1995parham/github-do-not-ban-us

★ 11,734JavaScriptAudience · generalComplexity · 1/5Setup · easy

Mindmap

mindmap
  root((github-do-not-ban-us))
    What it is
      Open letter petition
      Community campaign
      Policy advocacy
    Background
      2019 US sanctions
      Iranian developers
      Account restrictions
    Requests made
      Export private repos
      Location not nationality
      Public apology
    Outcome
      Requests addressed
      Closed August 2019
      11000 stars solidarity

mindmap root((github-do-not-ban-us)) What it is Open letter petition Community campaign Policy advocacy Background 2019 US sanctions Iranian developers Account restrictions Requests made Export private repos Location not nationality Public apology Outcome Requests addressed Closed August 2019 11000 stars solidarity

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Things people build with this

USE CASE 1

Read the historical account of how GitHub trade-sanction restrictions affected developers in Iran and other countries in 2019

USE CASE 2

Learn about significant open-source projects built by Iranian developers through the catalog linked in the README

USE CASE 3

Reference as a case study in how the developer community organizes online advocacy campaigns around platform policy

USE CASE 4

Use the petition structure as a template when drafting a community statement about access restrictions on a developer platform

Tech stack

JavaScript

Getting it running

Difficulty · easy Time to first run · 5min

In plain English

This repository is a public letter and community petition addressed to GitHub, created by Iranian developers in response to GitHub restricting their accounts in 2019. It contains no software to install or run. Its purpose was to document the problem, rally support, and apply pressure for policy changes. The issue started when GitHub began enforcing US trade sanctions, which resulted in developers in Iran, Crimea, Cuba, Syria, and North Korea losing access to parts of the platform. Iranian developers specifically objected to two aspects: the restrictions were applied without warning, and GitHub banned accounts based on the history of IP addresses used, meaning Iranians living abroad were caught in the ban regardless of where they currently lived. The petition asked GitHub to allow affected users to make their private repositories and private gists public before losing access, to stop restricting users based on nationality rather than current location, and to issue a public apology in the way Slack had done when it faced a similar situation. The README includes updates noting that several of these requests were eventually addressed, and the campaign was formally closed in August 2019. To demonstrate the scale of Iranian participation in open-source software, the README lists well-known projects built by Iranian developers, including HarfBuzz (a text shaping library used across many operating systems), intro.js (a widely used onboarding tour library), and fl_chart (a popular Flutter chart package). A link to a more complete catalog is also included. The repository was translated into over fifteen languages by volunteers and gathered more than eleven thousand stars as a show of solidarity from the global developer community. The full README is longer than what was shown.

Copy-paste prompts

Prompt 1

Summarize the GitHub sanctions issue of 2019 and list the specific policy changes GitHub made in response to the github-do-not-ban-us campaign

Prompt 2

What notable open-source projects are credited to Iranian developers in the github-do-not-ban-us petition?

Prompt 3

Draft a community petition following the structure used in github-do-not-ban-us for a hypothetical case where a platform restricts developers based on nationality

Prompt 4

Explain what US trade sanctions meant for developers on GitHub in 2019 and how the situation was eventually resolved based on this repository

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