Article is from WeChat public account: InfoQ (ID: infoqchina) , author: Tina, Zhang Xiaonan, from FIG question: IC photo

GitHub gets up and fights on its own. Today it blocked its own open source project, Aurelia, because it has two external contributors from Iran.

Following the ban on Iran and other regional accounts last year, GitHub today banned Aurelia, a front-end open source project belonging to Microsoft, on the grounds that there are two external contributors from Iran in the project. Although the CEO of GitHub apologized and stated that “this is indeed a mistake”, the developers obviously did not buy it: Is it too arbitrary for GitHub to ban the project? Doesn’t such behavior run counter to the belief in open source?

GitHub accidentally blocked its own project

Today, a front-end project called “Aurelia” has been banned by GitHub. Aurelia is a JavaScript framework developed by Microsoft. It has been open sourced for 5 years and is managed by an American company.

As project leader, Rob Eisenberg, chief UX engineer at Microsoft, said:”When I woke up, I found that the Aurelia website was shut down and I couldn’t access the archives. I haven’t received a formal notification before, which is devastating for us!” He joked: “Is it because Microsoft Now that you have a new JavaScript framework, you need to block Aurelia?!

What’s even more ironic is that Rob Eisenberg, who works at Microsoft, had to solve the internal problems of the company by posting Twitter and informing GitHub. (after all Microsoft has acquired GitHub) . GitHub’s support account then gave him a painless response:

If you think you have been mislabeled, you can appeal to GitHub. See our help page.

After the formal appeal, GitHub re-enables the organizational account for the project. Rob subsequently explained to the public the reasons for the ban:

Because we have two external contributors from Iran, (non-GH member) , GitHub automatically tags and bans them account number.

The event continues to ferment, and it quickly reaches the front page of HackerNews. The CEO of GitHub has to apologize for this too:

Closing this account is obviously a terrible mistake, and I apologize to those affected. We are investigating the specific process and changing the rules to ensure that such issues do not happen again.

Blocked another regular developer account

Not coincidentally, similar things are not alone.

A little Russian brother Nikolay has been a bit annoyed recently. He is a web developer, and his usual hobby is writing open source libraries. Like many developers, he hosts these open source libraries on GitHub. Looking at the picture below, Nikolay has 3,236 in the past yearContributions, showing that they are hardworking and active. But recently he has had some trouble: his GitHub account has been blocked.

Legend: This little brother is really active on GitHub

On March 9, GitHub suddenly blocked my account without notifying me. I didn’t find it at first, but someone still emailed me that my hosting repository has stopped working and asked me why I deleted my GitHub account (I don’t have it) , I found something wrong.

What’s even more frustrating is that if someone goes to my GitHub page, it says “404 Not Found”, or even a “The user account is temporarily inaccessible” page, just like me. Doesn’t exist at all.

The Russian brother started to appeal to GitHub, and live broadcast the following appeal process on Medium. Attracted many developers to watch.

The only hint from GitHub is that when I click on their website, (for me only) with a notification at the top : Your account has been flagged, so your profile is private. If you think this is a mistake, please contact support to review your account status.

Although the first time Nikolay sent an email to GitHub to apply for unblocking, one week passed and no response was received.

Nikolay then started to guess: Why was my account blocked? Is there a “blacklisted” website hyperlink deep in my source code? Or am I calling someone an idiot recently? (It turned out to be exactly this!)

What makes Nikolay most unacceptable is that after the account is closed, everyone except him himself / herself issues all (issues) Of comments disappeared instantly, some of them are actually very valuable. Nikolay is going to be bombed:

GitHub can prevent your code from being lost if it wants to prevent you from logging in, but it cannot guarantee that your comments in issues / pull-requests / commits / etc will not be lost. It is ridiculous that GitHub has always promoted “share” and “co-construction”, but it has easily prevented people from logging in. They have spent a lot of time and experience co-creating the source code and knowledge base community, blindly targeting a person who does not know why People, is this the so-called “lenient tolerance”?

After a while, Nikolay’s article was updated again:

A week after the account was closed, GitHub finally responded. But suspiciously, this response happened after someone posted my post on Hacker News, which attracted a lot of attention.

Nikolay explains why he was named in the article. It turned out that he jokingly called a guy prick on GitHub. The other party appealed because they felt insulted, and although the inappropriate speech should be punished, GitHub did not give Nikolay any opportunity to appeal and did not give him any notification.Then he closed his account.

“Review” above all else?

Although these erroneously banned projects have been reopened, they have indeed increased people’s distrust of GitHub, and the developers are very angry: How many projects have their repositories disabled? If it’s not because Aurelia is a Microsoft project and entered the front page of HackerNews, I don’t know if similar problems can all be solved.

Russian brother Nikolay is also obviously disappointed: “Although GitHub is an open source community, it is more a commercial company. External image and stability are what they really care about. As long as someone puts pressure, they can Dispose of anyone with ease. “

You can say that you are a business company, but you still advertise yourself as a non-profit organization. Now think about how naive those who praise and recommend GitHub to others on social media.

In July last year, an Iranian developer’s GitHub account was banned. He shared his experience on social media and launched an official question on GitHub. In the end, I learned that because of the sanctions imposed on Iran, the GitHub account in Iran is not available.

What’s even more irritating is that GitHub blocked all Iranian accounts without any prior notice, and there was no chance for developers in the region to download backup data. The following news indicates that the developer accounts of countries and regions sanctioned by the US trade also include Crimea, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Syria.

Open source is a key technology line in the software era. Almost all software companies will build their applications based on the open source software stack. Open source software is the wealth of all human beings and does not belong to any individual. The boundaries of open source software have surpassed an organization or company. It represents faith, spirit, and culture.

But can GitHub equate with open source? Definitely not.

GitHub has always been the best choice for hosting open source projects, but after Microsoft acquired GitHub, whether you areAdmit it, none of it can get rid of the label of a commercial company.

Microsoft’s attitude towards the open source community has always been subtle, and this is no secret; in turn, some people in the open source community have also maintained an “anti-Microsoft” attitude. How GitHub under Microsoft’s control will develop is still difficult to determine, but there will definitely be some open source people who will “choose a good tree and live” and go elsewhere. Including the protagonists of these events, many developers have given various suggestions:

Want to transfer to GitLab?

Google Code is also good. It has free Git and 2 GB storage.

SourceForge is also good.

Try a code hosting platform not in the United States?

…

However, GitHub is still the most popular code hosting platform in the world, and the sunk costs are too high for these developers.

Of course, it’s not necessarily Microsoft’s fault. If it hadn’t been acquired by Microsoft, GitHub would be better than it is now? In addition to the dilemma encountered in its own development, for developers, if GitHub is too big, is it a good thing?

Fu Sheng once said in a speech: You put an app on the Internet, which can be downloaded by billions of people, and let people around the world know you. Times have changed, and the emergence of huge platforms such as Google, Apple, and Facebook has taken things to another extreme. When it comes to various business interests and social factors, they can also make billions of users completely out of reach of you in one day, and make the foundation you build instantly annihilate-this is the power of monopoly platforms.

This sentence applies to GitHub as well.


Article from WeChat public account: InfoQ (ID: infoqchina) , Author: Tina, Zhang Xiaonan