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A developer from the Crimean region of Eastern Europe has seen restrictions imposed on his GitHub account due to US-imposed trade control regulations.
Anatoliy Kashkin uses the services of GitHub to host his website and a game management tool that he maintains, called GameHub. Earlier this week, it received a notification regarding US trade sanctions and affecting its access to the account and its resources.
Specifically, this resulted in a 404 "not found" error when attempting to reach its GitHub hosted website and its inability to create new private repositories.
Existing private deposits were also prohibited for Kashkin. In trying to access it, he found that they were disabled because of restrictions imposed by US trade control legislation.
However, it could create public repositories but their removal was not possible. After a while, the developer was allowed to remove the public code.
GitHub indicates that the code and information downloaded on its platform, including Enterprise Server, "may be subject to trade control regulations, including under the US Export Administration Regulations. United States (EAR) ".
The list of countries facing US government sanctions includes the Crimea region in Ukraine, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria. This concerns developers residing in these regions.
Although Kashkin has alternatives allowing the public to access its website and its code, the problem of easy access for people accustomed to finding resources on GitHub arises.
"Discoverability is also a very important factor, I do not think many people will find GameHub somewhere on a self-hosted server and I do not think many of them will report problems there either." – says Kashkin
In addition, GitHub has a proven track record in quickly and efficiently handling security issues. An alternative to self-hosting, for example, comes with the complications badociated with the correction routine, which has an impact on the code development cycle and can, in many cases, take into account periods longer exposure.
Since Kashkin has been informed of limited access, other developer projects located in sanctioned areas are experiencing the same problems.
On Friday, Akash Joshi, a full-fledged Indian engineer, pointed out that the restrictions apply in waves, so some developers have had time to plan their migration to another service.
People had known for a while that this was going to happen and that bans were happening in waves, so some people, like my friend @ 0xaryan had time to react.
Others, however, have not had this chance: https://t.co/Em1X2BegHz 3/4
– Akash Joshi (@akashtrikon) July 26, 2019
According to the Iranian developer Parham Alvani, the restrictions imposed by GitHub unfolded without warning, denying them the possibility of carrying out their projects.
"GitHub was an open and free platform for everyone, but it decided to stop the Iranian accounts from contributing and being part of the open source ecosystem." Even though we understand that GitHub could make this decision under the pressure of the US government, we were waiting for a more respectful action of GitHub ". – Parham Alvani
Alvani also discussed several open-source projects of Iranian developers affected by the restrictions. A larger list of them is available here.
Another Iranian software engineer also discussed the implications of this decision, which applies to all people in countries facing US sanctions and could also have an impact on the development and maintenance of open source projects.
The developer explains that Riot, the company behind the game League of Legends, informed its users that they could no longer access the game due to US laws and regulations in force in their area.
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