> 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?
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.
Are there any obstacles to creating a github clone for Iran, outside of a viable business model? All these ghettoes of company private gitlabs are of no use to an Iranian software industry. Arguably it is even detrimental to Iran's national security.
Speaking of which [the industry], wtf? I left Tehran in 79, and I must tell you, AmirAli, that I fully expected Iran to be a software powerhouse by now (if not earlier), given the national propensities and talents, and the lack of an artificially imposed barrier to starting up an industrial/technical sector, and fairly open access to technical literature. Can you shed light on this?
Talented people are found everywhere around the world, and many are in Iran for sure. But what exactly made you expect a theocracy becoming a software powerhouse?
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
The termination of processing in Crimea by Visa and MasterCard was actually a big deal. It came out of nowhere. One morning ATMs and terminals in shops just stopped working and everybody was left with maybe some cash and a bunch of useless cards. It was not a joke. I was making trips to the nearest working ATM in Russia with like 15 credit cads of our friends and relatives with scribbled pin-codes - a 6-7 hour drive one way, often only to find that we need to drive further to find a not yet emptied ATM. And then returning with a bag of cash.
And then the same winter Ukraine cut electricity and water supply. I remember doing homework with kids by a candle light, wearing warm jackets inside because heating didn't work. Fun times. I don't know how this all was supposed to turn people of Crimea back to Ukraine and who thought it was a good idea. I think it worked the opposite way and turned a lot of locals into supporters of the annexation.
Anyway, I'd say the most upsetting result of the sanctions is almost total absence of large international and Russian business in Crimea. It makes everything very expensive. It's like an additional tax on everything. For example, no large Russian bank has a local branch. There are only few small local banks and as a result it is really hard to get a business loan or mortgage, and the rates are bad. There are almost no stores of big food chains, and it means the food is more expensive than in mainland Russia; there are no McDonalds, no Burger King or Starbucks; you cannot receive an international delivery and you have to pay to one of the many proxy services that re-send packages if you want to receive a package from Amazon; no international flights which means you always need to buy a flight to Moscow first; etc.
Looks like your real problem is that the new overlords actually give a shit about the people. They don't invest in anything unless it is strategically valuable infrastructure.
Well, almost. The problem is that _nobody_ gives a shit about the people. The old overlords demonstrated how much they care by cutting off the power and water supply. The new overlords are not interested in taking more risks to continue what they started. The international community has a very little clue about anything, a strong opinion about everything, and not enough time and attention to give shit about the people.
But this GitHub announcement gives a hope that someone somewhere gives a shit about the problems of real people and that the sanctions will eventually end one way or another.
Why no Russian businesses? I can understand blaming the West and Ukraine for their boycotts, but how come Russia gets a pass for screwing you over as well?
Yeah, Russia is getting a lot of criticism for this from locals, but nothing changes. The reason is that any large russian business is an international business. They are either a publicly trading company, or have a headquarter in Europe, or partially owned by an international company. For them getting sanctioned would mean multi-millions losses, losing investors, suppliers, and much more. Even the largest state-owned Russian bank cannot afford to open a branch in Crimea because (as they have publicly commented) this will result in mass loss of their investors and will crash their stock price.
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.
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.
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.
Speaking of freelancers as others did, basically they all went through acquaintances or shell companies in Russia in order to receive funds from the West. Which doesn't sound like what the US wanted, to me.
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.
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.
> 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).
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.
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.
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.
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?