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Iranian law prohibits merge of PR from Israeli?

290 points by jonahbenton 6y ago

mikece 6y ago
Does this mean that there is an Iranian government enforcement agency monitoring Github PRs?
- justinclift 6y ago
  It's probably a case of the person being super careful, as they live in a jurisdiction where a mistake could have tragic consequences.
- twunde 6y ago
  Iran is known to monitor the internet of its citizens especially social media (of which Github could be seen as a specialized version) and email (where PR notifications go by default) [1]. Even if its not being monitored at the moment, its likely it could be picked up later on by the Iranian government. If the chances are 30%+ that the dev in question could be sent to jail for years, its more than understandable why he didn't merge in the changes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Iran#Monitoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Iran#Mo...
- amadeusw 6y ago
  Probably not, but if a regime wants to persecute someone (maybe they went to a protest?), they could comb through the individual's accounts looking for slightest evidence of breaking the law.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  You never know for sure in an authoritarian country, but it's plausible there could be. The Iranian government has engaged in some public efforts recently to get rid of Israel-linked tech.
jonahbenton 6y ago
Noticed this on Reddit. Very little context in the above. Posting here in hopes that knowledgeable individuals can chime in with links and info. PLEASE assume goodwill and cooperative intent for all parties. Goal is merely to help educate all as to parameters and guidelines for safe global work together.
AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
I would have said "Jerusalem" as a location could lend some ambiguity as to whether the committing user is Israeli or Palestinian, but ah...his username and profile picture certainly leaves nothing to the imagination.
- inglor 6y ago
  As an Israeli I have exactly zero intention to hide my nationality in order to participate. I don't really understand this PR as GitHub is an American company that is forbidden to do business with Iranians. It seems weird to me to use the website but not take a PR. That said I am sympathetic to the package maintainer and I hope to never live in a place so repressive. It's scary as it is.
  - AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
    I don't suggest anyone "hide" anything, I was merely pointing out the potential for false positives based on a geographical IP lookup.
  - razakel 6y ago
    >It seems weird to me to use the website but not take a PR. The long and short of it is that he's more afraid of his government than the US government.
- yiddishe-kop 6y ago
  Hi Author of the PR here. Would you submit a complaint to GitHub? What should I do?
  - throw_m239339 6y ago
    I would submit a complain, it would in fact protect that developer FROM the Iranian government since he wouldn't be able to interact with Israeli on github if it's apparently a problem. He can't have it both way at first place, he can't be on github and obviously violate github TOS with anti-Israeli PR merging policies, no matter what the reason is.
ronakjain90 6y ago
How is accepting a PR account to having a relationship with an individual. Popular OS repository would have code contribution from 1000s of contributor, it's possible that the maintainer don't personally know a majority of them. This just don't make sense.
- duxup 6y ago
  It doesn't make sense. But they're in a country where the law also might not make sense. Technical / administrative issues aside here I can understand how an individual might fear some sort of retaliation... even if the basis for it is absurd, the consequences could be very real.
  - heliodor 6y ago
    In every country there are laws that don't make sense. Yes, the same can be said for your own country. The quantity and ridiculousness can be argued, but there's no place on Earth that's "good", just "better". For any given person, they will have some disagreements regarding the body of law that applies to them.
    - duxup 6y ago
      >but there's no place on Earth that's "good", just "better". I don't know what you mean by that. I get the rest, but not that.
      - tikhonj 6y ago
        I assume they're saying that, in an absolute sense, all systems of law are arbitrary and capricious. Some might be much better than others, but none are sufficiently fair or transparent to be "good". The extent to which you agree with that is a question of political philosophy :).
        duxup 6y ago
        I can't say I'm well versed in this idea but if people are creating the laws they've got some motivations and trigger for the law.... I think we can evaluate those on some sort of practicality / sense of justice or other scale rather than declare them all arbitrary.
jacquesm 6y ago
Stuxnet inheritance?
colordrops 6y ago
This seems to be just an individual being passive aggressive and not some international incident.
- mathieuh 6y ago
  Who's being passive-aggressive? The Iranian guy added commits to the PR, it seems he was going to merge it and realised he probably shouldn't
  - d0100 6y ago
    > I hope one day your country removes this restriction, just like my country has never put such restrictions. This reads to me as passive-aggressive To add insult, a superficial search for Iran sanctions show that Israel is pushing hard for US sanctions on Iran [0][1] So even if Israel hasn't sanctioned Iran, they sure seem to want the US as a proxy sanctionner [0](https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/TAG-iran-sanctions-1.5598930 https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/TAG-iran-sanctions-1.55989...) [1](https://www.timesofisrael.com/topic/iran-sanctions/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/topic/iran-sanctions/)
    - yiddishe-kop 6y ago
      Hi, PR author here, Israel has never restricted private individuals from collaborating on open source with Iranians (afaik).
veeti 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeed_Malekpour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeed_Malekpour
