
Iranian law prohibits merge of PR from Israeli? - jonahbenton
https://github.com/armancodes/laravel-download-link/pull/9#issuecomment-683417436
======
oferzelig
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24360801](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24360801)

------
rgbrenner
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.

~~~
wheels
Iran is repressive, and fraught with problems, but it's not a dictatorship.
There's a reasonably intricate bureaucracy, much of which is semi-democratic:
for example, the supreme leader's preferred presidential candidate doesn't
always win. The current president, Rouhani, is a moderate, and is not
especially liked by the hard-liners. It's pretty crazy that your comment
comparing it to North Korea and insinuating that someone would be tortured and
executed for merging a Github PR is top rated.

~~~
averysmallbird
Whether the civil administration is elected is irrelevant to the threat that
this person faces, although to be sure, the Guardian Council dictates who is
an acceptable candidate. Rouhani does not have control over the IRGC, which
has engaged in a years long campaign of arrests and threats of software
developers with links to the West, e.g. Arash Zad, Naranji, and, most
recently, Behdad Esfahbod, among others. Once in the hands of the IRGC,
neither the President nor the courts can save someone, and the facts of the
case matter little -- Rouhani can't even save his own brother. One would have
to be profoundly ignorant of Iranian politics and the IRGC and Iranian state
media's campaign of intimidation against software developers, the startup
community, and other tech figures to not understand that this is the direct
result of the security apparatus's propaganda and coercion, and that this
person's decision is rational based on well-founded fears -- despite being
unfortunate and regrettable.

~~~
SpaceRaccoon
> Behdad Esfahbod

Funny you mention him. He showed up on the linked thread, posting the final
comment before it was locked:

> Just merge it.

------
Alir3z4
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-...](https://alireza.gonevis.com/how-i-didnt-get-my-first-paying-
customer/)

~~~
newswasboring
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
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
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
1\. Torturing is illegal and prohibited by constitution in Iran. A single sign
of torture can easily make a judge dismiss the trial. Although this was not
the case pre revolution era (where the Shah, head of state was a US and west
puppet). A private company restricting its service to a certain nationalities
is clearly racist. What would a private repo would do ? Hide the secret
nuclear weapon design system in a US company?

2\. Countries have rights to impose trade sanctions on whoever they want as
long as their intentions is not malicious and not directly toward the
individual and citizens in hope to cause revolution and civil war to topple
the government (what has been said by Brian Hook, Mike Pompeo, John Bolton and
...) or making Iran the bogeyman to increase the arm industry sales in the
region.

If you're not aware, the WW3 has been long started, it's not by bullet much
anymore, but by much gruesome and brutal tactics such as prohibiting the sale
of medicine in the pandemic or preventing to get a simple cancer medicine for
small children.

~~~
gruez
>1\. Torturing is illegal and prohibited by constitution in Iran. A single
sign of torture can easily make a judge dismiss the trial.

uhh...
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24365648](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24365648)

~~~
Alir3z4
He has killed a police officer and his brothers would have done if they could.

The same protests that was caused by US to make civil unrest and riot to
topple the government

I'm sure the "anonymous" sources have a lot of hard evidence to say he has
been tortured. The same kind of evidence (excel files) they provided to show
Iranian death over COVID19 were many times more than official numbers

~~~
newswasboring
Are iranian court rulings open for public reading? If yes, at least we can
look at the evidence being presented.

~~~
anticensor
Most countries keep the lower court rulings secret, unlike USA.

------
jonahbenton
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.

------
Ahmed90
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

~~~
akerro
>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
Thank $GOD for Bouncy Castle.

------
newswasboring
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#i...](https://github.com/armancodes/laravel-download-
link/pull/9#issuecomment-686413931) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behdad_Esfahbod#Detention_Iran...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behdad_Esfahbod#Detention_Iran_visit)

~~~
eternalban
[https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing-
fro...](https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing-from-me-
please-be-this-2262ec7b8af2)

~~~
panpanna
So the Iranian government had access to a Facebook employees credentials for
around a week?

Oh, that can't be good...

------
zozbot234
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
VPN, and I don't think he especially cares about getting banned, much less bad
than being imprisoned.

------
Darmody
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.

------
msoad
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-
fro...](https://medium.com/@behdadesfahbod/if-you-read-one-thing-from-me-
please-be-
this-2262ec7b8af2?source=friends_link&sk=e29ac54d3fbed71de045ed6a5857280b)]

~~~
refurb
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.

------
Navarr
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?

~~~
gruez
>Zend (which was an Israeli company)

What?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zend_(company)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zend_\(company\))

>Zend, formerly Zend Technologies, is a Minneapolis, Minnesota-based software
company owned by software developer Perforce.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perforce](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perforce)

>Perforce, legally Perforce Software, Inc., is an American developer of
software [...]

~~~
sulam
Really? Did you somehow miss the whole section describing Israeli founders,
Israeli VC, and the fact that it has been acquired not once, but twice since
founding?

"was" an Israeli company is entirely accurate.

------
darkarmani
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).

------
steventhedev
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-
coun...](https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/29/github-ban-sanctioned-countries/)

EDIT: github doesn't show profile location on mobile. My bad.

~~~
hinkley
Look at his profile.

------
ronakjain90
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
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
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
>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
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
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.

------
fred_dev
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.

------
yiddishe-kop
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-iran...](https://blog.yiddishe-
kop.com/posts/my-pr-was-denied-by-iranian-law)

~~~
Thelordofalamut
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.

------
polote
post from the author of the PR

[https://blog.yiddishe-kop.com/posts/my-pr-was-denied-by-
iran...](https://blog.yiddishe-kop.com/posts/my-pr-was-denied-by-iranian-law)

------
hinkley
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.

------
AdmiralAsshat
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
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.

~~~
razakel
>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
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"

------
anonu
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.

~~~
dudul
> 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.

------
azangru
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
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.

------
jacquesm
Stuxnet inheritance?

------
scottlocklin
Could it be this the PR recipient was worried about?

[https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/iran-passes-
law-...](https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/iran-passes-law-banning-
use-of-israeli-technology-629390)

Don't tell them about the Linux kernel.

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

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

------
shariat
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.

------
rsynnott
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.

------
veeti
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeed_Malekpour](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saeed_Malekpour)

~~~
hinkley
> 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.

------
phonon
Dupe:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24360801](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24360801)

------
erex78
Why was this taken off the front page?

~~~
Alir3z4
Hehe, it's obvious why.

------
mothsonasloth
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
"It was more fun when I didn't know I was working with Nazis" is an
extraordinarily bad take.

~~~
lilSebastian
Quite the misrepresentation of the comment

------
darepublic
Yes, please add the check to circle ci

------
turing_complete
Hope this guy gets out of Iran ASAP.

------
joshxyz
The fuck did i just read.

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

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

~~~
twunde
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#Mo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Iran#Monitoring)

------
flixic
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
I don't think it's an acceptable state of affairs if people feel pressured to
keep their nationality private.

~~~
kome
but that's what happens in the real world when you apply to jobs, to renting
houses, etc.

~~~
newswasboring
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.

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

~~~
mathieuh
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
> 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-1.55989...](https://www.haaretz.com/misc/tags/TAG-iran-
sanctions-1.5598930)) [1]([https://www.timesofisrael.com/topic/iran-
sanctions/](https://www.timesofisrael.com/topic/iran-sanctions/))

~~~
yiddishe-kop
Hi, PR author here,

Israel has never restricted private individuals from collaborating on open
source with Iranians (afaik).

