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> We want every developer to be able to collaborate on GitHub, and we are working with the US government to secure similar licenses for developers in Crimea and

> We want every developer to be able to collaborate on GitHub, and we are working with the US government to secure similar licenses for developers in Crimea and Syria as well. I'm very interested in hearing about the experience of HN people from these regions in terms of open source collabs. Since Github has such a large presence, what are you all using instead?

natfriedman 6y ago
GitHub still allows public repo access even in sanctioned locations like Syria and Crimea.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  > Crimea Why would Crimea be sanctioned? It was annexed. That's like sanctioning the citizens of Iraq for the 2003 US invasion and occupation...
  - adamc 6y ago
    Presumably, they want to keep the pressure on Russia. I don't know why we would sanction Crimea rather than all Russian-held territory, though.
    - curtis3389 6y ago
      IIRC, Russia provides gas to Europe.
    - dgudkov 6y ago
      Because Crimea isn't part of Russia for the US and much of the world.
  - Merman_Mike 6y ago
    https://www.state.gov/ukraine-and-russia-sanctions/ https://www.state.gov/ukraine-and-russia-sanctions/ ctrl + f "Crimea", there's some interesting information there. It lists specific companies and explains why. edit: This is a specific example: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm889 https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm889
    - option 6y ago
      yes, it’s stupid and such sanctions led to more anti-west/us and more pro-russia sentiment in Crimea. Source: have relatives there
      - Merman_Mike 6y ago
        Which parts of the Crimean sanctions are normal people most upset about? The ones I'm seeing on the Treasury page target specific individuals and companies. And they're coordinated with Canada and other countries, and the EU.
        goblin89 6y ago
        After annexation, a number of sanctions were put in place against Crimea as a whole. Visa and MasterCard stopped processing payments, eBay and Amazon stopped shipping, Upwork blocked freelancers with Crimean addresses. Some of the sanctions were lifted months to years later, but I am wondering how this must have made the average citizen of the annexed region feel in meantime.
        option 6y ago
        the freelancers and devs were the ones: (a) most independent from the government (derived their livelihood not from state) and (b) most liberal-minded and friendly to the West. Now, because of sanctions, they can only work for Russian government and companies.
        hintbits 6y ago
        They can also move to the part of Ukraine not under the occupation. Trying to pretend it's business as usual is supporting the occupation.
        select-all 6y ago
        For most of us this is not option for personal reasons. Old parents who will not move, kids going to school here, etc. Not to mention that I don't have any relatives or friends in Ukraine and moving there would require to cut all personal and business relationships.
  - helge9210 6y ago
    No, it wasn't. It's under occupation.
  - jimmy2020 6y ago
    same thing for Syria.
  - papito 6y ago
    Except that Iraqis were not forced to take US citizenship. They are still, and will be, citizens of Iraq. I think it's still possible to hold Ukrainian citizenship in Russia-occupied Crimea, but your life will be thoroughly miserable.
  - Grustaf 6y ago
    Probably because an overwhelming majority of the Crimeans wanted to belong to Russia - they are collaborators...
    - chimeracoder 6y ago
      > Probably because an overwhelming majority of the Crimeans wanted to belong to Russia If you're referring to the vote held in 2014, it was boycotted by supporters of Ukraine (because the vote itself was unconstitutional under the Ukranian constitution).
      - Grustaf 6y ago
        No I'm not, then I would have said 95%...
    - nickik 6y ago
      Crimea was part of Russia for 100s of years and never had much to do with Ukrainian nationalism. When the Soviet Union was established Crimea was part of the Russia Republic. It was only a power play by Khrushchev to move Crimea into the Ukrainian Republic, since that was his primary base of power. Since during the collapse of the Soviet Union, the power broke down along the lines of the established Republics Crimea just defaulted into Ukraine even while in terms of infrastructure, population and military port it was Russian. It was certainty a terrible way how Russia forced the change in the boundary but the people there real had nothing to do with it and shouldn't be punished.
      - bushin 6y ago
        Blatant Russian propaganda. Shame on you! Shame!
      - viktorcode 6y ago