- hinkley 6y ago
  > On 3 August 2019, Malekpour returned to Canada after escaping Iran through an unknown third country. Oh I bet it’s known. But to announce it means you can’t use the same trick for the next asylum seeker. I wish the Internet had this level of class more often.
rgbrenner 6y ago
All the people arguing semantics when the author lives in a repressive dictatorship that would literally torture you for a confession and then execute you for it.. if anyone EVER comes by this PR even a decade from now. Meanwhile, no one here would even think of violating US export controls against North Korea... when the consequences are likely just prison time. Armchair tough guys.
- duxup 6y ago
  I don't see a lot of shade being thrown at the author, just a lot of confusion. Not armchair tough, just not fully understanding... yet, I think there's a difference.
  - panpanna 6y ago
    Are you sure? His comment has right now 109 thumbs down, zero thumbs up.
    - duxup 6y ago
      At the time I posted I didn't see much shade being thrown at the author. As for votes I see no reason to interpret them in any particular way.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago
  > no one here would even think of violating US export controls against North Korea If there were a vibrant industrial or creative community in North Korea to interact with, I’d see the light in this argument. But there isn’t. The only entity to contract with is the state. That makes the comparison difficult. Cuba, on the other hand...
  - kome 6y ago
    or Iran...
  - gruez 6y ago
    Violating sanctions is definitely a concern as your company gets bigger. See: https://news.crunchbase.com/news/startups-have-to-care-about-violating-u-s-sanctions-laws-too/ https://news.crunchbase.com/news/startups-have-to-care-about..., and github restricting access for people from iran, syria, and crimea.
flixic 6y ago
If this PR would have come from a sufficiently anonymous user (no location / profile picture), I'm sure it would have gone through. I'm certain maintainers don't check identity and nationality of every contributor.
- SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
  I don't think it's an acceptable state of affairs if people feel pressured to keep their nationality private.
  - mlyle 6y ago
    Yup. That would make a policy like Iran's spectacularly effective: just make all the Israelis have to disappear/pretend not to exist as a people.
  - kome 6y ago
    but that's what happens in the real world when you apply to jobs, to renting houses, etc.
    - newswasboring 6y ago
      Are you saying in real world we hide our nationality? In what universe does your CV does not include which university you graduated from and which house owner lets you rent without a copy of your ID? Maybe it works differently in america but in the rest of the world I am pretty sure nationality is a standard thing to ask.
scottlocklin 6y ago
Could it be this the PR recipient was worried about? https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/iran-passes-law-banning-use-of-israeli-technology-629390 https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/iran-passes-law-... Don't tell them about the Linux kernel.
- inglor 6y ago
  I guess no Intel, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft or Amazon products then since all those companies have R&D centers in Israel, lol.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
Navarr 6y ago
How does this work considering PHP is heavily made up of code from Zend (which was an Israeli company) Can Iranian-built websites not use PHP?
- Gaelan 6y ago
  In fact, this is a PR on a PHP-language repo!
- sushshshsh 6y ago
  Depends if the Iranian authorities in question care about prosecuting/arresting the person in question, aka how connected is the coder to the government
- aaomidi 6y ago
  First rule about Iran. Nothing is logically consistent.
- duxup 6y ago
  Arguably, maybe, I don't think the law in question is particularly... practical. It's purely political it seems and fairly arbitrary. It's possible 'usage' might not be considered a relationship, but 'interacting' with a PR might? But I'm trying to be practical and I suspect the law was not written by anyone intending to be practical.
- burnte 6y ago
  They were an American company that took investment money from an Israeli VC, that doesn't make them an Israeli company.
  - oaiey 6y ago
    The owners of Zend, Zeev and Andi are indeed Israeli making it a company under Israeli control for some time no matter what. This whole story makes me sad.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
mothsonasloth 6y ago
This is the problem with the internet now, profile pics, egotistical bio summaries and emojis. It was more fun when it was anonymous and the person you were talking to could have been a 43 year old neo nazi with blue hair, but their code or stuff was good, so you didn't have that getting in the way of you.
- Kapura 6y ago
  "It was more fun when I didn't know I was working with Nazis" is an extraordinarily bad take.
  - Minor49er 6y ago
    He clearly said it was more fun not knowing the personal details of whoever he was working with online, not that he was ever literally working with Nazis.
  - lilSebastian 6y ago
    Quite the misrepresentation of the comment
- duxup 6y ago
  How does that apply to the story?
  - dudul 6y ago
    The PR author has their location in their Github profile. Had they not filled this part, the maintainer probably would have just merged the PR.
    - duxup 6y ago
      Is that bad to share that info? And that aside, what about the name? Going this direction seems like a very strange aside to a situation where the law is clearly bonkers...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Alir3z4 6y ago
I never knew about such law. For those who have Pikachu eyes now, or whoever gave thumbs down on the maintainer comment, I dare you to do a single tiny transaction with Iran or an Iranian citizen which would be in violation of unilateral sanctions imposed by US on Iran and Iranian national globally and you'd see how you'll get a taste of freedom and liberty and some prison time to sweeten the deal by US. If there's #metoo movement for this, put me and other +85 million Iranians in it. Ref: https://alireza.gonevis.com/how-i-didnt-get-my-first-paying-customer/ https://alireza.gonevis.com/how-i-didnt-get-my-first-paying-...
