
GitHub blocked me and all my libraries - taion
https://medium.com/@catamphetamine/how-github-blocked-me-and-all-my-libraries-c32c61f061d3
======
seveibar
The author is Russian and has numerous seemingly popular github repositories.
They question Github's decision to ban their account without giving them any
reasoning and illustrates how the open source community has lost a lot of
value as a result of the comment/asset removal.

The author's comparison to internment camps and other dramatic measures of
government suppression seems unfair. Github not providing reasoning is also
unfair, but seems to be standard practice among corporations (maybe to help
with liability?). The questions Github is asking from the user relate to U.S.
OFAC policy, which is how the U.S. enforces economic sanctions. Basically if
you've done business with North Korea or a number of other flagged entities
you can be held liable criminally or more often for huge fines.

I don't know how the author triggered whatever automatic suspension mechanism
github has in place, but I think github should priorize the author's case
given their contribution to the community. I don't think Github is an evil
organization. I do think OFAC policy is difficult to enforce and the U.S. gov
should make it easier. If Github reported the number of suspensions, who was
suspended or explain why a suspension happened I would have more trust in them
as a platform.

~~~
nimbius
>I don't think Github is an evil organization.

its...getting there. There are good arguments to suggest new Microsoft is the
same as old Microsoft and this might be one of them. Github frantically
clawing for control of developers, while blindly enforcing things like ITAR
are a classic Microsoft case of directionless middle management vying for
government rent-seeking and free market capital at the same time.

Either MS fixes this quick, or FLOSS projects will rightly start hosting
things elsewhere. free software is free as in speech, and in most cases this
crap is interpreted as outright censorship.

~~~
syshum
>> FLOSS projects will rightly start hosting things elsewhere

They should be doing that anyway, and it should be happening RIGHT NOW, not
because of this single dev account suspension but because centralization of
control is the antithesis of FOSS, the fact that the community is centralized
around github is a clear and present danger to said community.

and no the solution it not for everyone to just move to gitlab, I can see that
coming as well, replacing github with hosted gitlab would simply replicate the
problem

We as a community need to the distributed, not centralized

~~~
kanox
> replacing github with hosted gitlab would simply replicate the problem

How so? A hosted gitlab instance makes you immune from the administrative
whims of any particular corporation.

It's possible that gitlab the company stops maintaining the free editions but
that's not very much different from other pieces of software going
unmaintained.

All the older project hosting software suites like sourceforge/gforge/savannah
are still available.

Git itself is very easy to use in a distribute manner, but I guess some form
of distributed issue tracker is missing?

~~~
syshum
I meant using GitLab's Hosted solution, their Cloud SaaS

Not Self Hosting a GitLab environment yourself.

GitLab.com, not Self-Managed

------
drummer
Yeah shadowbanning is not cool, and it is still used here on HN. This shows
once again that you cannot trust these corporations with your information and
sure as fuck not with your livelihood. Facebook, patreon, google, youtube,
twitter, apple, etc. Ironically even medium where this article is posted, as
they regularly shadowban accounts.

~~~
samatman
HN has showdead and vouching, which imho substantially reduce the negative
effects of shadowbanning.

I run showdead, and most shadowbanned accounts deserve it. I also rescue the
occasional comment from the grave.

Do the moderators un-shadowban users if they get enough vouched comments? No
idea, but they do have enough information to do so.

~~~
derekp7
I'll often come across shadow banned comments, and when I look at the author's
post history (back to the first dead comment, plus a few pages of comments
before) I really don't see anything wrong. Is it because the comment(s) that
got them banned have been removed?

When I run across such an account, should I email an HN mod to investigate? I
wouldn't mind doing that, but I've tried before and never got a reply back --
so not sure what the outcome was.

~~~
emilfihlman
It's possibly because of a single comment (out of n, where n is large) of
disagreeing with the crowd or saying something unpleasant or a mod
powertripping.

It's stupid as fuck. Reddit is also plagued by it.

~~~
phillijw
I am shadow banned. I think because of one comment I made many years ago that
was heavily downvoted? I just don't log in anymore. I emailed PG at the time
and he said there's nothing he can do.

