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GitHub (Microsoft) blocks developers in countries facing US trade sanctions

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@droida
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I found a creepy news

Developers who lives in Crimea are banned from GitHub. https://www.zdnet.com/article/github-starts-blocking-developers-in-countries-facing-us-trade-sanctions/

GitHub starts blocking developers in countries facing US trade sanctions If you use GitHub's online services in a country facing US sanctions, you could be about to be kicked off all but the most basic offerings.

There's a debate over free speech taking place after Microsoft-owned GitHub "restricted" the account of a developer based in the Crimea region of Ukraine, who used the service to host his website and gaming software.
GitHub this week told Anatoliy Kashkin, a 21-year-old Russian citizen who lives in Crimea, that it had "restricted" his GitHub account "due to US trade controls".

The GitHub's rules

https://help.github.com/en/articles/github-and-trade-controls

... Crimea region of Ukraine. This list currently contains Cuba, Iran, North Korea, and Syria, but is subject to change.

Travel in these regions may impact your account status

The story of an Iranian developer

https://medium.com/@hamed/github-blocked-my-account-and-they-think-im-developing-nuclear-weapons-e7e1fe62cb74

First, some background: I am a software developer based in Iran and I’m on GitHub since 2012. In January 2019 when they announced that GitHub free includes unlimited private repositories, I completely moved to GitHub. ...

An interesting discussion about the ban

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20531039

This is very disquieting

The source code for many open source projects is on GitHub, including Bitcoin and Steem.
If the US government decides to ban cryptocurrencies, the source code of Bitcoin will no longer be available.