On October 3, 2020, GitLab blocked Iranian access (based on IP) without prior notice. Five days later (October 8), some developer accounts in the region were blocked and even their own projects were not allowed to be accessed. They can only export the developer's personal projects even if they request temporary access rights, and GitLab refuses to unblock them.
In response to the ban, a developer posted a blog stating, “ When it comes to US policy, free software is a joke .”
And GitLab is not the first platform to initiate a ban on the region. Currently, developers in this area have been blocked by GitHub, Docker, NPM, Google Developer, Android, AWS, Go, Kubernetes, etc.
In fact, affected by US policies, some US companies must comply with the sanctions issued by the government, but different companies and platforms implement different strategies. An Iranian developer named Hamed Saeedi took an inventory of companies that have imposed sanctions in his post , such as:
- When an American company called Digital Ocean decided to impose sanctions on Iran, it notified customers in Iran and gave them 72 hours to replace servers. This is a sanction that is implemented without harming users.
- In 2018, Slack blocked the Iranian account without any prior notice, and did not provide any method of backing up data, and only divided the nationality, even some Iranian scholars from Canada who have no relationship with Iran. It was also banned.
- GitHub also began restricting developers from countries subject to US trade sanctions in 2019 , including Crimea, Cuba, North Korea, Iran, and Syria. Hamed revealed that the reason GitHub blocked his account at the time was that he believed he was using a free private library to develop nuclear weapons.
GitHub stated: "Users are responsible for ensuring that the content they develop and share on GitHub.com complies with U.S. export control laws, including EAR (Export Administration Regulations) and U.S. International Arms Trade Regulations (ITAR). Cloud hosting provided on Github.com The service product is not designed to host data subject to ITAR, and currently does not provide the function of restricting access to the repository by country/region. If you want to collaborate on ITAR or other exports, and control data, we recommend that you consider GitHub Enterprise Server , GitHub's internal deployment product."
In March of this year, GitHub once again banned Aurelia, a front-end open source project belonging to Microsoft, on the grounds that there were two external contributors from Iran in the project. At that time, many developers urged Iranian users to transfer to GitLab. However, now, GitLab has also joined the ban.
It is undeniable that GitLab has always been an active responder to US policies and regulations. In November 2019, GitLab issued a statement on its official website stating that they decided to enable the “Work Family Country/Region Blockade” order for team members who have access to customer data , and stated that under the current geopolitical environment , This is the most humane solution . The two countries targeted by this "blockade order" are China and Russia.
The updated recruitment process clearly stipulates:
- GitLab will not provide offers to Chinese/Russian citizens
- Those employees who have access to customer data cannot now move to China or Russia
In response to these endless blockades, Hamed said helplessly, “People around the world or in the software community can’t even imagine what it’s like to be unable to access 50% of the Internet. Therefore, when we (people living in Iran) talk about sanctions At this time, no one can really understand the seriousness of the situation." He added that what is even more frustrating is that they have to deal with domestic censorship while facing US sanctions.
Ask US high-tech companies such as GitLab why they use US trade laws and sanctions like this: they lock users by nationality, block users without prior notice, and disable backup options.
Who authorizes this kind of legal discrimination?
Hamed called on everyone to spread this incident and actively express their views; he hopes to draw enough attention to resolve this dilemma. At the end of the article, he quoted the famous " I Have a Dream " speech by Martin Luther King, the leader of the American black civil rights movement : I say to you today, my friends, though, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream (Today I want to tell you, my friends, even if we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream ).