GitHub builds wall round private repos, makes devs in US-sanctioned countries pay for it Microsoft-owned GitHub has slapped restrictions on users residing in certain countries as the company bows to restrictions resulting from US sanctions, according to a hand-wringing tweet from CEO Nat Friedman. Friedman took to Twitter over the weekend after users began noticing their accounts had been mysteriously blocked. …
Why would you need to use a "GitHub Enterprise Server" or BitBucket or whatever? Jut run a local git (or other version control system of your choice) repository.
If fact, why not do this anyway? It's not like it costs much (for most uses, it's just a PC sat on the internet. Fallover/load balancing is an optional extra of course, but even for a small company, the cost is minimal).
Or even one of the other such systems. I personally use "gitea" for my personal repos, which I am very happy with.
The only problem for public repos (and indeed the only reason I use github) is the issue of account management and logins.
It is a pain to convince people to sign up to yet another online service, create account, passwords, etc... and manage it. Github at least has the benefit of the network effect (i.e. most people already have an account), so it is easy to put a public repo there and have people contribute.
If you run your own public git repo, anyone who wants to contribute has to create an account on your server, and on the server of everyone else they want to contribute to, and vice versa. It rapidly becomes a headache.
There were attempts to get this sorted out (OAuth is the one that comes to mind now), but nothing ever really succeeded. That is where these centralised repos make more sense. However with centralisation you get issues of control like this, where they can pull the rug from you at a moments notice.
"All that issue/work tracking, documentation pages, "
Isn't it a shame the FOSS community never got round to tackling such issues. It would be great if you could just Google something like turnkey linux and get a complete server image prebuilt to handle all this stuff.
The same as any other company with a presence in the USA, in theory, yes. In practice, Microsoft have a track record of testing in court, whether they have to hand the data over, at least in some cases, where there is no precedence.
Such as the Irish data center being in the USA...
Exactly! How comes only free access to GitHub is subjected to US regulations ?
From the fine article:
Affected users were presented with a yellow warning message with little or no warning last week as access to private repos on the service were summarily blocked.
From one of the Friedman tweets in the fine article:
Public repos remain available to developers everywhere – open source repos are NOT affected.
While they do offer free private repositories this move affects both paid and free private repos.
To comply with US sanctions, we unfortunately had to implement new restrictions on private repos and paid accounts in Iran, Syria, and Crimea.
Doesn't seem like it should or else you can't carry any printed text when you physically visit those countries.
With printed text, the service provided was to print the text. So once you have the paper in your hands with the text on it, the service has been completed. Therefore you carrying that printed material is not a service, you already had it, and you are carrying it around.
Online stuff is being provided as a service every single time you access the site. It is an ongoing and continuous service (which, BTW is why IT corporations like MS, Amazon, etc, love the cloud because it means you have to continually pay to access the services, your services, rather than a one-off service charge like a kinkos printing a document). And since services are being sanctioned, you lose access to that service if you are in an affected country.
"Doesn't seem like it should or else you can't carry any printed text when you physically visit those countries."
That would be joined-up thinking.
Back in the day it was illegal to export PGP from the United States, but the source code complied into a book was free to be sent anywhere in the world, where you could type it in and compile it legally.
The future isn't really good concern; if there's a decent chance they won't backfire in the next year and four months, or at least not in a week when he hasn't come up with some other distraction, that'll do. And even if they do backfire before then, he'll just say that they haven't, and a thousand pundits will take to Fox to decry this unfair attack on the President from the hard left.
As much fun as it would be to blame trump, US export restrictions are not exactly a new thing. Check out the problems PGP had for more insight.
Ask Putin - but hope he doesn't think to move it again.
Jokes aside, there's a clear border, and being Russia under sanctions because of its invasion of Crimea, it's no surprise even a region may have restrictions. There are other kinds of restrictions for other places, like Transnistria.
From Wikipedia:
Transnistria is an unrecognised but de facto independent semi-presidential republic with its own government, parliament, military, police, postal system, currency and vehicle registration. Its authorities have adopted a constitution, flag, national anthem and coat of arms.
Crimea is still not there and I doubt will ever be.
Crimea is a region fairly recently annexed by Russia, despite being rather widely considered on the international stage to be part of Ukraine, as indeed it was prior to the annexation. I presume any local nationalists who happen believe that Crimea should instead be an independent country might be keeping their heads down at the moment.
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No. NATO members. But sure, why Russia fears so much three little Republic it unleashed a cyberattack against them? Or why Russia fears Georgia so much it illegally occupies parts of its territory?
Cuba, meanwhile, it's a dictatorship which keeps its citizens under Orwellian control. And sells its women (and men) to tourists for some hard money. Great place... probably that's the reason you like it.
But shouldn't be Cuba a paradise for the people, unlike those ugly capitalist countries? Cuba was a brothel before Castro, and is still a brothel under the Castros. And you can't even leave it easily.
