GitHub responds to sudden supply cut: We are in the United States and have no right to give advance notice

Qian Ming from Aofei Temple
Quantum Bit Report | Public Account QbitAI

"GitHub is subject to U.S. trade laws, just like any company doing business in the United States."

This is GitHub CEO Nat Friedman's response to GitHub restricting accounts in Iran and other places.

Recently, engineers from Iran, Crimea and other places found that their GitHub accounts suddenly could not be used normally, and some people’s personal pages even had 404 errors.

After the incident happened, it immediately attracted huge attention.

A programmer named Hamed in Iran created a project called "github-do-not-ban-us" on GitHub to protest, demanding that GitHub apologize for the incident and modify the restrictions.

Currently, this project has received more than 6,100 stars and ranked first on the GitHub hot list.

In Issues, programmers from all over the world have given their support.

At the same time, Hamed also called out to GitHub head Nat Friedman on Twitter, asking him to give an explanation, and it has been retweeted nearly 2,000 times so far.

After a few days of silence, Nat Friedman finally responded.

Companies in the United States have to limit

Nat Friedman tweeted to explain the reason behind this - after all, GitHub is a company registered in the United States and doing business in the United States:

It pains me to hear about how trade restrictions are hurting people. We do our best to do only what the law requires. But clearly, people are still impacted. GitHub is subject to U.S. trade laws, just like any company doing business in the United States.

Unfortunately, in order to comply with US sanctions, we have had to impose restrictions on accounts in Iran, Syria, and Crimea.

However, some netizens commented that many American companies move their headquarters outside the United States to evade taxes. Why doesn't GitHub do the same (avoiding US legal constraints)?

Nat Friedman also revealed his helplessness in his response:

As long as you do business in the United States, you must abide by U.S. laws.

How to remove restrictions: Just make private projects public

Nat Friedman also gave an explanation on behalf of GitHub regarding the scope of restrictions and countermeasures:

Restrictions on private repos and paid accounts in Iran, Syria, and Crimea. Developers around the world can still access public repos, and open source repos will not be affected.

These restrictions are based on where you live and where you are, not on factors like nationality. If you are "accidentally targeted," you can fill out a form and your account will be unblocked within a few hours.

As a countermeasure, he also proposed a solution:

Users who have restricted private repositories can choose to make them public.

This plan also made some netizens angry: If we can’t access private repos, how can we make them public?

Finally, Nat Friedman once again expressed his frustration:

We do this not because we want to, but because we have to. GitHub will continue to advocate with governments for policies that protect software developers and the global open source community.

But netizens don't buy it, they don't understand -

Why didn't GitHub give advance notice?

This wave of sanctions against GitHub came without any warning or prior notice.

According to Hamed, he woke up to an email from GitHub informing him that his account would be restricted.

Then, his personal GitHub page was banned, and the shared open source library was inaccessible, so there was no time to back up the relevant resources and codes.

Some people are even worse off. They have been working hard for six months and everything is almost finished, but suddenly it is banned.

Nat Friedman also gave an explanation for this:

Our understanding of the law does not allow us to notify anyone of the restrictions in advance.

In response to this, some netizens raised a "soul-searching question": Why did GitLab give advance notice?

Hamed said in a related tweet that they were also unable to use GitLab, but that users were informed of the issue in advance and no repos had been disabled.

Therefore, many netizens have expressed the view that GitHub may have over-interpreted the legal restrictions in the United States.

What do you think?