<story><title>GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran</title><url>https://twitter.com/sebslomski/status/1344219609923276801</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>whack</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;You have relinquished so much control, why be surprised if that stares you back in the face?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;We live in a market-based economy with highly specialized division of labor. The idea of &amp;quot;keeping control&amp;quot; of all our necessities and dependencies, is an archaic one. The system generally works, because we create sensible laws that foster trust, vet for partners who are trustworthy, and name-and-shame entities that violate our trust.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re a behemoth the size of FANG or a nation-state, maybe it is worth the effort needed to insulate yourself against these black-swan scenarios. But for a startup or small-medium-business that no one has heard of? That just sounds like bad prioritization.&lt;p&gt;All of which is to say... we should absolutely be surprised when a vendor like GitHub blocks an entire company because of an employee logging in from Iran while on travel. And this surprise, and the resulting name-and-shame, is what keeps the wheels of our economy turning.</text></item><item><author>factorialboy</author><text>So many dimensions come to play here.&lt;p&gt;1. There&amp;#x27;s the obvious legal aspect i.e. how these laws are framed and interpreted.&lt;p&gt;2. Then there&amp;#x27;s the geopolitical aspect. Is it fair to impose sanctions on Iran.&lt;p&gt;3. There&amp;#x27;s another aspect around GitHub policy that asks if an entire organization be banned for the location of one team member.&lt;p&gt;4. Finally, there&amp;#x27;s the aspect of relinquishing control. Your app development is on the cloud. IDEs are on the cloud. Deployments are on the cloud. App stores are on the cloud.&lt;p&gt;You have relinquished so much control, why be surprised if that stares you back in the face?&lt;p&gt;Ironically, Git is a decentralized version control system.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>throwaway0a5e</author><text>I think it&amp;#x27;s the opposite.  When you&amp;#x27;re FANG or a nation state preparedness doesn&amp;#x27;t matter.  You have strings to pull to get fair treatment.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re a small guy you get screwed and have no practical means of recourse.  The little people are the ones who need to care about this kind of stuff.</text></comment>
<story><title>GitHub blocks entire company because one employee was in Iran</title><url>https://twitter.com/sebslomski/status/1344219609923276801</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>whack</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;You have relinquished so much control, why be surprised if that stares you back in the face?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;We live in a market-based economy with highly specialized division of labor. The idea of &amp;quot;keeping control&amp;quot; of all our necessities and dependencies, is an archaic one. The system generally works, because we create sensible laws that foster trust, vet for partners who are trustworthy, and name-and-shame entities that violate our trust.&lt;p&gt;If you&amp;#x27;re a behemoth the size of FANG or a nation-state, maybe it is worth the effort needed to insulate yourself against these black-swan scenarios. But for a startup or small-medium-business that no one has heard of? That just sounds like bad prioritization.&lt;p&gt;All of which is to say... we should absolutely be surprised when a vendor like GitHub blocks an entire company because of an employee logging in from Iran while on travel. And this surprise, and the resulting name-and-shame, is what keeps the wheels of our economy turning.</text></item><item><author>factorialboy</author><text>So many dimensions come to play here.&lt;p&gt;1. There&amp;#x27;s the obvious legal aspect i.e. how these laws are framed and interpreted.&lt;p&gt;2. Then there&amp;#x27;s the geopolitical aspect. Is it fair to impose sanctions on Iran.&lt;p&gt;3. There&amp;#x27;s another aspect around GitHub policy that asks if an entire organization be banned for the location of one team member.&lt;p&gt;4. Finally, there&amp;#x27;s the aspect of relinquishing control. Your app development is on the cloud. IDEs are on the cloud. Deployments are on the cloud. App stores are on the cloud.&lt;p&gt;You have relinquished so much control, why be surprised if that stares you back in the face?&lt;p&gt;Ironically, Git is a decentralized version control system.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Erlich_Bachman</author><text>There is plenty of solutions that are keeping the data in-house. Or allow for easy exporting&amp;#x2F;importing (github is not too bad in this regard though). None of these solutions go against the &amp;quot;highly specialized division of labor&amp;quot;. This is a question about what kind of solutions we build, not how labor is divided or not.</text></comment>