- kome 6y ago
  exactly, the hypocrisy is just off the charts. Or, a more generous interpretation, is that many people are just unaware of American imperialism.
- newswasboring 6y ago
  I get why people should not thumbs down and the whole tough guy angle, but I have never heard US putting someone in jail for a merged PR. Many of the big open source projects are american citizen lead and they accept PRs from all around the world.
  - Alir3z4 6y ago
    Tell that to GitHub to force and ban Iranian github repos that were private or gitlab completely non reachable for Iranians due to GCP policies.
    - newswasboring 6y ago
      1. There is a difference between jailing/torturing someone and a private company restricting its user base. 2. Countries have the right to have trade sanctions towards other countries. Does US abuse its rights some times? Absolutely. But does not make it not their right.
      - Alir3z4 6y ago
rsynnott 6y ago
I would wonder if this is a misunderstanding of the law (to be clear, I have no idea; not an Iranian lawyer). It would be common for things like this to apply to _commercial_ relationships, or munitions broadly defined.
newswasboring 6y ago
Edit: Sorry I completely misread it. I thought he said just "merged" it instead of encouraging "merge" it. Still interesting to learn about Behdad though, cool stuff about localization and language support. Interestingly merged by Behdad Esfahbod who is also iranian. He was even arrested by the iranian government in the past > Esfahbod claims that he was arrested by Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps intelligence echelon during a 2020 visit to Tehran. He was then moved to Evin prison, where he was psychologically pressured and interrogated for 6 days. Iranian security forces let him go based on his promise to spy on his friends once he was back in United States.[2] [1] https://github.com/armancodes/laravel-download-link/pull/9#issuecomment-686413931 https://github.com/armancodes/laravel-download-link/pull/9#i... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behdad_Esfahbod#Detention_Iran_visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behdad_Esfahbod#Detention_Iran...
- amarshall 6y ago
  Doesn’t seem like Behdad merged (or even has privileges to do so on that repo), just that he encouraged doing so.
- dgellow 6y ago
  Where do you see that he merged it? He’s just saying that it should be merged as far as I can tell.
- eternalban 6y ago
  https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing-from-me-please-be-this-2262ec7b8af2 https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing-fro...
  - panpanna 6y ago
    So the Iranian government had access to a Facebook employees credentials for around a week? Oh, that can't be good...
- dvirsky 6y ago
  Behdad used to post on an Israeli LUG message board nearly 20 years ago! I completely forgot about it but his name rang a bell now, and I went and looked at the archives. https://www.mail-archive.com/search?q=behdad&l=linux-il%40cs.huji.ac.il https://www.mail-archive.com/search?q=behdad&l=linux-il%40cs...
phonon 6y ago
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24360801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24360801
zozbot234 6y ago
I'm a bit confused here - how are people under Iranian jurisdiction going to use GitHub anyway? Isn't this against GitHub ToS, given Iran's status as a country that's under international sanctions?
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  VPN, and I don't think he especially cares about getting banned, much less bad than being imprisoned.
hinkley 6y ago
If this were just an IP problem it would be easy enough to solve, but I don’t think whatever passes for a district attorney in Tehran would be impressed. And as someone else implied: are you willing to stake a life on your solution? The last time I had a provenance problem with source code (multinational, could not utilize public domain code for liability reasons), I clean-roomed a solution. It took longer to explain why I wanted this to the intended author than it did for him to write it. But I had a knack for filing bug reports such that the maintainer can fix the problem cheaply (same employer, I could not file PRs against OSS, but I could tell them the bug was on line 53 and what input triggered it) You’d need someone who has read the PR to write tests and/or a spec and for someone else who has not read it to file an equivalent PR. But I’d want to talk to some Iranian lawyers first. Plural.
msoad 6y ago
It's scary business doing anything like that if you are living in Iran. Just read[1] what Behdad (guy who finally merged it) went through when he visited Iran recently. I don't blame them to be scared. [1][https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing-from-me-please-be-this-2262ec7b8af2?source=friends_link&sk=e29ac54d3fbed71de045ed6a5857280b https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing-fro...]
- refurb 6y ago
  Yikes. That's a great summary of what can happen to you when you piss off a government in a country where they don't have many limitations on what they can do to you. He acknowledges the lack of human rights in Iran, but then casts blame on the US when Iran shoots down the Ukrainian airliner. Which is odd.
Ahmed90 6y ago
I lived in Syria before the war and stuff, even back in 2010, because of the US export laws Syrians were banned from downloading the most basic shit like Java runtime, adobe flash player, and Nvidia gpu drivers, Skype, Messengers like Yahoo etc... This type of internet "stupidity" is in every government DNA lol
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- akerro 6y ago
  >US export laws Syrians were banned from downloading the most basic shit like Java runtime That's still the case for many encryption products from Oracle. You have to register and sign T&C which say you will not export this .jar to a banned country. It's been like this since I remember... 2005 maybe?
  - sangnoir 6y ago
    Thank $GOD for Bouncy Castle.
Darmody 6y ago
