GitHub, owned by Microsoft, would block people in Crimea, Iran

Some long time users of GitHub have reported this week that Microsoft has restricted their use of its code hosting service because they reside in countries subject to US trade sanctions.

A software developer based in the Russian-occupied Crimea region of Ukraine and another resident in Iran each reported in separate online publications that GitHub had told them that their access to his service had been restricted. The Iranian developer Hamed Saeedi said Wednesday in an article on Medium that his code repository had been disabled, that he could not access certain parts of the GitHub site and that he could not download the data that he had. He had sheltered.

"I hope they find a good way to solve this problem," Saeedi said via a direct message on Twitter on Saturday. "Before that, as a software developer, I really liked GitHub a lot."

But he's not the only GitHub user to report being restricted by the service, as ZDNet reported for the first time on Friday. Anatoliy Kashkin, the Crimean programmer, was also touched. Kashkin has developed an application called GameHub that allows users to download and run computer games from multiple sources, including Steam and Humble Bumble, and hosts program code on GitHub. In a GitHub article on Wednesday, he said the service had prevented him from creating new private code repositories and disabling its existing ones.

Kashkin confirmed these restrictions in an email to Business Insider. But a problem he had with his website, which is also hosted by GitHub, has since been resolved, he said. In the e-mail, he downplayed the seriousness of the GitHub restrictions.

"It did not affect my main open-source project much," he said in an e-mail.

"I do not know why we pay so much attention to that," he said. "I do not really think that this restriction differs as much from the previous restrictions that we have had in the last five years and that people from other countries have known even longer."

GitHub says it's complying with US trade sanctions

On an undated support page on its website, GitHub said it was trying to comply with US trade laws and said Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea and Syria were all subject to trade sanctions imposed by the United States. The reason that GitHub has only recently begun to restrict access is that sanctions have existed in some cases for years.

"To comply with US trade control laws, GitHub has recently made some necessary changes to the way we service," the company said on the support page. "As US trade control laws evolve, we will continue to work with US regulators to determine the extent to which we can offer free code collaboration services to developers in sanctioned markets."

GitHub representatives did not immediately respond to an e-mail requesting a comment.

The company has become a favorite place for developers to host and share code and software. It was bought last year by Microsoft for $ 7.5 billion.

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