GitHub starts suspending Russian accounts, including some individual developers
gameworldobserver.comI don't know if this is a good thing. Why would a random dev guy suffer from his/her government actions. I had for example a team of russian devs. Impossible to pay them at this point. They are all good guys and women. Now they fall back into what? And believe me. Some are getting frustrating and angry towards the west. I see many people around me crying for hard sanctions on every Russian person. I get downvoted to oblivion when I say something about this on reddit or some local forums. I just think that this razzia or how would you call it, goes too far. i don't support it.
The west wants to hurt Russia's economy, Russia's economy is made up of individuals.
The west's objective is to limit Russia's ability to wage war, do you have another suggestion on how to do this?
I'm an individual in "The West" and I don't want to hurt Russia's economy, or Russian individuals. It isn't my objective, and it isn't the objective of many other intelligent, moral people who both oppose collective punishment and reject warmongering whether it comes from NATO, Russia or anywhere else.
If Github and other private organizations and companies want to act as proxies for the US government, NATO and the US military then they ought to expect to be treated as such.
You seem to be arguing as though I said the west's objective was to hurt Russia's economy and Russian individuals. I believe those are only means to an end, those are not the ultimate objective.
The west's objective is to limit Russia's ability to wage war.
The real question is (again): Do you believe limiting Russia's ability to wage war is a worthy goal? If so, how would you suggest doing so?
>> they ought to expect to be treated as such
but they already are (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/21/russia-bans-fa...). I mean Russia is not the only country to do this, but companies are typically considered to be in cahoots with the their hosting country. Which makes sense because in order to operate within a country you have to "abide by the law" (which can and does often include sharing data).
That’s a poetic sentiment but by your own logic you won’t hurt those employees at Github so what do they care about your poetic sentiment?
Taking action against those companies is taking action against people with families.
The wartime speculative industrial march we’ve “civilized” has externalized a lot of real cost on others. You materially profit from it but if you just say you hate it it’s cool, you’re good?
This circular hustle for higher mindedness when all people are right at the same point in human existence, discovery, logic, is exhausting. Take real steps, stop buying crap, stop driving, stop generating mess for the future, stop hustling for nation state scrip.
Soaking up the material wealth and externalizing the problem as “those others” is old. Everyone hates “the bubble” but we refuse to pop it.
> Why would a random dev guy suffer from his/her government actions.
It's hard to keep the facts in order in these days, so just saying:
The action that dev likely suffer from is from a foreign and not his/her government.
And regardless what you and I think, those (and many of the in long past years) sanctions are violating public international law.
What would be interesting thought if there are examples in human history where sanctions have stopped a war. Most of them are done without good examples nor any scientific base it seems, but what do I know?
" I don't know if this is a good thing."
It is. The whole internet shall be like this. Available only for members. Or as Bruce Lee put it in his movies "This park is forbidden for Chinese or dogs". But they shall not stop talking about democracy and freedom. As an () president put it: It feels good doing it.
Well, by supporting their economy, you would be supporting ongoing genocide. We are at (proxy/economic) war with them. It sucks. At least they aren’t in Ukraine.
Your devs could consider fleeing Russia. It’s gotten harder in the last month, but may still be possible, depending on their financial means. Demographic trends suggest most people that could leave did over the last few decades. That option sucks too.
If they want to blame someone, they should blame Putin.
Fleeing a country while you have a family, friends, culture and your entire life there. Isn't quite a small step to leave a country. Hardly anyone wants to move.
there is no proven genocide yet. calm your horses
Luckily the article links its sources, so we can see that "some individual developers" is one guy on twitter who later said he is unblocked again and claims it was related to sanctions against his former employer. Would be interesting to see if people currently working for the sanctioned banks are affected. Investigative journalism instead of regurgitating blogs and tweets. Maybe i am too harsh, it is good some people translate russian sources.
More interesting is is the side note about GitHub enforcing the crimea sanctions from 2014 (still ongoing) that prohibit, among other things, the export of goods, technology, or services to the Crimea region of Ukraine. It seems that crimea nowadays only has two backbone providers, both routing through russia. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03100247/
Looking at how this could affect civilians in the crimea region it seems their primary problems are ethnic cleansing and oppression of opposition, not access to american services.
People are always looking for an excuse to hate "the others". We will always find new groups of people to label as "the others". For now it's the Russians, so we cheer on anybody who is also against the others.
All countries should see using foreign online services as a national security threat and ban them outright. China was right al along with the Great Firewall. They still allow GitHub as of now though.