If you think this is stupid, just think about all the times western politicians have made laws and rules for tech stuff they don't understand. Some years ago, the CEO and Chairman of Telefonica/Movistar, who should have a minimum understanding of how the internet works, said Google should pay them money because, and I quote him, Telefonica had all the infrastructure, the customer support and Google only had algorithms. If this kind of stupidity comes from a guy like this, imagine what could come out the rulers of a theocratic regime.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
shmerl 6y ago
Is that a surprise? What do you expect from a fascist regime, to have normal laws?
anonu 6y ago
Couple ways to read this: 1. repo owner is justified. Understandable from the lens of living under an oppressive regime that could use anything to justify your imprisonment or whatnot... Even if he has good intentions, fear of disproportionate response keeps him from collaboration 2. repo owner is just not being friendly. The risk is so minuscule here that any intelligent person would just merge a PR. After all, theyre having a discussion in a public forum... so they've already past the point of "no contact"... 3. repo owner has government ties.
- chadash 6y ago
  I can't say for certain, but the tone of his response leads me to think that #2 is not the case. The risk might be minuscule, but the repo owner worried about it anyway, which is natural and doesn't mean they are being unfriendly.
- dudul 6y ago
  > The risk is so minuscule here that any intelligent person would just merge a PR. Out of curiosity, have you ever lived under a repressive regime? Because I have, and even when "the risk is minuscule", when you know what could happen you tend to think twice.
polote 6y ago
post from the author of the PR https://blog.yiddishe-kop.com/posts/my-pr-was-denied-by-iranian-law https://blog.yiddishe-kop.com/posts/my-pr-was-denied-by-iran...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
steventhedev 6y ago
Weren't Iranian devs banned from github last year[0]? That aside, I dont see any first hand source for the repo owner being Iranian, only speculation in the comments. The situation is sad, but a reasonable response to a PR that has legal issues. I don't think there's much intelligent discussion that can be had about this. [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-countries/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-coun... EDIT: github doesn't show profile location on mobile. My bad.
- hinkley 6y ago
  Look at his profile.
azangru 6y ago
I don't have anything useful to offer, but don't you find it utterly bonkers that a government can tell you who you may or may not associate with. Nothing to do with Iran specifically; the US also has similar claims on its citizens dictating to them who they are and are not allowed to have business relationships with; as probably do other countries. I can't fit this into my head. It's too insane.
- zb1plus 6y ago
  Nation-states need to be consigned to the ash heap of history. They do not bring value in the 21st century, the lessons of the 20th ought to show we need to be implementing better solutions for organizing people, making decisions and building public infrastructure.
darkarmani 6y ago
This is disheartening but nothing new. My memory is rusty at this point, but I thought OpenBSD/OpenSSH wouldn't take crypto code from US developers when the US was still squashing all (strong) crypto code as munitions exports (more than they do now).
oferzelig 6y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24360801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24360801
joshxyz 6y ago
The fuck did i just read.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hacktember 6y ago
A sad reality in Iran. There's a lot of wonderful people there who deserve our empathy.
darepublic 6y ago
Yes, please add the check to circle ci
ykevinator 6y ago
Israel and Iran are not that different, they're both monoracial theocracies that cost the us a lot of money
vacuum04 6y ago
If this is not dictatorship, I don't know what is dictatorship then. The Iranian regime or the CCP regime are like ticking bombs on this planet. You have no idea how ridiculous they can be.
turing_complete 6y ago
Hope this guy gets out of Iran ASAP.
yiddishe-kop 6y ago
Hi, PR author here. I wrote a blog post with my personal perspective here: https://blog.yiddishe-kop.com/posts/my-pr-was-denied-by-iranian-law https://blog.yiddishe-kop.com/posts/my-pr-was-denied-by-iran...
- Thelordofalamut 6y ago
  I just want to let you know the guy is being an asshole. To get a position in government job or something. IRGC doesn't check people's merges on github. His actions are personal choice. You are very welcome to contribute to other Iranian projects.
erex78 6y ago
Why was this taken off the front page?
- Alir3z4 6y ago
  Hehe, it's obvious why.
yiddishe-kop 6y ago
On second thought, I should've responded as follows: "Hi, I'm from the IRGC secret intelligence, we just wanted to test your loyalty to the regime, therefore we create fake accounts. You can merge the PR without any problem"
shariat 6y ago
I am Iranain, and the regime does prosecute people on any bogus thing you can imagine. But in this case, the owner of the repo looks very suspicious to me. Maybe he had his own prejudiced, or he has some relationship with the regime.
fred_dev 6y ago
Wow, this topic is not that hot. A very ordinary Iranian developer has a repository (which he shouldn't have it on github, since github belongs to MS and MS is American, at any moment they can close his account with legal excuses, just like what other Americans tech companies did to Iranian users). A very ordinary Israeli guy made a PR and the repository owner politely rejected it because he doesn't want to interact with any person from that country) US has a lot of law and rules against many countries including Iran, no one argues about that. And some guys want to escalate a PR up to governmental level. It's ridiculous... There is no specific law for git PR. It's a very general law. Many middle eastern countries would not recognize Israel as a country, it is called Occupied Palestin. Citizens of these countries shouldn't interact with ppl from occupied territories.