And many prostitutes in the USA and other countries come from communist countries because they have no way to live there because there's no economy to speak about, and have to sell themselves abroad - where they find a lot of people who hail communism and dictatorships while paying for sex in the ugliest capitalist way.
Very few of us in the UK elected mini-trump to his current elevated position. Admittedly many more of us voted for fellow members of his political party, which is what gave him the opportunity to run for the job of leader of the largest party in parliament at the moment.
Admittedly many more of us voted for fellow members of his political party
Really? People really, actually voted for the gentleman (Esq) who wants a return to Imperial Standards and has a problem with the word "unacceptable"? By Jove!
Apparently, yes, some people did. The mind boggles somewhat. But maybe he's in a safe seat where there are enough die-hard Conservative voters to ensure that whoever is in that seat will get voted in. Most seats in the UK are at least fairly safe, elections are usually decided on a relatively small number of seat changes.
I live in a very safe seat (Mrs. Leadsom's) and there's nothing I can do about it. Every time in recent history the Conservatives win by a clear margin. Often so large a margin that even if the votes for all the other candidates were pooled together it wouldn't make any difference.
This is what passes for democracy in the UK :-/
Can you get her indicted for Treason?
I'd say it's dodgy but not criminal to make gazillions betting against Blighty (as George Soros did in 1992). But to do it from within parliament - even government - smells of treason to me. Ben Leadsom's hedge fund should be barred from betting against Blighty on grounds of insider trading - though he isn't personally an insider, his wife obviously is. It's her who has a serious conflict of interest, and should be prosecuted for treason.
Of course she's not the only one ...
I live in a very safe seat (Mrs. Leadsom's) and there's nothing I can do about it. Every time in recent history the Conservatives win by a clear margin. Often so large a margin that even if the votes for all the other candidates were pooled together it wouldn't make any difference.
This is what passes for democracy in the UK :-/
--------------
That is quite clearly democracy.
If an absolute majority of the people voting vote for one candidate among several, that person wins the seat. No other result could be democratic.
And you being able to change that would not improve democracy, it would substitute tyranny.
The Cloud = another man's computer
And reality strikes yet again.
And people really, really should look at this Reg article. Posted last week too. Don't fall into the trap of thinking you're safe and secure in the cloud. It could become a right royal pain in the SaaS
@big_D
And, yet again, we see why international public clouds just don't work.
There you go, reads much better now.
The Cloud = another man's computer
Indeed ...
For the longest time I've been saying that this cloud thing is all very nice but NO thanks, being endelessly criticized for it.
"It's SO convenient and easy." I hear people gush over and over again.
It will be -30º C in hell before I even consider putting anything in a/the cloud, no matter how convenient it may be.
That I'm old?
Yes, I am.
But that's why I know better.
O.
You might know better, but in the same way betamax was superior to VHS - and we know how that turned out....
It is clear is that legacy technologies: networking, compute, storage, security, etc, are no longer fit for purpose. The replacement is cloud-based, whether public cloud, or on-prem private cloud.
...funnily enough, the "cloud" is no different in business terms from a mainframe back in the day...
You might know better, but in the same way betamax was superior to VHS - and we know how that turned out....
Rubbish. VHS had a superior recording time to Betamax, and price, it was cheaper. Sure, Betamax did catch up to the recording time, but after VHS was already dominating the market, but still more expensive than VHS, too little too late.
Since the consumer regarded a longer recording time as a more important feature than picture quality, once picture quality was good enough, not having to swap tapes in the middle of watching a movie, only having to carry half as many tapes home from the video-store, or over to a friends house, or to store on the shelf, being able to record an entire movie via a timer, which you couldn't do with Betamax (without extraordinary measures like having a dual tape device or having 2 devices that you carefully program to sequential record the movie/show) that means that VHS was overall superior.
Now, you personally may have valued superior picture quality as more important than the numerous advantages VHS had over Betamax, but since the majority of people preferred VHSs advantages over Betamax, then that makes VHS a superior product overall, despite it having inferior picture quality.
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Not only small/medium company. Any company, organization or state irrespective of size should evaluate how bad they need the data in case a mighty corporation or state might decide to deny access to it.
If this happens in times of peace, just try to imagine what would happen in time of armed conflict. How's Azure and Office 365 going to run for you if you'll happen to be on the wrong side of the gun barrel.
And we're not talking about the usual mighty, scary enemies of the US like Iran, Syria, Cuba and others. Yes, you all Western countries have a nice noose around your neck / balls when time will come to deal with US who is holding the string. No war is needed, just the US feeling a little bit uncomfortable or displeased. The actual president will go after his second term (hopefully) but America will remain great for a long time. His successor will likely continue the ascension, you don't stop when you're on a winning streak. Expect all economic, trade or any other kind of agreement bilateral or multilateral to be renegotiated the Trump's way.
Now that is scary!
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