        It was a part of Russian Empire and later USSR. Many territories including Ukraine were part of it. The modern Russia is just a part of old countries' land which don't include Crimea.
SahAssar 6y ago
I'm just guessing, but probably a VPN.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  I'm in a first-world nation and I still have to use a VPN to access parts of the Internet like georestricted content on Netflix and YouTube...
amiraliakbari 6y ago
Access to public repositories was not blocked, so those who wanted to work with open source projects were unaffected. For a while after the GitHub block, many used GitLab. In fact many people who needed private repositories were already using GitLab because of the limitations of GitHub private repositories and its pricing. Also many companies in Iran are using a self-hosted GitLab. After recent blocking of Iranian accounts on GitHub and GitLab, even more companies started using self-hosted GitLab. The blocking of GitHub accounts was unexpected and presumably took into account the usage history, so many accounts were blocked and had no further access to their private repositories and gists even if they used VPN after that. GitLab was blocked in Iran after they migrated to GCP, but was accessible with VPN. A few month ago GitLab also started blocking some Iranian accounts, so our company moved all of its repositories to a self-hosted instance just to be safe.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  > In fact many people who needed private repositories were already using GitLab because of the limitations of GitHub private repositories and its pricing. Today I learned how similar to Iranians I am. > many accounts were blocked and had no further access to their private repositories and gists even if they used VPN after that. Can’t access with VPN? How?
  - sbx320 6y ago
    > Can’t access with VPN? How? Your account is unable to access _any_ private repository after being flagged as being from a sanctioned country. That's regardless of where you're actually accessing your account from. While you could create a new account, you still couldn't grant that new account access (since you can no longer access private repositories from your primary account). Also a new account still runs the risk of getting flagged if you accidentally access the account without a VPN enabled just once.
    - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
      Oh, I see. Well that’s super lame. This requires a great deal of cooperation on Microsoft’s part.
aasasd 6y ago
When the Great Firewall started blocking Github, there was a post on Reddit (iirc) saying Chinese devs basically had to abandon the profession and switch to other work—supposedly because so much development these days depends on libraries and frameworks that are on Github. Though, I recently learned that Taobao has a publicly-available mirror of npm packages. However, I'm also noticing more and more popular repositories with Chinese language, in the past couple of years—they gather plenty of stars presumably just due to the population size (can't judge them on merit). I guess the GFW block was lifted and Github is popular for publishing software even for consumption in China.
- modo_mario 6y ago
  Github being fully blocked never lasted more than a few days I believe. Nevertheless I imagine a lot of Chinese also use Gitee or the like. If a library or something like that is a really common dependency i'd imagine it would have a copy on such places.
- tgragnato 6y ago
  Gists and other subdomains are still blocked, but the APEX is available. This is one of those cases where ECH would really make sense: the censor is forced to choose whether to pass TLS connections to an IP or not.
select-all 6y ago
VPN with kill switch on all devices and an address in mainland Russia in github profile. I know quite a few people who live in Crimea and do contract work for US companies, who are not disclosing their actual location to their employers.
arlk 6y ago
Most people in Syria use VPN anyway because most of the tech tools are blocked, that includes everything hosted on GCP (including GitLab), Android docs, Bitbucket, SEO tools, not to mention cloud providers, just to name a few. Actually the next day after GitHub ban, I rolled out a GitLab instance on my server and opened it for free access and published it in Syrian devs groups, but it barely had a dozen active users after 6 months, and all from one company not individual contributors, so I had to turn it off. What I can say from my experience and how we as Syrians look at open source contributions is that we see it as our ticket to get a better chance in leaving Syria to a good job that allows us to start a new life. It's not something we do as a hobby or for fun in our spare time, because we don't really have spare time. Btw, it's quite common to have Syrians working on projects for US and Europe and avoid sanctions by VPN and registering their business in Dubai. I know a Syrian company that is a GitHub and AWS partner.