290 points by jonahbenton 6y ago

mikece 6y ago

Does this mean that there is an Iranian government enforcement agency monitoring Github PRs?

justinclift 6y ago
It's probably a case of the person being super careful, as they live in a jurisdiction where a mistake could have tragic consequences.
twunde 6y ago
Iran is known to monitor the internet of its citizens especially social media (of which Github could be seen as a specialized version) and email (where PR notifications go by default) [1]. Even if its not being monitored at the moment, its likely it could be picked up later on by the Iranian government. If the chances are 30%+ that the dev in question could be sent to jail for years, its more than understandable why he didn't merge in the changes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Iran#Monitoring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Iran#Mo...
amadeusw 6y ago
Probably not, but if a regime wants to persecute someone (maybe they went to a protest?), they could comb through the individual's accounts looking for slightest evidence of breaking the law.
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
You never know for sure in an authoritarian country, but it's plausible there could be. The Iranian government has engaged in some public efforts recently to get rid of Israel-linked tech.

jonahbenton 6y ago

Noticed this on Reddit. Very little context in the above. Posting here in hopes that knowledgeable individuals can chime in with links and info. PLEASE assume goodwill and cooperative intent for all parties. Goal is merely to help educate all as to parameters and guidelines for safe global work together.

AdmiralAsshat 6y ago

I would have said "Jerusalem" as a location could lend some ambiguity as to whether the committing user is Israeli or Palestinian, but ah...his username and profile picture certainly leaves nothing to the imagination.

inglor 6y ago
As an Israeli I have exactly zero intention to hide my nationality in order to participate. I don't really understand this PR as GitHub is an American company that is forbidden to do business with Iranians. It seems weird to me to use the website but not take a PR. That said I am sympathetic to the package maintainer and I hope to never live in a place so repressive. It's scary as it is.
- AdmiralAsshat 6y ago
  I don't suggest anyone "hide" anything, I was merely pointing out the potential for false positives based on a geographical IP lookup.
- razakel 6y ago
  >It seems weird to me to use the website but not take a PR. The long and short of it is that he's more afraid of his government than the US government.
yiddishe-kop 6y ago
Hi Author of the PR here. Would you submit a complaint to GitHub? What should I do?
- throw_m239339 6y ago
  I would submit a complain, it would in fact protect that developer FROM the Iranian government since he wouldn't be able to interact with Israeli on github if it's apparently a problem. He can't have it both way at first place, he can't be on github and obviously violate github TOS with anti-Israeli PR merging policies, no matter what the reason is.

ronakjain90 6y ago

How is accepting a PR account to having a relationship with an individual. Popular OS repository would have code contribution from 1000s of contributor, it's possible that the maintainer don't personally know a majority of them. This just don't make sense.

duxup 6y ago
It doesn't make sense. But they're in a country where the law also might not make sense. Technical / administrative issues aside here I can understand how an individual might fear some sort of retaliation... even if the basis for it is absurd, the consequences could be very real.
- heliodor 6y ago
  In every country there are laws that don't make sense. Yes, the same can be said for your own country. The quantity and ridiculousness can be argued, but there's no place on Earth that's "good", just "better". For any given person, they will have some disagreements regarding the body of law that applies to them.
  - duxup 6y ago
    >but there's no place on Earth that's "good", just "better". I don't know what you mean by that. I get the rest, but not that.
    - tikhonj 6y ago
      I assume they're saying that, in an absolute sense, all systems of law are arbitrary and capricious. Some might be much better than others, but none are sufficiently fair or transparent to be "good". The extent to which you agree with that is a question of political philosophy :).
      - duxup 6y ago
        I can't say I'm well versed in this idea but if people are creating the laws they've got some motivations and trigger for the law.... I think we can evaluate those on some sort of practicality / sense of justice or other scale rather than declare them all arbitrary.

jacquesm 6y ago

Stuxnet inheritance?

colordrops 6y ago

This seems to be just an individual being passive aggressive and not some international incident.

mathieuh 6y ago
Who's being passive-aggressive? The Iranian guy added commits to the PR, it seems he was going to merge it and realised he probably shouldn't
- d0100 6y ago
  > I hope one day your country removes this restriction, just like my country has never put such restrictions. This reads to me as passive-aggressive To add insult, a superficial search for Iran sanctions show that Israel is pushing hard for US sanctions on Iran [0][1] So even if Israel hasn't sanctioned Iran, they sure seem to want the US as a proxy sanctionner [0](https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/TAG-iran-sanctions-1.5598930 https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/TAG-iran-sanctions-1.55989...) [1](https://www.timesofisrael.com/topic/iran-sanctions/ https://www.timesofisrael.com/topic/iran-sanctions/)
  - yiddishe-kop 6y ago
    Hi, PR author here, Israel has never restricted private individuals from collaborating on open source with Iranians (afaik).

veeti 6y ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeed_Malekpour https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeed_Malekpour

hinkley 6y ago
> On 3 August 2019, Malekpour returned to Canada after escaping Iran through an unknown third country. Oh I bet it’s known. But to announce it means you can’t use the same trick for the next asylum seeker. I wish the Internet had this level of class more often.

