what's going on.
Update 1 - 28/7/19
It is now possible to make your private repositories public.
A few days ago, I received an email from GitHub which stated that my GitHub account has been restricted due to "Trade Control Laws Restrictions". Opening my GitHub profile, I found out that I can't access my private repositories. It also had stopped publishing my GitHub Pages sites. I was pretty upset and disappointed to see this happen again.
I understand that GitHub may be innocent and simply obligated to comply by the US government laws and regulations but here's the sad part, it's not the governments who suffer. It's us. We have to pay the price just because governments and politicians don't get along.
I do appreciate GitHub providing free private repository hosting for us, but I do believe it was absolutely unprofessional and unethical to block our access to our private assets without any prior notice.
You might think, "what's the big deal?! there are many alternatives out there." Yeah, I know but this is not what it's about. It's about being constantly overlooked and discriminated against and not being able to have the same right to access the tools and resources as your fellow DEVs. 😔
How would you feel like if you wake up tomorrow and see that @ben is blocking your access to this great community of amazing developers for a stupid reason?
Please make sure to checkout this repo for more information and see how you can help us.
1995parham
/
github-do-not-ban-us
GitHub do not ban us from open source world 🇮🇷
A Message to GitHub
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Attention! We are so thankful for your support. This repository always shows that people are all together against unfortunate happening around the world As GitHub revised some of the previous restrictions, we decided to reduce this repository's activity. Of course, it does not mean that we agree with the sanctions and the GitHub We will post a conclusion and explain more soon, please wait for that The campaign will be terminated Thursday 1 August 23:59 (Tehran Time GMT +4:30). After this time we won't merge any new PR. Once again thanks for your support and kindness Please wait for our final conclusion
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Oldest comments (106)
I intellectually understand why the company is doing this, but it definitely seems like they're throwing Iranian devs under the bus instead of expending some effort to figure out how they can be accommodated. This is a bad look for GitHub.
Github has no say in any of this all they can do is comply with trade bans. If Github was still doing business in Iran they'd be fined.
This is terrible!
Is the ban/block based on your IP address? or the location field in your profile?
or something else?
I think that's the worst part, apparently it isn't IP/geolocation based because there is at least one guy who lives and works in Finland that got blocked: twitter.com/Farzad_YZ/status/11546...
His GitHub says he is in Helsinki as well, github.com/farskid
And it's a ban on your account, so even if you left Iran you wouldn't be unbanned.
It might be where you created your account.
It's probably the country of origin you defined where signing up. IP and nationality is very different and can't be relied on.
I hope that this news mobilizes developers to get involved in the discussion. This is not a situation with an easy answer, and it needs to be elevated so that we don't let it get swept away as we move past this news cycle.
Here's another discussion going on right now as well:
Github Must Be a Free Platform
Milad Nekofar ・ Jul 26 '19 ・ 1 min read
I really appreciate you getting involved in this discussion. It's a long shot and it may not even happen but the least they can do is give us access to download our private repositories.
I totally agree with you dear friend In the text above
I'm sorry you have to deal with this. Github is a symbol for open source, which is about bringing people together across boundaries. This nationality-based discrimination is the opposite of that, adding insult to injury. I hope GitHub does a
git revertand rolls back these changes. Sending support to the repo from the US!GitHub is a symbol for Microsoft buying developers 🙈
BAH! shakes cane
I am really socked... Just added my contribution. I'll do my bests for this to change, github should be for everyone, without discrimination.
Thanks. Apparently repos made by restricted users isn't making it on the trending list.
My pleasure. About the trending list, it's not only that. I think that the algorithm for the trending repos has been changed, without any update from Github, a week ago I sent them an e-mail to explain what is changed to the community, never got a reply about it.
How I know it? Repositories with 5-10 stars are shown in the list and some of my own repos with 20-30 per day don't. The order of listing is also changed, it doesn't order by the highest to lowest number of stars anymore.
I don't know whats happened after the microsoft's acquisition and I am not even a guy who ever hated Microsoft.
Αnd now I hear this about users got ban because of a country they are living on. I am really disappointed and angry in the same time.
I appreciate the support. BTW, it's not based on where you live, it's been confirmed that it's soely based on your nationality.
And how do they determine your nationality!?
(I don't think I've stated mine.)
I'm very interested to know how too.
Yo DEVs! I'm a backend dev and open source advocate, Cuban by birth, and currently living in NorthEast Cuba. A few weeks ago, in one of the Telegram channel when mostly of the FOSS advocates of the Island, gather to share knowledge, projects, questions, or simple 'how is your day?', We made a curated list of all the open source projects in GitHub by now. Here's the link: Cuban Open Sourcers
By now, some of those contributors already have the notification of thier account to be restricted, the rest of us are expecting it soon.
Now Github joins SlackHQ, Docker, Dell, Gitlab, and many other companies or online services we have restricted due to US laws.
This is a bad news for all the Cuban devs, and for the other fellows devs of the countries affected as well. We really hope this could be solved.
I got shocked because this was something like war maneuver against freedom and the open-source world. and like always, we have to pay the price of stupid politics of our governments!
I've just added my name and a
together/message to the repo. Thanks for the link! Sharing this.Could this be because Github is now owned by Microsoft? Anyway I completely agree, ridiculous that common people like you and me suffer because the leaders of our countries don't like each other.
It's not just GitHub, We've had this issue with most US based tech giants.