------
fmakunbound
If you're hosting your stuff on corporate platforms, like Github, Google
(Gmail/etc.) you just have to be Ok with losing access to all your code or
data with no notice, explanation or recourse.

~~~
iKevinShah
While I understand the reality, this is just how a lot of us did not imagine
Internet should be / would be. It's 2020, we should have _some_ way to connect
them instead of hoping the victim's post go viral forcing the "Big ones" to
act on that particular case.

~~~
pdonis
_> this is just how a lot of us did not imagine Internet should be / would be_

That's right, but that's because the way a lot of us imagined this did not
involve relying on third parties with other agendas to host cost that we write
that others rely on in production.

 _> It's 2020, we should have some way to connect them_

We do: set up your own hosting for projects that you provide that others rely
on in production.

Oh, that costs money, you say? First, hosting is cheap these days. Second, if
your code is used by so many people, at least some of them will probably be
willing to pay for it.

~~~
yakireev
You make it sound as if it is the guy's fault.

Being a software developer is a well-paid job indeed, but that guy was
offering (some of) his work for free, and apparently other developers made
some use of it. And now you are blaming him for the fact that he was not also
paying extra for being able to share his work.

As much as I support self-hosting and not relying on third-parties, attitude
like this is bullshit.

~~~
pdonis
_> You make it sound as if it is the guy's fault._

It's not the guy's fault that Github behaved poorly, yes.

It is the guy's fault that he relied on an untrustworthy third party to host
his code that lots of other people were using in production, meaning they lost
access to it when that third party screwed him.

 _> now you are blaming him for the fact that he was not also paying extra for
being able to share his work._

No, I'm blaming him for using an untrustworthy third party to provide
production code to other people who were depending on him. If he can find a
way to provide his code to others for free without doing that, that's fine.

Btw, I probably should make clear that all of those others who are using his
code are also to blame if they don't have a plan in place to deal with this
situation.

Also, "paying extra for being able to share his work" is not correct. If he's
willing to share his work with the explicit disclaimer that he doesn't control
the access to the shared hosting where the work is available, so he makes no
guarantee that others will always be able to find it and access it, that's
fine too. But clearly he didn't intend to share his work with that disclaimer.
And the only way to be _sure_ others can access your work is to host it
yourself, so you control access.

~~~
krapp
>It is the guy's fault that he relied on an untrustworthy third party to host
his code that lots of other people were using in production, meaning they lost
access to it when that third party screwed him.

He can literally git push to any webhost and they can literally git pull from
there, or has everyone just forgotten how git and the web actually works? He
can drop a zip file somewhere the way we used to do back in the ancient days.
And that's not even considering the plethora of other hosted Git portals he
could push to as well.

And everyone still has access to their own repositories. They only thing
anyone has lost here is momentary convenience.

~~~
yakireev
> They only thing anyone has lost here is momentary convenience.

No, what we all lost here all the other meta-information which is not code,
but is still part of the project.

------
wishinghand
The quote from the article:

> Also, apparently, all my comments in all issues in all other repos have
> instantly disappeared for anyone other than me, and some of those comments
> contained a lot of really useful and valuable
> information/knowledge/solutions

Reminded me of something: I was following a thread in a Github issue, received
an email that had a useful answer but was hard to read due to gmail not
formatting code well. I let it be and the next day went to the thread and the
comment was nowhere to be found. I wonder if something similar happened.

------
kujaomega
I have tried to access his account and seems to be working now:
[https://github.com/catamphetamine](https://github.com/catamphetamine). And
It's also indexed on github:
[https://github.com/search?q=catamphetamine](https://github.com/search?q=catamphetamine)

------
Paul-ish
> While git version control itself makes sure that you don’t lose your code
> when GitHub, Inc. decides to block you, the same isn’t true for all your
> other intellectual property in the form of numerous comments you’ve posted
> in issues/pull-requests/commits/etc (including your employer’s paid repos).

Companies that pay for GitHub and have remote workers that may trip up the
detection system should take note of this situation. They could lose their
employees work in an instant.

