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Sourceforge.net Blocked In Mainland China
gzipped_tar contributed a link to Moonlight Blog, which says that "SourceForge, the world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications, appears to be blocked in Mainland China. The current blocking may be related to the recent anti-China protests of Beijing Olympic Games, which will begin on 8 August. Some days before, a very popular free source code editor in SourceForge named Notepad++ start to boycott Beijing 2008. The project's developer said that the action is not against Chinese people, but against Chinese government's repression against Tibetan unrest earlier in this year. SF.net has once been banned by China in 2002. However, the ban was lifted later in 2003."
gzipped_tar adds: "As a SourceForge user in Beijing, I can confirm this first-hand. I also tried traceroute to sourceforge.net, only to find the connection being dropped at a Beijing ISP's gateway router. It appears that the projects' respective homepages are available even if they are hosted by SF, but the summary and download pages are blocked."
(As you probably know, Slashdot and Sourceforge share a corporate overlord.)
Recently I read that people were arrested and/or beaten because they didn't promote the Olympics. Is it strange that the chinese govt blocks EVERYTHING that protests against it?
I can see politics entering a free for all site like Slashdot, but Sourceforge??? While I personally think it's disgusting that China even GOT the Olympics and find their regime and it's actions reprehensible, there are proper forums for such matters. Sourceforge isn't one of them.
See here
I think it's idiotic for these project leaders are attaching their pet causes to software with bunch of contributors. It should be a rule to keep one's politics separate from such projects.
How about the British government? Or the USA's government? All things considered, I don't see how the government most open about their bad behaviour is the one most worthy of this.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Except that an OSS project is voluntary. Totalitarian Marxism is not. It is imposed by a central Government and you have no option to fork the code...
It should be a rule to keep one's politics separate from such projects.
In Open Source? One might as well ask Stallman to run Vista.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
I guess I don't understand your comment because you seem to be saying "good riddance!"... but why should the open-source community be happy that a government firewall is fracturing the community?
Why?
Actors feel free to express their ideas on politics, some corporations do not hesitate to sponsor or take position for a given cause.
Why should FREEsoftware refrain from doing so?
It's even distributed under GPL v2 which means they are not even forbidding those with whom they disagree to use it.
May I use your sig please?
Tell your editor that "communist China" has been down for quite some time. "China the generic fascist state" still stands, it seems.
The Olympic Brand is in very serious trouble
zimbabwe? sudan?
>I think it's idiotic for these project leaders are attaching their pet causes to software with bunch of
>contributors.
And I think you miss something fundamental about "Free as in Speech." I'd go as far as to say you are supporting the suppression of free speech with your comment.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It was one project page, notepad++. If a person wants to protest on their own personal project page, that's a perfect place to do it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
They were blocked from competing
Spelling and Grammar errors have been added to this post for your enjoyment
As a conscientious human being, you have a duty to speak out against injustice when you see it. If you have a large audience because of your software, you have a responsibility to use that platform. As the saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you want change, you have to speak out, you may even have to be a bit disruptive. Yeah it sucks for the rest of us, but it would suck even more if no one ever spoke up.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
While the neglect for human rights in Europe and the US is getting worrying, we should not use that as a reason to accept or belittle the far worse human rights crimes in China. Was that your purpose?
They're not fascist, they're totalitarian. Similar, but different.
Not a sentence!
As it stands right now, entire sourceforge is being punished because of actions of some idiot who decided to tie his political grievances into a notepad application that has fuckall to do with Tibet.
That is interesting, because I thought it was China that was being punished because they have an overly controlling government that believes in suppressing freedom(apparently as in speech and beer in this case).I don't see the developer as the bad guy who keeps SF out of China, isn't it more the repressive chinese regime that is blocking SF because someone executes his right of free speach? So shouldn't we all rather be mad a this regime than at the guy who thinks he can say what he thinks (whether you agree or disagree with the content or form of delivery)?
Actually I am still trying to figure out why I should care more about what an Actor has to say about some political idea than my barber.
I have less of a problem when a hard working programmer puts us a little political statement than when some rich actor with a private jet tells me that I need to cut my carbon foot print:)
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Yes, but actors are the people least capable of discussing politics. I present Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey, and Al Gore as exhibits A, B, and C.
Corporations have known for a long time that only 535 people control a country of 300 million. But, their "sponsorship" is balanced and offset by the equally loaded special interest groups. Democracy in action, and candidates get campaign funds - win-win questionmark?
But, that doesn't mean the developers of open source software have no right to an opinion, public, private, protected, or otherwise. The idea of Notepad++ boycotting the Beijing Olympics sounds pretty silly - (the self-extracting installer was going to attend, but no longer will!) - but if Oprah gets to tell me who to vote for, then surely Notepad++'s dev can tell me about how evil China's government is.