It's all Trump's fault, he's extremely biased ... Saudi Arabia harbors and supports 10 times more terrorists than Iran ever did, while half Yemen is in ruin because of Saudi sponsored war, but all of that is okay with him as long as he can ship billions of USD on weapons sales to the Saudis.
Anything they do is okay apparently, including the worst human rights violations, because they're "friends" of the US. Europe/EU still wants to have normal relationships with Iran but it's made all but impossible by the US government.
Trump's got no brain, no common sense and no empathy, worst president ever, but I'm stating the obvious. This is probably the most political comment on dev.to ever, but I don't care, the truth must be told.
It's not even about trump, this drama predates trump or even bush. Paypal and other financial providers are blocking many countries under the excuse of human rights and political POV for last 2 decades.
That must be extremely annoying, I completely understand your frustration ... can't really understand that commercial companies are so biased for nonsensical reasons.
That's really sad! it'll hurt none but the open source community
This is terrible. That's why I hate politics! It divides people while it should unite. Stared the repo.
Can anyone suggest any alternatives to GitHub? GitLab is also a US company, so there is no point in switching to it. Maybe BitBucket? It's a part of Atlassian products and Atlassian is Australian company.
GitLab is open source, you can host it yourself, so maybe the best solution would be creating a self hosted GitLab in a country that isn't subject to all this nonsense. I wish Linode weren't an American company.
AFAIU it has nothing to do with the location of the company, but with whether that company does business with the US.
So, all companies are affected. Only non-commercial stuff isn't.
A very unethical step by GitHub. If they continue to involve politics,it will have bad business consequences for GitHub . That's insane.
Lol, what?) I am not sure about their existing if they continued to provide their service to terrorist countries
1 Because CNN declares somebody terrorist for political reasons doesn't mean one is actually terrorist
2 These people were using GitHub for ages,how many people they killed via code that you can go and check how that code fires bullets
3 One should be rationale not like going with wind flow,media and politics should not be mixed with all things
4 Imagine you are somebody who makes living by writing code and not actually a terrorist,how would you feel? You of course cannot feel the pain otherwise you would not have put up such stupid comment
5 People like you are in face real terrorists who have no sane minds, somebody like you was there in GitHub management who took this decision
6 It still makes sense to follow county rules which GitHub did but calling those who make living by writing code and growing their children and families is absolutely unethical and insane.
7 Your comment showed your thinking level and personality so I wouldn't expect sane or good comments developing in that mind and coming out from that mouth.
I doubt that. It's not Github who said "eh just block Iran lulw". I'm sure they didn't want to do that at all, but if you're going to ignore the laws of the country in which you're doing the business, it will fall down very quickly. And since Github is not a non-profit organization, I guess it would cost them less to block Iran rather than get kicked off of U.S. That sounds horrible, but that's how it works.
Well, I don't watch CNN, so you are wrong from beginning. If they develop calmly in their country with terrorist government, it means, that they support it(developing nuclear weapon etc)So, why do they use enemy's service? I'd like companies be even more tough on things like this.
Remarks. By support I mean no physicals, I mean mental support of ideology and doings. And I think it is wrong and stupid ban people from Iran, who live and commit from other countries for many ages
If it's a criteria US develops nuclear weapons as well. It's always easier to stick labels than work on the problems themselves.
So your trust to Iran government is the same with USA?)
Sorry, developing nuclear weapons is the criteria you provided for being a terrorist state, not my idea.
Terrorist government developing nuclear is the criteria, don't manipulate
MFW people on Twitter and DEV call GitHub "insane" because they won't break federal law.
This whole situation is stupid. I doubt the Iranian government is going to be persuaded by this, not to mention the hypocrisy and lack of ethics from the government mandating this sanctions. But... most people would do the same thing if they were in the GH compliance officer's shoes. The whole reason corrupt regimes exist is because most people aren't willing to go to jail so that someone they've never met can access a web page.
So what's wrong with that? It is part of US sanctions to terrorist countries. Change government to notterrorist and everything will be ok. Why would you use enemy's services?)
Come on! you suggest we ruining are life to use GitHub? right?
and do you think terrorist is that stupid to use GitHub as a repository? how naive you are, no the normal people use GitHub, and please stop call us terrorist, politics does mean who use better lies. so no one knows the true truth.
It is made not for restricting terrorist access to github. It is for common citizens, who doesn't do anything against terrorist government, which means they are ok with it, so support it. Enjoy and don't use enemy's services :)
I am not calling all Iran citizens terrorists. But if you do nothing against your governmebt, you support your government by inaction
With all of the controversy at NPM sparking new, decentralized alternatives such as entropic, we should really start discussing how to start federating our own git repos as well.
Centralizing resources like our code on any platform is incredibly volatile - in this case, Microsoft made a business decision to cut off Iranian users without warning to avoid fines.
No matter where you stand on the subject of ethics, we can only ever rely on any for-profit company to work for the interests of their shareholders. The catch is, entire swaths of our community will only be welcome to use cornerstone services of the web at the whim of people in power who have proven themselves to be racist, negligent, and a force of net harm towards certain communities.
The people at GitHub have worked tirelessly (and invested in a ton of PR) to present themselves as arbiters of free and open source software - but as long as they are centralized, we can never be sure of the fact that this won’t happen due to a new whim of some local authority. For the sake of the entire open source community, we can do a lot better.
Really uncomfortable position to be in 😔
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