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Mattermost [update: isn't] suspending our licenses because of 'US sanctions'
Update: See the reply below (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31853107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31853107). Incorrect email.
Context:
We're a B.V. (Dutch LLC) incorporated in the Netherlands, ran by me from the Netherlands with contractors from around the world. Two of these contractors were located in Russia, one of them has recently moved to the Netherlands on a skilled migrant visa, another is still in the process of obtaining the required travel documents and is still communicating (albeit unable to be paid) with us. It should be noted that neither of these contractors are in any way related to a sanctioned entity according to EU legislation, nor should they be related to any such entity according to US legislation either.
We use Mattermost 'Enterprise' (self-hosted!) for our organization's internal communications. This was a logical option as we thought Mattermost was a modern organization, it had a fancy on-boarding flow, an open source variant of their products, and a lot of transparency.
During the order process, I had provided the information for the B.V., and my personal details, both indicating very clearly that the organization is based in and operates from the Netherlands.
What happened:
I received an email from Mattermost today claiming 'Our understanding is that your organization is located in either Russia or Belarus. Because of this, we must pause interactions with your organization until the sanctions are lifted.', which I'll quote verbatim in the comments due to the HN character limit.
My interpretation:
First off, it worries me that they do not provide the data on which they have based this 'understanding that [our] organization is located in Russia'. This probably implies there's telemetry being sent on the IP addresses our self-hosted install is being accessed from, which currently still includes one (singular) Russian user, as there is no other way they can have derived any such (wrong) information.
Secondly, we do not have a 'legal counsel' specialized in 'U.S. sanctions rules', in fact we have no relationship with the USA at all, so we can not contact their compliance department whatsoever, as they also explicitly say that due to this misunderstanding, they can not answer any questions from us whatsoever.
We're glad we're using the self-hosted version of their product, as at least we can still export our data and eventually migrate to an actual open source solution like Zulip in case this isn't resolved, nor does there seem to be a kill switch on the self-hosted product (but given there is likely unexpected telemetry, we can't be sure this isn't the case either! the Enterprise Edition is actually a binary blob Golang binary).
As we're explicitly not allowed to contact Mattermost, Inc. without legal counsel experienced in U.S. sanctions rules, and we are effectively unable to communicate as an organization now as we are 'asked not to use our license key', I've ended up with the usual route for tech corporations being unwilling to cooperate: posting a plea for help (and a warning to other users of Mattermost Enterprise that they're not the transparent organization they claim to be) on a public forum like this.
- it33 4y agoHi all, Mattermost CEO here, We've had administrative error in our compliance automation. If you received an email from compliance@mattermost.com on June 23, 2022 titled "Our limitations due to new United States sanctions" please disregard it. Ian
- betweentwotests 4y agoI think the most interesting part about OP’s story is the question about how did self-hosted solution notify Mattermost server about potential Russian/Belarus connection? Even if the compliance automation was faulty, it’s still interesting how Mattermost found out of a Russian connection at all. (I am assuming this compliance email wasn’t sent out to everyone/larger group of people by mistake, and the OP happened to have a Russian user)
- it33 4y agoMattermost CEO here, Thanks for the question. Like many companies we use a 3rd party service to check if someone we’re doing business with a company that has been flagged on export compliance. This was more a blanket error than on specific to an account, tweeted about it just now as it’s hit a number of customers: https://twitter.com/iantien/status/1540039939089367040?s=21&t=GNul_EB0zg9TPa9y_lOuww https://twitter.com/iantien/status/1540039939089367040?s=21&...
- jsprogram 4y agoIan, you might want to clarify that the only thing submitted to the 3rd party service is the company name of the customer and there was no submission of any customer logs. Some other commenters in this thread think that you log their ip and submit their ip.
- alar44 4y agoThose people are jumping to conclusions without evidence.