Don’t use Git trackers that hate certain kinds of projects or developers.
In a few minutes, you are going to learn that there are source control websites on the internet who are biased about the projects they like on their platform, and those they don’t like.
Now you are probably wondering: “Ali, it is perfectly normal for people to hate certain kinds of projects”. Yes, I know that. There will always be people who hate what is called warez (because they are illegal), malware, viruses, Trojans (all illegal), online casinos (questionable and illegal in some jurisdictions), adult website code, weapons, specific MLM projects, etc. etc. But I’m not writing about any of that.
This is about entire classes of projects in a particular niche which become prohibited by certain Git sites because their owners don’t like them.
Let’s see some hypothetical example first, and then a real example:
Hypothetical Examples
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Of course, it is very difficult to imagine that AI will be banned any time soon, because of its extraordinary usefulness to society. But when you hear the AI Ethics communities speak out against it, that gives you a feeling that there’s a possibility that governments could regulate or even ban certain classes of AI in the future.
There was an instance several years ago when Google was criticized for labeling an image of a black man with a “gorilla” tag on Google Image. Of course, this was the AI’s fault and was not intentional. But given that the issue had to be fixed immediately, Google resorted to deleting the gorilla tag completely. So that tag no longer exists in Google’s databases.
But the general problem remains. Images of people of color being labeled by AIs as animals will always invoke accusations of racism.
Problem is, it’s not so easy to fix, because it’s a software engineering design flaw. But that’s not the point of this article, so let’s move on.
Critical Control Software
It is hard to believe that there would be platforms that do not like this kind of software, but not is always possible. I am talking about categories such as critical life control software, air traffic control software, anything used in a power plant, and pretty much any kind of software that could kill someone or severely damage the Earth if it fails.
If you have been looking at the terms of services of software, you will see that some of them have a clause saying that they are not intended for use in such environments. This is a legal clause to protect themselves from responsibility of making software work perfectly in these environments. From a legal perspective, it is very risky for software vendors to support these environments because they can get sued for millions of dollars if something goes wrong. So logically speaking, it makes sense for them to divest themselves from such industries.
Some software that you use every day also classified as critical control software, such as GNU libc, busybox (two system libraries), the Linux Kernel, GNU coreutils, systemd, libusb, the X Window System, and so on/so forth, simply because these parts might be used in embedded devices at those industries and connected to critical infrastructure. It doesn’t mean these projects will be held responsible for failures either, but generally, the responsibility lies with he vendor who supplies the embedded devices to the industry companies.
None of this means that a Git site can kick you out for making critical control software (I mean imagine trying to kick out the Linux Kernel of all things, if it wasn’t self-hosted). I’ll have more to say about that later.
Analytics Software
It’s hard to believe that people would have a grudge against analytics software either, considering that it has been very useful for identifying trends that result in better business decisions being made. For example, Medium itself uses analytics to track article and site performance among other things.
Of course, some shady companies have been using analytics data against their own users, like selling it, or perhaps phoning home. The most notable example of all this is Meta’s Facebook. Also, state agencies regularly harvest all kinds of data and use it against certain groups.
Does that mean that we should ban the use of analytics software? Absolutely not — that will send us back to the Stone Age of computing that is the ‘80s.
Strong Encryption Software
Any program or library that encrypts messages for you using an algorithm that can not be broken using modern hardware is called Strong Encryption Software. Encryption enables privacy, which is a fundamental human right. But it was not always like that.
In the early days of the internet, there was a controversy because the NSA wanted to read everyone’s messages and be the only one with access to strong encryption, so they attempted to make export control laws that demand other people to use easily broken (by the NSA) algorithms, starting with banning an encryption program called PGP.
Naturally, this caused an outrage, and people responded by printing the source code of PGP in books and other print media, including even T-shirts. The NSA realized hey were fighting a losing battle, so they gave up.
Antivirus software
Yeah, the software that basically kills viruses before they can infect your computer. If something does wrong in the code, it could crash your computer or destroy data. Plus, there are allegations that certain antivirus software are being used for government surveillance purposes. But this does not in any way diminish the usefulness of antivirus programs, especially since the average user will be tricked into downloading malware at least a few times.
Financial software and cryptocurrency
Surprise, surprise. It should come at no surprise to you that very bad things could happen if the software regulating access to your money fails, because you would not be able to pay your bills. Economies failing is one of the leading causes of civil unrest and revolt.
So how foolish could you be to have a grudge on financial software, just because it’s failure poses this?
In the same vein, cryptocurrency has a similar risk as traditional financial software, except it is much greater. Since the economy of crypto is contained entirely in software, a bug could cause all the nodes (copies of the software running on different computers) to fail, and rapidly send the value of the underlying currency to zero, because you can’t use it anymore.
However, cryptocurrency, just like anything else that resembles money, has seen its fair share of scams as well, from random crooks attempting to scam you online to entire exchanges failing (the most recent being FTX). Like I said, that is not a reason to hate on open source cryptocurrency projects in general either. And this particular niche will be the main focus of the rest of this article.
The case for banning cryptocurrency projects
If some Git site blanket bans crypto projects, then that implies one of two states of mind with the site’s operators:
1) Nearly all of the crypto projects are a legal liability that will give them trouble in the future, or
2) They must really hate cryptocurrency with a passion.
