this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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What happened? Why did github block them?
OrganicMaps GitHub repo was blocked due to contributor being geolocated in a US-sanctioned place https://mastodon.social/@organicmaps/114155428924741370
🎉 sometimes US sanctions actually do lead to positive outcomes :)
the world adapts :)
Wow, I read that in the completely wrong way for a sec and wondered, why you had 38 upvotes for promoting the banning of open source contributions from certain countries.
Btw. how do we get them to do that banning for the whole of EU? Asking for a friend.
Thank you. Would you mind explaining what this means please? What is a U.S.-sanctioned place? Why does the U.S. government think this is a bad thing?
US likes to impose arbitrary sanctions on its adversaries. Basically the US government decided that people from a particular country aren't allowed to collaborate with people using US based platforms like GitHub.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_sanctions
The US has been punishing open source contributors from countries they don't like.
@TheOubliette @racketlauncher831 supporters and apologists of violence against innocent civilians should be punished, by any human. You don't think so? Do you support violence against innocent civilians?
What country do you live in and how much should you be punished for living in it?
@TheOubliette living in a country, vs going on vacation in Crimea, are two very different things.
Sanctions are indiscriminate punishment that mainly affect innocent civilians.
@driving_crooner sanctions work to stop undemocratic regimes. Those regimes are keeping their own people hostage, and I wish there was a way to save the anti-regime people without supporting the regime. But traveling to Crimea is not what anti-regime people do, so sanction that ass.
Where the sanctions on Saudi Arabia or any others western aligned dictatorship? Sanctions are weapons that kill innocent people, denying people of medicines and food.
Please educate yourself.
Sanctions does not work, the regime still stays while average people suffers and even it harder to even escape the country. North Korea still exist. Belarus still exist. Eritrea still exist.
American sanctions also only targeted towards anti-America countries. If the regime is pro-America, it's not gonna be sanctioned.
If you actually support democracy, let's support the people by giving them platform in the international community. Making them be able to showcase their voice without hijacked by external political force.
@nasi_goreng what if the people then use that platform to get nice vacations in occupied territories?
It seems your context is specific. If a country is actively hostile against other countries, occupying territories, forbidding people to visit the dangerous area is a common sense.
Making individual user to not be able to contribute to GitHub literally does not do anything towards the regime. In fact, it's just making the regime to make alternative platform that controlled by the government to censor the voice. The people basically living on their own bubble and potentially disconnected to the world.
@nasi_goreng It does. It makes it visible. I mean look, we are talking about it. And people tolerating the regime, which needs their ignorance to function, yes, those people should not be enjoying the perks of the free world. The alternative is that we will host and greet the supporters of such regimes, and I don't think that's in any way effective.
People are not tolerating to the regime.
We are helping individual to contribute on open source project.
We should punish the government, but not individual participation in global community.
Yes, but punish the government and those who support those governments. The majority of people who live in a fascist country do not agree with the government otherwise fascism wouldn't be necessary.
I live in the US and I don't agree with nor apologize for the anti-trans, anti-women, anti-immigrant, and racist policies the federal government has recently implemented. In fact many policies directly affect me and my wellbeing.
I voted against them, but unfortunately we weren't given an option to vote for something better because of the way things work here. And many of these countries don't even have that. Nor do I think anyone else who lives in or visits the US should be punished for the actions of its government. Same goes for any other country.
And in this case it looks like it may just be someone visited one of those countries sometime in the past, though details are scarce. I get then need to sanction people involved with the bad stuff, but people who just visit or live there with no other connection to the bad stuff is a little extreme. Especially since contributing to this project, for free, is not producing profit for or supporting any government.
Which sanctioned country? There are several of them.
Guess Russia.
Yeah, that was my first guess, but I don't like to assume.
I wasn't curious enough to look deeper.
https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/other-site-policies/github-and-trade-controls
🙄