------
rkeene2
Fossil [0] makes this situation a bit better since you can always clone the
entire repository. It wouldn't help with authoritative URLs to resources if
the host went away, though -- that kind of infrastructure would still need to
be planned.

I offer free Fossil hosting [1].

[0] [https://fossil-scm.org/](https://fossil-scm.org/) [1]
[http://chiselapp.com/](http://chiselapp.com/)

~~~
appleflaxen
> ...since you can always clone the entire repository.

how is that different than github?

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
It might be better to say that you can clone the _project_ , including ex.
issues, as a single thing, rather than just the "repo" of code

~~~
appleflaxen
ahh. that's clear. thank you!

------
PaulDavisThe1st
However many years ago it was that sourceforge capsized, I swore to myself
that I'd never give a 3rd party control of my source code repository (or bug
tracker or ...).

I still use github because it is convenient for many other people, but it is
always a mirror of the canonical repository, which runs under my control on
AWS (and is fully replicated locally).

I understand the convenience, but once burned, twice shy: I'm never going to
rely on 3rd party code hosting services ever again.

------
wolco
If I had software used by thousands I would ask them to contact github via
twitter or any employees.

Then I would self host.

If still angry then I would create a liceasd that doesn't allow
Microsoft/github/etc to use your product in anyway. Share to lib users with
self hosted link.

~~~
djsumdog
> If still angry then I would create a liceasd that doesn't allow
> Microsoft/github/etc to use your product in anyway. Share to lib users with
> self hosted link.

This would actually cause your project to no longer be open source. AGPLv3 is
probably the closest you can get, forcing anyone who uses your project, even
on a server and not distributed to end-users, to contribute all changes back.

~~~
wizzwizz4
> _forcing anyone who uses your project, even on a server and not distributed
> to end-users, to contribute all changes back._

Actually, it doesn't quite do that. It treats "providing access to via a
network" as "distribution", and requires the source to be provided, under the
AGPL, to users who ask. For example, if Hacker News was AGPL'd (and not
copyright owned by Y Combinator), I could ask Y Combinator for the source and
they'd have to give it to me… but they wouldn't have to provide the original
developers their patches.

If, say, this AGPL Hacker News was only available to people within Y
Combinator, I wouldn't be entitled to receiving a copy of the source from the
company. I'm not a user, you see. (Notably, the original developers aren't
entitled to Y Combinator's fork, unless they're also being provided the
software.) But I _could_ ask a friendly employee for a copy, and they could
get it for me, and then I could give it to anybody who wanted it as per normal
GPL rules.

------
jpz
It seems that it only tells half the story.

Perhaps he was pushing code from his holiday in Crimea and his IP got tagged.
Something like that would possibly do it.

~~~
yakireev
Let's assume he did. Now what? Does it make the situation better for
Microsoft? User is banned, repos are lost, comments and issues are lost, with
no explanation whatsoever. Microsoft is covering its ass, while we all are at
loss.

There's no reason for you or me to be supportive of Microsoft in this
situation.

~~~
yuretz
Well, indeed there is. Shouldn't Russians share some collective responsibility
for their government actions? I guess, in this case this was this specific
person's share of responsibility.

~~~
f-jin
(I'm not sure if you're from the US or not, but let's just assume you are) --
how responsible do you feel for the vast amount of war crimes commited by US
soldiers in the middle east over the last few decades? Shouldn't Americans
share some collective responsibility for their government actions?

~~~
yuretz
Of course they should. Aren't Americans democratically electing their
government every now and then? Does the US foreign policy ever change in any
significant way during the last 40+ years?

------
aasasd
> complain about centralized corporate content-hosting

> post that on Medium

Hoo boy.

------
correct_horse
A practice resembling this is featured in dystopian literature and has been
written about since at least the early 1900s
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka#%22Kafkaesque%22](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Kafka#%22Kafkaesque%22)

------
beatrobot
Can't GitHub add a popup asking, "We detected you are in a restricted country,
are you sure you want to login?" or just block logging in without locking up
the account?