natfriedman 6y ago

GitHub still allows public repo access even in sanctioned locations like Syria and Crimea.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
> Crimea Why would Crimea be sanctioned? It was annexed. That's like sanctioning the citizens of Iraq for the 2003 US invasion and occupation...
- adamc 6y ago
  Presumably, they want to keep the pressure on Russia. I don't know why we would sanction Crimea rather than all Russian-held territory, though.
  - curtis3389 6y ago
    IIRC, Russia provides gas to Europe.
  - dgudkov 6y ago
    Because Crimea isn't part of Russia for the US and much of the world.
- Merman_Mike 6y ago
  https://www.state.gov/ukraine-and-russia-sanctions/ https://www.state.gov/ukraine-and-russia-sanctions/ ctrl + f "Crimea", there's some interesting information there. It lists specific companies and explains why. edit: This is a specific example: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm889 https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm889
  - option 6y ago
    yes, it’s stupid and such sanctions led to more anti-west/us and more pro-russia sentiment in Crimea. Source: have relatives there
    - Merman_Mike 6y ago
      Which parts of the Crimean sanctions are normal people most upset about? The ones I'm seeing on the Treasury page target specific individuals and companies. And they're coordinated with Canada and other countries, and the EU.
      - goblin89 6y ago
        After annexation, a number of sanctions were put in place against Crimea as a whole. Visa and MasterCard stopped processing payments, eBay and Amazon stopped shipping, Upwork blocked freelancers with Crimean addresses. Some of the sanctions were lifted months to years later, but I am wondering how this must have made the average citizen of the annexed region feel in meantime.
        option 6y ago
        the freelancers and devs were the ones: (a) most independent from the government (derived their livelihood not from state) and (b) most liberal-minded and friendly to the West. Now, because of sanctions, they can only work for Russian government and companies.
        hintbits 6y ago
        They can also move to the part of Ukraine not under the occupation. Trying to pretend it's business as usual is supporting the occupation.
        select-all 6y ago
        For most of us this is not option for personal reasons. Old parents who will not move, kids going to school here, etc. Not to mention that I don't have any relatives or friends in Ukraine and moving there would require to cut all personal and business relationships.
- helge9210 6y ago
  No, it wasn't. It's under occupation.
- jimmy2020 6y ago
  same thing for Syria.
- papito 6y ago
  Except that Iraqis were not forced to take US citizenship. They are still, and will be, citizens of Iraq. I think it's still possible to hold Ukrainian citizenship in Russia-occupied Crimea, but your life will be thoroughly miserable.
- Grustaf 6y ago
  Probably because an overwhelming majority of the Crimeans wanted to belong to Russia - they are collaborators...
  - chimeracoder 6y ago
    > Probably because an overwhelming majority of the Crimeans wanted to belong to Russia If you're referring to the vote held in 2014, it was boycotted by supporters of Ukraine (because the vote itself was unconstitutional under the Ukranian constitution).
    - Grustaf 6y ago
      No I'm not, then I would have said 95%...
  - nickik 6y ago
    Crimea was part of Russia for 100s of years and never had much to do with Ukrainian nationalism. When the Soviet Union was established Crimea was part of the Russia Republic. It was only a power play by Khrushchev to move Crimea into the Ukrainian Republic, since that was his primary base of power. Since during the collapse of the Soviet Union, the power broke down along the lines of the established Republics Crimea just defaulted into Ukraine even while in terms of infrastructure, population and military port it was Russian. It was certainty a terrible way how Russia forced the change in the boundary but the people there real had nothing to do with it and shouldn't be punished.
    - bushin 6y ago
      Blatant Russian propaganda. Shame on you! Shame!
    - viktorcode 6y ago
      It was a part of Russian Empire and later USSR. Many territories including Ukraine were part of it. The modern Russia is just a part of old countries' land which don't include Crimea.

