Too many people are missing the point of actions like this. You want to make lives of everyone in Russia more unpleasant to send the signal that a war can’t be an easy PR win. If you start a war, it should suck for your citizens, even if they are watching the news from a safe distance. If your leader starts a war, your life will become worse and you will be poorer personally. Sure, this is less effective for authoritarian countries, but is still useful.

Of course most Github users from Russia aren’t guilty, and many of them are already against the war. Good for them! But that’s not the point.

Interesting how fast people lose all compassion and sympathy, and really humanity, towards a whole population which itself might be against what it's leaders are doing ...

Also: I have yet to see such suggestions directed at the US or Israeli population for the many, well-known war crimes their leaders have committed and still are.

This would be very similar to limiting email to and from Russia. A bad idea. Put a permanent Ukrainian colour theme on GitHub and a page explaining that GitHub condemns the act instead.

They might block it anyways because it can be used to share information, so that is not a concern.

Apple/Google could easily add a persistent notification to devices in Russia saying something along the lines of "The world condemns the invasion of Ukraine".

"Russian government has been building internet wall for a while now, let's help them and cut them out immediately and for free, that will show them!" - Somebody smart /s

Yeah: don't hold your breath on that.

This is why self-hosting is the ultimate best solution and is a big criterion when i choose software.If you have moral/ethical problems towards an entity: you can solve them, because you're in control, not some "magical cloud fairy" you have to beg to stop providing useful resources to a regime(yes, ultimately even normal well-intended citizens become part of the regime, like it or not) that kills your family or close ones.

As stated previously in my comments, the corporate western world is either personally fetishizing russian or totalitarian regimes (there >are< other examples besides russia/china from the past 10-15 years), or they/their higher-ups are too invested into those countries to be able to do something meaningful without hurting themselves and their own financial well-being.

But does this not impact ALL russians including those protesting against putin? Also, does this not go against the entire FOSS philosophy- free as in libre and free as in gratis?

Github is fully available in Iran after securing a license to operate there from the US government. GitHub is about developer freedom. [0]

Why would they be against developer freedom in Russia?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648585

As it has already been noted in the issue’s comments - this move won’t affect Putin’s supporters (yes, they exist in Russia and they aren’t just a few freaks), it won’t even affect the majority of those living in Russia. The most affected group will be young-middle aged educated people who are interacting with the rest of the world (ad opposed to the rest who can be fed any BS by state TV) and who are mostly in opposition to Putin’s actions. So it does more harm than good. Roskomnadzor has started ”restricting”/throttling traffic to FB and probably other big international websites/social networks, so the options to get more independent info about the reality are getting scarce in Russia.

Why not cut off Russia from the internet and any form of tech really? That would send them into a free fall, wouldn't it? Some people immediately bring up China, but those who know history, know very well that China is Russia's frenemy at best.

I'm just speculating here, but what if say Microsoft sent a Russia-wide update that wipes all data and kills Windows?

Cut everything. This is probably among the less effective sanctions as its probably not affecting Putin supporters or anyone in power but more osint volunteers and similar.

But do cut off civilian exports to Russia such as airplane parts. Ten time zones is a big place once the Boeings and Airbuses (90%+ of fleets?) are grounded for maintenance.

Instead of blocking, I recommend using the opportunity and attention to provide visitors from Russia with objective information about about the war to counter lies from the Russian government. Russia is engaged in a shameful war and they are hiding its true extent from their population.

Stupid idea. Move on.

My 2 cents, if somehow github can, throttling the Russian ip may be good.

1. It still provide access to citizens

2. Those with vpn can still access it unthrottled

3. It makes the news and set precedent

4. Nobody should underestimate how angry a programmer with a slow connection will be

EDIT: with recent censorship from Russia, it's a tricky situation if github show some "invasion" notice there. Either Russia block github themselves or they irritated because they can't do anything.

Most young educated russians (the ones that use github) are against this war already, the problem is that no one can really do anything as literally holding a blank piece of paper in front of any government building will get you arrested.

Those are not the people you want to target, target the elites close to Putin, those are the ones that could probably force some change.

Stop this stupid separatism. If you’re an engineer, rather ask for the root causes hidden behind the scenes. Bonus hint: main stream media with their war propaganda won’t tell you the root causes. They infect you with further separatism ideas.

Sounds good. While they're at it, also:

- cut off Israel from GitHub for the occupation of Palestine

- cut off Saudi Arabia from GitHub for the invasion of Yemen

- cut off the US from GitHub for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq

- etc.

No double standards for the same imperialisms, please.