DATABASE WOW WOW
While it's grossly disproportional, there's been economic growth for everyone in China the last decades as they moved to a market economy. Try to understand me correct when I say this: If you lived under Mao's China and didn't know much about the outside world, you'd think the leadership was brilliant as the standard of living has much approved. One of the most subjective definitions in the world is "poor". I read about "poor" children here (we're one of the wealthiest and most well-distributed countries in the world) and you just have to laugh. Are they starving? Are they freezing? Are they wearing their older brother's worn out clothes? Do they have to work instead of going to school? Are they lacking fundamental medicines and healthcare? No, it's completely superficial things like not having the right fashion clothes, not being able to take part in expensive social events, sports club memberships or school outings. That's pretty much taken straight out of a news article about it. I think most people in China are happy with the economic growth, and many probably don't want to "jinx" it by starting some kind of revolution. Call me a pessimist but I don't think anything will happen politically unless they get a large downturn ecnomically.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
In Open Source? One might as well ask Stallman to run Vista.
"In Closed Source? One might as well ask Gates to run Debian."
Whether a project is open source or closed source is irrelevant in this context and people who continually pretend that open source is any more political than closed source are talking nonsense.
All decisions, including monetary decisions, that affect other people are political decisions, whatever marketers might like to pretend.
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Beware deceptive astroturfers.
yes. but the patch probably won't be accepted.... if you were the project leader and the majority of the other developers disagreed with something that you were forcing onto the project, then that is where forking happens, whether it is political, technical or even personal.
porl
The reporter on this Reuters piece, Ben Blanchard, has lived and worked in China for many years and is widely regarded in China as one of the best of his generation in terms of China expertise. He speaks Mandarin fluently and reads and writes both traditional and simplified.
No one, including China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has ever suggested that he is "anti-China" not biased against either China or its government.
A dream is good. A plan is better.
One application, which it is likely that most Chinese people don't use, is causing nearly all users of the internet in China to be blocked from a wonderful source of software that many more Chinese and foreigners alike will use.
No, the Chinese Government is being silly. They are the ones who instigated the block, not sourceforge. They are the ones who are depriving chinese Internet users of a wonderful resource. Take it up with them. Protest. Sign petitions. Take up arms. Whatever. Don't blame us for the censorious policies of a foreign government.
Open Source is a neutral way of defining free software. That is non offensive to certain companies. The "free" in free software is about freedom. The philosophical basis of free software is about freedom of the USER and the PROGRAMMER. Therefore the basis of free software is political.
Fascism is also totalitarian, so that is no objection.
It's ridiculous that a Sourceforge-hosted site contains such a message, when it is known that countries will react by blocking the site, hurting the primary goal of sourceforge (to collaborate on developing Open Source Software).
The developers of said project should be ashamed of themselves.
Sourceforge and its services are provided for developing Open source software, not about spreading $project_admins_ political_message_of_the_day.
Not about doing $X where X is not developing OSS software and publishing details about OSS software.
It's a no-brainer that if one project insists on attempting to use their SourceForge resources to spread such messages, which have nothing to do with the objectives of the site, that one project should clearly be expelled from sourceforge.
There is a time and a place for posting political pro-boycott messages on a site that will cause enraged countries to block that site.
That place is not a community site whose purpose is something else.
It is really not very different from using your sourceforge pages to post viagra ads. (Which will get you banned as a spammer)
Every nation is guilty of crimes against humanity, but at least the others have the decency to bow their heads and lie about it.
You're right to a certain degree, yet I don't know whether I personally would like to see the Chinese government lie about their deeds. It's a side effect of a lack of democratic process -- those in power don't need to please the unwashed masses with sugar coated words, and obviously that translates to a relative lack of ability to please foreign audiences. But that in itself doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing.
I mean, if you accept that every nation is guilty of crimes against humanity (from time to time?), why not at least be honest and admit it's the darker side of human nature? Last I heard, honesty was a virtue. Or have those days gone by and all that matters now is the looks on the outside?
You may have problems with the Chinese government blatantly doing things considered atrocious in more civilized countries, but then sometimes I look at the USA and are relieved that my government isn't telling *jokes* (not even "lies") like "War on Terror". Both aren't nice, but it's the matter of which poison you're willing to take.
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That being said, some of the more famous accusations towards the Chinese government are simply magnified out of proportion. If you really investigate into the details you with a neutral, non-biased viewpoint, you might realize that they aren't as bad as how most western media paints them.
Don't quote me on this.
I'm not sure I follow, but I'll try. If you want to add a "Free Tibet!" splash screen, please do. If you want to create a patch that others can use, by all means do. If you want to submit the patch, feel free. Just don't expect the patch to be accepted by anyone. If it gets accepted, don't be surprised if someone else submits a patch to remove it or forks a version lacking the patch or makes the splash screen optional. They'd be free to do so as well.
I'm not sure were suppression comes into it unless you mean that rejecting your patch would be suppression. You can publish you patch or a forked version of the package all you want. You've no right to expect other to publish your work though. I'm free to not repeat what you say.
Unless you expect someone to hunt you down and destroy all copies of such a patch. If thats the case, I'm not qualified to help you. Maybe you need to move?