SahAssar 6y ago

I'm just guessing, but probably a VPN.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
I'm in a first-world nation and I still have to use a VPN to access parts of the Internet like georestricted content on Netflix and YouTube...

amiraliakbari 6y ago

Access to public repositories was not blocked, so those who wanted to work with open source projects were unaffected. For a while after the GitHub block, many used GitLab. In fact many people who needed private repositories were already using GitLab because of the limitations of GitHub private repositories and its pricing. Also many companies in Iran are using a self-hosted GitLab. After recent blocking of Iranian accounts on GitHub and GitLab, even more companies started using self-hosted GitLab. The blocking of GitHub accounts was unexpected and presumably took into account the usage history, so many accounts were blocked and had no further access to their private repositories and gists even if they used VPN after that. GitLab was blocked in Iran after they migrated to GCP, but was accessible with VPN. A few month ago GitLab also started blocking some Iranian accounts, so our company moved all of its repositories to a self-hosted instance just to be safe.

SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
> In fact many people who needed private repositories were already using GitLab because of the limitations of GitHub private repositories and its pricing. Today I learned how similar to Iranians I am. > many accounts were blocked and had no further access to their private repositories and gists even if they used VPN after that. Can’t access with VPN? How?
- sbx320 6y ago
  > Can’t access with VPN? How? Your account is unable to access _any_ private repository after being flagged as being from a sanctioned country. That's regardless of where you're actually accessing your account from. While you could create a new account, you still couldn't grant that new account access (since you can no longer access private repositories from your primary account). Also a new account still runs the risk of getting flagged if you accidentally access the account without a VPN enabled just once.
  - SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
    Oh, I see. Well that’s super lame. This requires a great deal of cooperation on Microsoft’s part.

aasasd 6y ago

When the Great Firewall started blocking Github, there was a post on Reddit (iirc) saying Chinese devs basically had to abandon the profession and switch to other work—supposedly because so much development these days depends on libraries and frameworks that are on Github. Though, I recently learned that Taobao has a publicly-available mirror of npm packages. However, I'm also noticing more and more popular repositories with Chinese language, in the past couple of years—they gather plenty of stars presumably just due to the population size (can't judge them on merit). I guess the GFW block was lifted and Github is popular for publishing software even for consumption in China.

modo_mario 6y ago
Github being fully blocked never lasted more than a few days I believe. Nevertheless I imagine a lot of Chinese also use Gitee or the like. If a library or something like that is a really common dependency i'd imagine it would have a copy on such places.
tgragnato 6y ago
Gists and other subdomains are still blocked, but the APEX is available. This is one of those cases where ECH would really make sense: the censor is forced to choose whether to pass TLS connections to an IP or not.

select-all 6y ago

VPN with kill switch on all devices and an address in mainland Russia in github profile. I know quite a few people who live in Crimea and do contract work for US companies, who are not disclosing their actual location to their employers.

arlk 6y ago

Most people in Syria use VPN anyway because most of the tech tools are blocked, that includes everything hosted on GCP (including GitLab), Android docs, Bitbucket, SEO tools, not to mention cloud providers, just to name a few. Actually the next day after GitHub ban, I rolled out a GitLab instance on my server and opened it for free access and published it in Syrian devs groups, but it barely had a dozen active users after 6 months, and all from one company not individual contributors, so I had to turn it off. What I can say from my experience and how we as Syrians look at open source contributions is that we see it as our ticket to get a better chance in leaving Syria to a good job that allows us to start a new life. It's not something we do as a hobby or for fun in our spare time, because we don't really have spare time. Btw, it's quite common to have Syrians working on projects for US and Europe and avoid sanctions by VPN and registering their business in Dubai. I know a Syrian company that is a GitHub and AWS partner.