And this goes for all the other project kinds as well.
For instance, It makes sense for Gitee, a Git client based in China, to ban crypto projects, because cryptocurrency is prohibited in China. It’s the law; there’s nothing you can do about it.
What I am about to show you are two Git sites who are attempting to blanket ban crypto projects, but only because they hate them with a passion.
SourceHut
The announcement for this one came earlier this month (Hacker News). This Git site wants to ban crypto projects by 2023, and plans to update their terms of service to reflect that.
Their reason? Well, let’s see:
These domains are strongly associated with fraudulent activities and high-risk investments which take advantage of people who are suffering from economic hardship and growing global wealth inequality. Few to no legitimate use-cases for this technology have been found; instead it is mostly used for fraudulent “get rich quick” schemes and to facilitate criminal activity, such as ransomware, illicit trade, and sanctions evasion. These projects often encourage large-scale energy waste and electronics waste, which contributes to the declining health of Earth’s environment. The presence of these projects on SourceHut exposes new victims to these scams and is harmful to the reputation of SourceHut and its community.
This statement was clearly written by someone who doesn’t understand laws surrounding cryptocurrency, because otherwise, Github would’ve banned all these projects long ago, starting with Bitcoin Core.
Hosting a crypto project should not harm your reputation unless you do not regularly purge scam projects from your platform, in which case, it is your fault for not taking proper care of your site in the first place.
You should not have to wait for “the crypto industry to take action against these scams” because there is no way for them to take action. Even Microsoft can’t deal with its own tech support scammers, and they are a multi-billion-dollar company. And we regularly hear news about companies being helpless against hackers making data breaches.
With regards to sanctions evasion: Most cryptocurrencies are decentralized and are therefore not subject to US law. However, they are still subject to international law, since they are still contained in Earth.
Which means that anyone from Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Syria, Sudan, and Russia can use it all the same as other nationals. Crypto does not discriminate between nationalities like the current banking system does. It gives a lifeline of hope to people to be their own bank.
And regarding those people who fall for “get rich quick” schemes, two things I want to mention:
1) Get rich quick was not invented by crypto
2) The people who fell for these scams are victims of their own greed, and it is only the cryptocurrency’s fault if it was a scam.
The only way to stop scams is if everybody becomes smarter and recognizes scamming patterns. Unfortunately, most people don’t want to learn anything, they just want blame everything else when life becomes inconvenient for them!
And this is where the crux of the problem is. If the industries themselves can’t prevent scams involving their own products, then how can a random website possibly prevent them by banning them from its website?
It’s bonkers.
Anyway, SourceHut is a small website but hopefully you’re not using it, if you have any kind of project there, not just crypto projects, put them somewhere else now because the owners have demonstrated that they do not give a pair of dingo’s kidneys about open-source.
Codeberg
This one is more egregious then SourceHut because the only reason they’re doing this was because SourceHut’s actions “inspired them to”. Fortunately, it has not been commenced yet.
Unfortunately, it looks like it will be commenced soon if nobody else intervenes and tries to stop that.
This is a discussion thread someone opened two weeks ago to try to get crypto projects banned on their site (I mean, they claim it’s a “we’re trying to discourage crypto projects from coming here in the first place” but its all the same to me. Trying to do something is morally equivalent to doing the action itself.) They locked it after a storm of users came in to protest that proposal, likely to stifle public debate, and then reopened it a week later, thinking that the noise has died down.
That’s when the second wave of us hit.
The word spread, and more people, such as myself, came in and attempted to explain to them why this is such a bad idea. They closed their eyes and called us cryptobros and arrogant, and said we are wasting their time because we don’t even use Codeberg. But it’s not about that. It’s about making a stance that open-source code hosting sites must not discriminate against projects. That is against the mantra of open source.
It is very ironic that a website that claims to “welcome the world” on its homepage has such a burning hatred of crypto projects. It strikes me almost as a real-life Ultron. Hopefully the third wave, the fourth wave, and even more developers come to convince them of the errors in their judgement.
The Crypto Age Of Ultron
Open source projects have licenses which guarantee its availability all around the world, on any medium, and if some entitled people (usually the ones who are responsible for safeguarding this access in the first place) think they can take that access away, they are in for an ugly surprise because that software will appear in more places.
Just look at what happened when Hollywood trolls tried to take down YouTube-dl from Github. So many more clones were made and were hosted everywhere, and still exist today. I’m not saying that Github is going to ban crypto projects next — far from it, but its worth pointing out the consequences of betraying open source principles for personal opinions.
Open Source is a human right. Its reproduction ensures that nobody can shut it down or deplatform anyone they don’t like.
Github and other Git sites tried exactly that with Tornado Cash as a result of OFAC sanctions. The code just spread to other places (and the sanctions themselves were partially reversed).
What you should learn from this article is that if anyone threatens to boot you off their platform because they don’t like your projects, just leave and don’t care. The haters are not worth your time. Go on and develop great software while everyone else gets stuck in #woke debates.
And if you are kicked off because you are living in a US sanctioned country, just take your creativity with you as well. No government can restrict or take away open source from the world.
