this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2025
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This post is stupid. The whole reason they are blocked is because Russia invaded ukraine, so the US sanctioned them, so Russian developers can't use Github, not because "microsoft bad" (true but irrelevant in this case) but because Microsoft is legally obligated to block them.
Fuck russia. Honestly this post makes Microsoft, Github and USA look good, and Organic Maps look bad. Organic maps should ban russian developers from contributing.
Honestly after this post I will avoid Organic maps. More like genocide-complicit maps amirite.
I don't think I want my government deciding who can contribute to my open source project.
When Trump gets into a dick measuring contest with a US ally and sanctions them, POOF foreign contributors are gone. Community management, codebase familiarity, and open PRs be damned. It'll kill open source projects.
The US supplied 80% of the bombs dropped on Gaza.
Do you believe US civilians should be prohibited from interacting with the rest of the world?
As a US citizen. YES. FFS, the point of sanctions is to compel a change or deter an action. Americans might pay way more attention when the rest of the world puts us in timeout because of the terrible leadership.
Research has shown it has historically had very little to no impact on policy. What it does do is harm the lowest rungs of society.
For example a 2019 report on Trump's Venezeuala sanctions estimate up to 40,000 people died. Mostly poor people who went without healthcare and medicine because the US froze all of the government's funds and access to credit.
In my opinion, I'd prefer if we just bombed civilians in the countries we sanction. It's more honest. It really is a form of low level warfare. Something akin to a medieval raiding party
It is the lowest rung that supports the russia invasion in ukraine. it is not a war crime to use sanction, people don't die due to sanction they die from failure of their government.
no countries and their friends should be forced to trade with any country they don't like. every country have the right to sanction or boycott countries they don't like. Just like I have the right not to buy McDonald's or not use reddit. Their employees die because I don't "trade" with them is not my responsibility. This is more honest.
Attacks against civilian targets are war crimes. When you do it through sanctions its OK.
I'm just asking that we are more honest about it. For example instead of putting sanctions on Venezuela we could have just done what Israel is doing to Gaza and gotten similar death toll.
but_what_about_.jpg
Yes...? Why haven't other countries sanctioned the US for Gaza genocide? But that's also not the point at hand.
How the fuck is banning people in certain countries for something they don't have control over from contributing to small projects like this doing anything but shooting the FOSS ecosystem, which already has a severe shortage of developers, in the foot?
They're too big to fail. At least, they were, but they're scaling back these days, so they may be sanctioned sooner or later.
whataboutism isn't some magical phrase that you can utter every time someone brings up hypocrisy
if we're going to support sanctioning civilians based on their countries breaking international law, then we should not have double standards. otherwise it's very clear to anyone paying attention that this is a geopolitical issue and not a moral one.
and that's what this is actually about. the US sanctions on Russia are a geopolitical tool meant to make the Russian re-subjugation of Ukraine more expensive. that's it. US doesn't actually care about Ukraine- neither this administration or the last.
to me, that doesn't justify banning individuals from participating in OSS projects. anybody that wants to contribute should be able to.
I mean, it’s probably in their best interest to avoid us. We are a terrible country.
Are you aware of how much open source work comes from Russians? Russians != Russian govt.
I... don't follow. How does this make the Microsoft, Github, and USA look good? The policy here is absolutely stupid.
Me too. I presume half of the votes on this comment are upvotes because they only read the first half of it.
Can you please explain how you come to such a conclusion of your second half, OP? Like you saw, we really don't follow.
Remember kids, racism and bigotry are always okay if it's against the right people.
I have nothing against Russian developers. But I do think they should be completely isolated and blocked from the outside world. That's the whole point of sanctions.
By your logic developers in the US shouldn't be allowed to contribute to free software either, after all the US is committing genocides and threatening to invade other countries
Well, yeah. That's literally the point of sanctions.
The point is to protect national interests, not reject free contributions from normal people for non-security critical but useful software projects which is just idiotic
yes, we are free to block US developers.
If some country will sanction US that is hosting FOSS, absolutely. That's not mutually exclusive with this.
You're causing more harm than good.
no.
You'll understand when you're older.
That makes sense when it harms business being done in that country, people’s opportunity to find jobs and stuff like that.
But blocking people from working for free on open source projects where there’s nothing to be gained is harming progress, not individuals or countries. That’s not what sanctions were made for.
If we would have taken the same line on say biology or mathematics we and the Russian people both would have been worse off.
Moving off of GitHub is still good, even if you believe their reasoning behind their reasons is incorrect.
Russian bots down voting you.
This is how sanctions work. Don't like it? Get your government to stop invading Ukraine.
Proceeds to use open source tooling with numerous contributions from US-based software developers
How about we get the american government to stop supplying Israel with bombs they drop on Gaza? Oh, I guess that's too much effort.
Not a Russian bot. Down voted it because GitHub is still a poor choice to host open source on nowadays. It's like someone saying "It's stupid that such and such switched to renewable energy instead of fossil fuels because they believe the world is flat. The world is not flat!" It's really missing the forest for the trees.
Upvoting for the concise summary of what the article is about (thanks!); not for the opinion expressed (which appears to conflate Russian developers with the actions of the Russian government -- something I find problematic at best).
Nothing personal against russian FOSS developers. They should be blocked (sanctioned) from contributing until the sanctions are stopped.