------
Animats
We need a system where repositories are duplicated in different political
jurisdictions that don't get along with each other. A copy in the US, a copy
in the EU, a copy in China, a copy in Russia, a copy in Kenya, a copy in
Japan, a copy in Vietnam, a copy in Iran. With hashes on a blockchain every
few days to check for tampering.

~~~
csydas
While I appreciate what you're going for, this wouldn't fly for countries
imposing sanctions and the next immediate question from said countries to the
repos would be "so how do you plan to stop this replication or penalize
persons engaging in it?"

Sanctions aren't really logical when you get down to it -- at face value
they're supposed to put a specific stress to either motivate a population for
change or impact the bottom line of targets enough to frustrate them into
cooperation.

In reality, the targets of sanctions typically are not affected, and those who
are affected lack the ability to make meaningful change in the near future or
even an extended future.

Basically, even if you do something like this and replicate using a system
outside of the intended mechanism, the sanction-ers' response is simply "why
aren't you just banning them?"

Call me cynical, but if the cost is bad publicity vs favor with the US
government, it's not hard to see why a given company would choose favor.

(I don't condone this, but I've lived in Russia for 6-ish years now as an ex-
patriate -- it's...pretty clear that the sanctions affect no one they're
intended to, and it's not like Russians haven't tried to change the status quo
(they really have). But really, nothing has changed since the sanctions were
imposed except a readjustment of prices and salaries)

~~~
michaelmrose
Couldn't you just have independent entities not obliged to each other or a
central authority that choose to replicate the others content.

Each entity can easy be forced not to replicate content from a sister
jurisdiction or allow connections from within that jurisdiction but how are
they supposed to keep entities from pulling data through a proxy they
themselves are not appraised of or a client pulling data from multiple centers
to get the complete picture.

Censorship in that case merely makes service slower not nonexistent.

------
grugagag
Wow, that interogation form is indeed freaky. I was planning to create some
github repos but after this, thanks but no thanks. The US is slowly becoming a
police state and it’s taking up the internet with it.

~~~
risyachka
It's not US, its the man is from a country under lots of international
sanctions (for good reasons), that may have been to places with even more
sanctions. The US laws prevent companies from doing business with those
regions (again, for good reason). So GitHub actions are probably based on some
intel, and they blocked account only to comply with lay and not to get fined.
I mean, with all you know the man could have been to Crimea.

~~~
luckylion
> I mean, with all you know the man could have been to Crimea.

My god, _not Crimea_ , where all the crime is produced and then shipped all
over the world.

The whole process is still messed up, even if he had been to Crimea, Iran or,
god forbid, Cuba. No explanation why, no ability to challenge the flagging
(yes, a form exists, but apparently it goes to /dev/null) etc.

~~~
leggomylibro
Crimea was unilaterally annexed after a military invasion; the sanctions are
intended to maintain the idea that it belongs to Ukraine, not Russia.

I actually don't object to sanctioning the area - it is less aggressive than
sanctioning all of Russia, and Russians entering Crimea against the wishes of
the Ukrainian government could be seen as invaders. After all, the original
invasion was done under the cover of "mercenary separatists" who did not
identify themselves as the soldiers that they were. And let's not forget,
those "separatists" did also shoot down a civilian airliner with a Russian
anti-air missile, killing hundreds.

Personally, I would prefer that organizations like Github remain impartial to
this sort of thing, but they aren't discriminating against Crimea in
particular; they're applying the same "it's out of our hands" attitude as they
do for developers from areas with similar sanctions, such as Iran.

~~~
luckylion
I just thought it sounded a bit extreme to make a potential visit to Crimea
sound like "he may have thrown toddlers into a volcano". I get the "our hands
are tied" argument, but even then, communication should be clear and honest
and not follow Google's support handbook.