rgbrenner 6y ago

All the people arguing semantics when the author lives in a repressive dictatorship that would literally torture you for a confession and then execute you for it.. if anyone EVER comes by this PR even a decade from now. Meanwhile, no one here would even think of violating US export controls against North Korea... when the consequences are likely just prison time. Armchair tough guys.

duxup 6y ago
I don't see a lot of shade being thrown at the author, just a lot of confusion. Not armchair tough, just not fully understanding... yet, I think there's a difference.
- panpanna 6y ago
  Are you sure? His comment has right now 109 thumbs down, zero thumbs up.
  - duxup 6y ago
    At the time I posted I didn't see much shade being thrown at the author. As for votes I see no reason to interpret them in any particular way.
JumpCrisscross 6y ago
> no one here would even think of violating US export controls against North Korea If there were a vibrant industrial or creative community in North Korea to interact with, I’d see the light in this argument. But there isn’t. The only entity to contract with is the state. That makes the comparison difficult. Cuba, on the other hand...
- kome 6y ago
  or Iran...
- gruez 6y ago
  Violating sanctions is definitely a concern as your company gets bigger. See: https://news.crunchbase.com/news/startups-have-to-care-about-violating-u-s-sanctions-laws-too/ https://news.crunchbase.com/news/startups-have-to-care-about..., and github restricting access for people from iran, syria, and crimea.

flixic 6y ago

If this PR would have come from a sufficiently anonymous user (no location / profile picture), I'm sure it would have gone through. I'm certain maintainers don't check identity and nationality of every contributor.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I don't think it's an acceptable state of affairs if people feel pressured to keep their nationality private.
- mlyle 6y ago
  Yup. That would make a policy like Iran's spectacularly effective: just make all the Israelis have to disappear/pretend not to exist as a people.
- kome 6y ago
  but that's what happens in the real world when you apply to jobs, to renting houses, etc.
  - newswasboring 6y ago
    Are you saying in real world we hide our nationality? In what universe does your CV does not include which university you graduated from and which house owner lets you rent without a copy of your ID? Maybe it works differently in america but in the rest of the world I am pretty sure nationality is a standard thing to ask.

scottlocklin 6y ago

Could it be this the PR recipient was worried about? https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/iran-passes-law-banning-use-of-israeli-technology-629390 https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/iran-passes-law-... Don't tell them about the Linux kernel.

inglor 6y ago
I guess no Intel, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft or Amazon products then since all those companies have R&D centers in Israel, lol.
deleted 6y ago
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Navarr 6y ago

How does this work considering PHP is heavily made up of code from Zend (which was an Israeli company) Can Iranian-built websites not use PHP?

Gaelan 6y ago
In fact, this is a PR on a PHP-language repo!
sushshshsh 6y ago
Depends if the Iranian authorities in question care about prosecuting/arresting the person in question, aka how connected is the coder to the government
aaomidi 6y ago
First rule about Iran. Nothing is logically consistent.
duxup 6y ago
Arguably, maybe, I don't think the law in question is particularly... practical. It's purely political it seems and fairly arbitrary. It's possible 'usage' might not be considered a relationship, but 'interacting' with a PR might? But I'm trying to be practical and I suspect the law was not written by anyone intending to be practical.
burnte 6y ago
They were an American company that took investment money from an Israeli VC, that doesn't make them an Israeli company.
- oaiey 6y ago
  The owners of Zend, Zeev and Andi are indeed Israeli making it a company under Israeli control for some time no matter what. This whole story makes me sad.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

mothsonasloth 6y ago

This is the problem with the internet now, profile pics, egotistical bio summaries and emojis. It was more fun when it was anonymous and the person you were talking to could have been a 43 year old neo nazi with blue hair, but their code or stuff was good, so you didn't have that getting in the way of you.

Kapura 6y ago
"It was more fun when I didn't know I was working with Nazis" is an extraordinarily bad take.
- Minor49er 6y ago
  He clearly said it was more fun not knowing the personal details of whoever he was working with online, not that he was ever literally working with Nazis.
- lilSebastian 6y ago
  Quite the misrepresentation of the comment
duxup 6y ago
How does that apply to the story?
- dudul 6y ago
  The PR author has their location in their Github profile. Had they not filled this part, the maintainer probably would have just merged the PR.
  - duxup 6y ago
    Is that bad to share that info? And that aside, what about the name? Going this direction seems like a very strange aside to a situation where the law is clearly bonkers...

deleted 6y ago

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Alir3z4 6y ago

I never knew about such law. For those who have Pikachu eyes now, or whoever gave thumbs down on the maintainer comment, I dare you to do a single tiny transaction with Iran or an Iranian citizen which would be in violation of unilateral sanctions imposed by US on Iran and Iranian national globally and you'd see how you'll get a taste of freedom and liberty and some prison time to sweeten the deal by US. If there's #metoo movement for this, put me and other +85 million Iranians in it. Ref: https://alireza.gonevis.com/how-i-didnt-get-my-first-paying-customer/ https://alireza.gonevis.com/how-i-didnt-get-my-first-paying-...