RE github staying impartial: yes, that would be nice. I suppose there would be
a market for independent countries to do this, but I doubt it's large enough
to outweigh the damage done by resisting the pressure of the big players.

~~~
leggomylibro
Yeah, it's a fair point, but this seems reasonable to me if you accept that
they are already looking at peoples' login locations and trying to keep their
platform civilian.

If a nominally-Turkish user started regularly logging in from Syria, I could
see there being the same sort of military/security concerns. And I could see
that user getting just as indignant if they were, say, an aid worker.

Is it right? Probably not, but it seems understandable when state-sanctioned
violence is involved.

------
techntoke
This is why centralized SCM is a bad idea. Backing up GitHub issues, etc is a
pain and isn't 1:1 portable to other platforms.

Issue tracking and SCM features needs to live inside the Git repo or at least
in a decentralized app. Git is supposed to be decentralized by nature.
Everyone is so content with GitHub and GitLab that not much innovation has
happened for decentralizing SCM as a whole. They have so much money and
resources that they can blackhole anyone who says otherwise.

~~~
olah_1
Here's just one project trying to make a decentralized github.
[https://radicle.xyz/](https://radicle.xyz/)

------
ph2082
> "Or maybe I’ve called someone a moron on the internet recently? (spoiler:
> that finally turned out to be the case)"

That doesn't look like reason for blocking an account and all the repository.
Probably Github should delete such comment and send email to poster to repost
comment without using any offensive words (As per their dictionary).

~~~
peglasaurus
Draconian/authoritarian responses are becoming more common online. Offline in
meatspace people are also becoming more guarded and wanting bans for all sorts
of slights. These are not good signs for society in general.

~~~
ph2082
Yeah. Good old camaraderie is dying.

------
rodgerd
Imagine my surprise when, after all the hyperbole and claims to have "no idea"
what could have triggered it, it turns out he's engaged in an Internet-scale
harassment campaign of another person.

I look forward to the pearl-clutchers in the thread walking back their
overheated rhetoric.

~~~
yuretz
Do you have a link?

~~~
qtplatypus
In the story.

“Ain’t no problem, bruh!”, — I thought. You know, we developers should stand
for each other. Only that I’m more used to GitHub so I’ve posted a (now
deleted) issue rather than a tweet. The issue was titled “You’re a [funny-
word]” where [funny-word] was a set of latin characters reminding a
transliterated Russian half-offensive word for “gay”, while not being equal to
that specific word. Think of something like “mother-lucker” or “mother-
trucker”.

------
kube-system
Good luck with Gitlab, they have to follow the same laws.

~~~
michaelmrose
How does that apply to self hosting? Are they obliged to push changes to their
repo that implement the policy they are obligated themselves to follow? Are
you obliged not to fork and remove such changes? How?

------
surround
It always struck me as ironic that Github itself isn’t open source.

------
raxxorrax
I just hope that people that advocated companies to remove users rot in hell.
And if it doesn't exist, they should rot in hell twice. Sorry for the rant,
but a lot of platforms have been made significantly worse the last past 5 or
so years because of random content moderation.

Github was pretty reliable for a long time. oh well... I guess the flaw of
code centralization should have warned us.