kome 6y ago
exactly, the hypocrisy is just off the charts. Or, a more generous interpretation, is that many people are just unaware of American imperialism.
newswasboring 6y ago
I get why people should not thumbs down and the whole tough guy angle, but I have never heard US putting someone in jail for a merged PR. Many of the big open source projects are american citizen lead and they accept PRs from all around the world.
- Alir3z4 6y ago
  Tell that to GitHub to force and ban Iranian github repos that were private or gitlab completely non reachable for Iranians due to GCP policies.
  - newswasboring 6y ago
    1. There is a difference between jailing/torturing someone and a private company restricting its user base. 2. Countries have the right to have trade sanctions towards other countries. Does US abuse its rights some times? Absolutely. But does not make it not their right.
    - Alir3z4 6y ago

rsynnott 6y ago

I would wonder if this is a misunderstanding of the law (to be clear, I have no idea; not an Iranian lawyer). It would be common for things like this to apply to _commercial_ relationships, or munitions broadly defined.

newswasboring 6y ago

Edit: Sorry I completely misread it. I thought he said just "merged" it instead of encouraging "merge" it. Still interesting to learn about Behdad though, cool stuff about localization and language support. Interestingly merged by Behdad Esfahbod who is also iranian. He was even arrested by the iranian government in the past > Esfahbod claims that he was arrested by Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps intelligence echelon during a 2020 visit to Tehran. He was then moved to Evin prison, where he was psychologically pressured and interrogated for 6 days. Iranian security forces let him go based on his promise to spy on his friends once he was back in United States.[2] [1] https://github.com/armancodes/laravel-download-link/pull/9#issuecomment-686413931 https://github.com/armancodes/laravel-download-link/pull/9#i... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behdad_Esfahbod#Detention_Iran_visit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behdad_Esfahbod#Detention_Iran...

amarshall 6y ago
Doesn’t seem like Behdad merged (or even has privileges to do so on that repo), just that he encouraged doing so.
dgellow 6y ago
Where do you see that he merged it? He’s just saying that it should be merged as far as I can tell.
eternalban 6y ago
https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing-from-me-please-be-this-2262ec7b8af2 https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing-fro...
- panpanna 6y ago
  So the Iranian government had access to a Facebook employees credentials for around a week? Oh, that can't be good...
dvirsky 6y ago
Behdad used to post on an Israeli LUG message board nearly 20 years ago! I completely forgot about it but his name rang a bell now, and I went and looked at the archives. https://www.mail-archive.com/search?q=behdad&l=linux-il%40cs.huji.ac.il https://www.mail-archive.com/search?q=behdad&l=linux-il%40cs...

phonon 6y ago

Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24360801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24360801

zozbot234 6y ago

I'm a bit confused here - how are people under Iranian jurisdiction going to use GitHub anyway? Isn't this against GitHub ToS, given Iran's status as a country that's under international sanctions?

sudosysgen 6y ago
VPN, and I don't think he especially cares about getting banned, much less bad than being imprisoned.

hinkley 6y ago

If this were just an IP problem it would be easy enough to solve, but I don’t think whatever passes for a district attorney in Tehran would be impressed. And as someone else implied: are you willing to stake a life on your solution? The last time I had a provenance problem with source code (multinational, could not utilize public domain code for liability reasons), I clean-roomed a solution. It took longer to explain why I wanted this to the intended author than it did for him to write it. But I had a knack for filing bug reports such that the maintainer can fix the problem cheaply (same employer, I could not file PRs against OSS, but I could tell them the bug was on line 53 and what input triggered it) You’d need someone who has read the PR to write tests and/or a spec and for someone else who has not read it to file an equivalent PR. But I’d want to talk to some Iranian lawyers first. Plural.

msoad 6y ago

It's scary business doing anything like that if you are living in Iran. Just read[1] what Behdad (guy who finally merged it) went through when he visited Iran recently. I don't blame them to be scared. [1][https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing-from-me-please-be-this-2262ec7b8af2?source=friends_link&sk=e29ac54d3fbed71de045ed6a5857280b https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing-fro...]

refurb 6y ago
Yikes. That's a great summary of what can happen to you when you piss off a government in a country where they don't have many limitations on what they can do to you. He acknowledges the lack of human rights in Iran, but then casts blame on the US when Iran shoots down the Ukrainian airliner. Which is odd.

Ahmed90 6y ago

I lived in Syria before the war and stuff, even back in 2010, because of the US export laws Syrians were banned from downloading the most basic shit like Java runtime, adobe flash player, and Nvidia gpu drivers, Skype, Messengers like Yahoo etc... This type of internet "stupidity" is in every government DNA lol

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akerro 6y ago
>US export laws Syrians were banned from downloading the most basic shit like Java runtime That's still the case for many encryption products from Oracle. You have to register and sign T&C which say you will not export this .jar to a banned country. It's been like this since I remember... 2005 maybe?
- sangnoir 6y ago
  Thank $GOD for Bouncy Castle.

Darmody 6y ago

If you think this is stupid, just think about all the times western politicians have made laws and rules for tech stuff they don't understand. Some years ago, the CEO and Chairman of Telefonica/Movistar, who should have a minimum understanding of how the internet works, said Google should pay them money because, and I quote him, Telefonica had all the infrastructure, the customer support and Google only had algorithms. If this kind of stupidity comes from a guy like this, imagine what could come out the rulers of a theocratic regime.

deleted 6y ago
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shmerl 6y ago

Is that a surprise? What do you expect from a fascist regime, to have normal laws?

anonu 6y ago

Couple ways to read this: 1. repo owner is justified. Understandable from the lens of living under an oppressive regime that could use anything to justify your imprisonment or whatnot... Even if he has good intentions, fear of disproportionate response keeps him from collaboration 2. repo owner is just not being friendly. The risk is so minuscule here that any intelligent person would just merge a PR. After all, theyre having a discussion in a public forum... so they've already past the point of "no contact"... 3. repo owner has government ties.

chadash 6y ago
I can't say for certain, but the tone of his response leads me to think that #2 is not the case. The risk might be minuscule, but the repo owner worried about it anyway, which is natural and doesn't mean they are being unfriendly.
dudul 6y ago
> The risk is so minuscule here that any intelligent person would just merge a PR. Out of curiosity, have you ever lived under a repressive regime? Because I have, and even when "the risk is minuscule", when you know what could happen you tend to think twice.

polote 6y ago

post from the author of the PR https://blog.yiddishe-kop.com/posts/my-pr-was-denied-by-iranian-law https://blog.yiddishe-kop.com/posts/my-pr-was-denied-by-iran...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

steventhedev 6y ago

Weren't Iranian devs banned from github last year[0]? That aside, I dont see any first hand source for the repo owner being Iranian, only speculation in the comments. The situation is sad, but a reasonable response to a PR that has legal issues. I don't think there's much intelligent discussion that can be had about this. [0]: https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-countries/ https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-coun... EDIT: github doesn't show profile location on mobile. My bad.

hinkley 6y ago
Look at his profile.

azangru 6y ago

I don't have anything useful to offer, but don't you find it utterly bonkers that a government can tell you who you may or may not associate with. Nothing to do with Iran specifically; the US also has similar claims on its citizens dictating to them who they are and are not allowed to have business relationships with; as probably do other countries. I can't fit this into my head. It's too insane.

zb1plus 6y ago
Nation-states need to be consigned to the ash heap of history. They do not bring value in the 21st century, the lessons of the 20th ought to show we need to be implementing better solutions for organizing people, making decisions and building public infrastructure.

darkarmani 6y ago

This is disheartening but nothing new. My memory is rusty at this point, but I thought OpenBSD/OpenSSH wouldn't take crypto code from US developers when the US was still squashing all (strong) crypto code as munitions exports (more than they do now).

oferzelig 6y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24360801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24360801

joshxyz 6y ago

The fuck did i just read.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

hacktember 6y ago

A sad reality in Iran. There's a lot of wonderful people there who deserve our empathy.

darepublic 6y ago

Yes, please add the check to circle ci

ykevinator 6y ago

Israel and Iran are not that different, they're both monoracial theocracies that cost the us a lot of money

vacuum04 6y ago

If this is not dictatorship, I don't know what is dictatorship then. The Iranian regime or the CCP regime are like ticking bombs on this planet. You have no idea how ridiculous they can be.

turing_complete 6y ago

Hope this guy gets out of Iran ASAP.

yiddishe-kop 6y ago

Hi, PR author here. I wrote a blog post with my personal perspective here: https://blog.yiddishe-kop.com/posts/my-pr-was-denied-by-iranian-law https://blog.yiddishe-kop.com/posts/my-pr-was-denied-by-iran...

Thelordofalamut 6y ago
I just want to let you know the guy is being an asshole. To get a position in government job or something. IRGC doesn't check people's merges on github. His actions are personal choice. You are very welcome to contribute to other Iranian projects.

erex78 6y ago

Why was this taken off the front page?

Alir3z4 6y ago
Hehe, it's obvious why.

yiddishe-kop 6y ago

On second thought, I should've responded as follows: "Hi, I'm from the IRGC secret intelligence, we just wanted to test your loyalty to the regime, therefore we create fake accounts. You can merge the PR without any problem"

shariat 6y ago

I am Iranain, and the regime does prosecute people on any bogus thing you can imagine. But in this case, the owner of the repo looks very suspicious to me. Maybe he had his own prejudiced, or he has some relationship with the regime.

fred_dev 6y ago

Wow, this topic is not that hot. A very ordinary Iranian developer has a repository (which he shouldn't have it on github, since github belongs to MS and MS is American, at any moment they can close his account with legal excuses, just like what other Americans tech companies did to Iranian users). A very ordinary Israeli guy made a PR and the repository owner politely rejected it because he doesn't want to interact with any person from that country) US has a lot of law and rules against many countries including Iran, no one argues about that. And some guys want to escalate a PR up to governmental level. It's ridiculous... There is no specific law for git PR. It's a very general law. Many middle eastern countries would not recognize Israel as a country, it is called Occupied Palestin. Citizens of these countries shouldn't interact with ppl from occupied territories.