~~~
risyachka
I mean, if we are talking 1 in a million, it proves nothing. All websites
block users for different reasons (including being geographically in regions
under US sanctions, in which case they have to block a user according to law,
not their wish).

~~~
raxxorrax
The normal site on the net doesn't give a rats ass about sanctions.

------
rs23296008n1
I'm sensing there is a lot more to this story.

Related note while we're banning people for word selection:

Does github realise that "git" has a pejorative association? Its not actually
a polite word. If you were to call me a "git" in comments on any of my
projects it would be an automatic code-of-conduct violation. You'd get one
very specific warning about abusive word use then you'd be blocked.

Are they aware of this? Its always made me laugh. They've basically put a
minor league swear/offensive word in the name of their corporation.

PS Please don't explain why the git tool is named git. Or why github was
named. I already know. Just understand that "git" is similar and has as much
offensive weight as pointedly calling someone a "worthless idiot". You're
actually being deliberately offensive. In some places you would also likely
get a punch in the face depending on who you insulted. Its at that level of
offensiveness. Different cultures etc.

------
kevin_thibedeau
So why did zbetcheckin demand that capslang come down? Why does abuse.ch get
to dictate to other countries based on hearsay?

------
peter_d_sherman
If I ever run an Internet company in the future, we will always have an old-
fashioned customer support telephone line, where you will always be able to
talk to a live human being, where they will actually try to assist you, not
give you B.S. answers nor hide behind corporate policy nor give you the run-
around.

Even if an account is ever closed due to a terms of service or policy
violation and the issue could not be resolved through customer service
channels (exceedingly unlikely but possible) -- you and every other user would
still be able to download YOUR DATA from YOUR ACCOUNT, _even if_ the account
was closed or suspended...

It's amazing what passes for both "customer service" and software "usability"
these days...

------
unnouinceput
Quote: "...the same isn’t true for all your other intellectual property in the
form..."

Sorry, it's not your intellectual property anymore, it belongs to Microsoft
now. People tend to forget Microsoft owns GitHub nowadays, and also tend to
forget Microsoft is a corporation.

------
FpUser
I've never kept my repos on Github, Gitlab and the likes. I just host them on
my own and rented servers, Sure I loose on that cumulative effect of a single
place that has everything but then I do not depend on the whims of some
company.

------
HaoZeke
Great post. Especially the addendum about github being super weird about
personal information. Wish it wasn't on medium though! They're worse than
github.

------
einpoklum
GitHub must not be able to remove user accounts nor individual repositories
without:

1\. Demonstrable just cause for removal, fully communicated to the removed
user.

2\. Due process - before and after the removal (some kind of prior notice,
ability to challenge claims against you, adjudication mechanism, appeal
mechanism etc.)

3\. Community notification about the removal - no axing accounts in secret.

------
walclick
what happens with forked or cloned projects? will they be blocked too?

~~~
techntoke
If a clone is a mirror, then it will simply stop mirroring. Forks will not be
blocked unless the reason had to do with the content, but I'm sure they can
block those too.

------
pjc50
We don't know why he was banned, and it's a real problem that you can't get an
explanation out of a company in situations like this, but there's a hint:

> “If you accessed GitHub.com while you were visiting Iran, North Korea,
> Syria, or Crimea, please tell us why you used GitHub.com.”

He may have tripped over the US government sanctions.

I also feel that it's poor taste for a Russian living in an authoritarian
state to liken github to the gulag.

~~~
vbezhenar
Or may be Github geodata bugged and registered him in Crimea. May be your US
provider will buy IP block which was used in Crimea yesterday and you'll get
banned for the same reason. Fascinating.

~~~
kube-system
My US provider is not going to get an IP block from RIPE NCC. They get theirs
from ARIN.

------
mmoez
Self-host. EOM

~~~
coldpie
I agree, although for large projects, this does get expensive. Xorg is (was?)
running out of funds for their self-hosted gitlab instance:
[https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-
devel/2020-February/058417...](https://lists.x.org/archives/xorg-
devel/2020-February/058417.html)

~~~
Hitton
That was because CI/CD costs, if you can get without, the hosting will cost
small fraction.

------
throwaway322382
Besides lower popularity, is there any downside to moving everything to
GitLab?

------
0ld
i could stand behind this rant until unexpectedly (or expectedly - this from a
russian after all?) stumbling upon this:

> Flagged”? So this is how you call “disposing of someone” in a “politically
> correct” manner nowadays — you “flag” them. “The United States flagged
> 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II”. Yeah, much friendlier than:
> “The United States forcefully relocated and incarcerated in concentration
> camps about 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II”.

~~~
ncmncm
What, the US imprisoning American citizens on no charges and without legal
recourse or due process is not mentionable? It happened in living memory.

Yes, Russia did it to uncounted millions of their own, and actually murdered
many millions of those, for decades. That does not excuse US behavior: both
are indefensible. The US has, at this moment, more people imprisoned than any
other country. The US doesn't seem to harvest their organs, at least on a
grand scale, but does engage in slavery: products stamped "made in USA" are
now quite likely to be produced by enforced prison labor, particularly in
Louisiana.

Solitary confinement for months or years on end, and withholding medical
treatment are certified torture methods, and routine practice in US prisons.
The American Way is to have corporations do it under contract, somehow
absolving government officials of responsibility.

~~~
samatman
Comparing getting your user account suspended to a war crime is histrionic.

~~~
Nuzzerino
You do realize that in the case of Github, an account suspension may prevent
one from earning a reasonable living with the skills that they have? There are
no social safety nets in some parts of the world, so being broke may be just
as bad as <insert bad thing done by a government>.

------
luord
I have the feeling that this article is gonna be deleted from medium for
including the f word.

Though that might just be my hatred for medium and its walls talking.

------
wespiser_2018
This is a great illustration of the problems of corporatization for online
content providers. A similar story is playing out over at YouTube, where
channel's, and people's livelihood's, are facing increased surveillance and
pasteurization for the sake of advertiser friendliness.

As for this case, I don't know what's going on, and can't tell from the
article, but a user 1) from Russia, 2) with a "drug name" in their handle is
not the picture perfect story of corporation friendly. Too bad for his users!

------
maallooc
Without even looking at the article I guessed he was a javascript developer.
And I was right.

------
chriswwweb
I'm a bit late to the party ... just wanted to say that his account seems to
be back (don't know why):

[https://github.com/catamphetamine?tab=repositories](https://github.com/catamphetamine?tab=repositories)

------
wyldfire
> “Flagged”? So this is how you call “disposing of someone” in a “politically
> correct” manner nowadays — you “flag” them. “The United States flagged
> 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II”.

Whoa!! What an astonishing comparison!

Go host your software on gitlab, IPFS, or some other service and please don't
bother comparing your experience hosting software with forced internment.

> Remind me, GitHub, since when are you Ordnungspolizei? Who exactly granted
> you the authority to interrogate and police regular people?

B...b...but it's their server, their disk space. _You_ granted them the
authority by showing up at their doorstep asking for the service.

~~~
rhinoceraptor
GitHub has monopolized open source development. The likelihood of your
software being discovered, used or contributed to goes to zero as soon as you
host it anywhere but GitHub.

~~~
mcguire
" _GitHub has monopolized open source development._ "

How exactly has GitHub done that? What actions has GitHub taken, other than
providing a useful service?

Open source developers have chosen to make GitHub a near monopoly.

~~~
xlapp
Partly choice, partly company pressure on project's key developers (in terms
of influence, not code quality or code contributions) to move to GitHub.

Companies love GitHub because they think it provides metrics. Mediocre
developers (the kind that gets influence in OSS projects) love GitHub because
they appear productive.

~~~
matchbok
Mediocre developers? Please. The arrogance here is astounding and not needed.

------
jakearmitage
Stallman warned all of us. No one wanted to listen.

~~~
coleifer
Yes, and the trend towards codes of conduct and ethical licenses are producing
projects ripe for this sort of hijacking.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
And ESR warned us of _that_. Although I can understand that signal getting
lost in the noise that is ESR's writing, unfortunately.

~~~
catalogia
Both ESR and RMS have warned against such "ethical" licenses.

[https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-
freed...](https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/programs-must-not-limit-freedom-to-
run.html)

Bruce Perens has as well: [https://perens.com/2019/10/12/invasion-of-the-
ethical-licens...](https://perens.com/2019/10/12/invasion-of-the-ethical-
licenses/)

------
saber6
He had a very, very valid point until he devolved into referencing Japanese-
American internment and Nazi Germany.

~~~
MockObject
He still has a valid point. He simply expressed it hyperbolically. But
intelligent people can ignore his emotional state and focus on the actual
issue.

------
itcrowd
So .. one user gets banned for unclear reasons, Github doesn't reply within a
week and _somehow_ Github is now the equivalent of the German Nazi party?

I understand: it's frustrating and maybe undeserved that a service has banned
you. But comparisons to the Second World War, concentration camps and the
treatment of Jews by Nazi Germany are really, really not appropriate. Take a
breath.

~~~
commandersaki
The ban was an overreaction. There is no need to ban the entire account and
close virtually all lines of communication over something miniscule. The
response is proportionate.

