US sanctions force GitHub to block developers based in Iran, Crimea and Syria

GitHub CEO Nat Friedman says the company has to block developers in sanctioned countries to comply with US laws

GitHub has blocked developers in several countries from accessing some sections of the service due to new US sanctions.

On Friday, a large number of users based in US-sanctioned countries, including Iran, the Crimea, and Syria, said that they were unable to access their accounts on GitHub.

GitHub CEO Nat Friedman later confirmed on Twitter that the company had, indeed, banned access to the service to users based in sanctioned countries as the company was "required to comply with the US export law".

Friedman also said that new restrictions were meant to prevent such users (including those based in North Korea and Cuba) from accessing GitHub Marketplace and private repositories, as well as using private paid organisation accounts.

Access to public repositories was, however, available to everyone, the company stated.

"This includes limited access to GitHub public repository services (such as access to GitHub Pages and public repositories used for open source projects), for personal communications only, and not for commercial purposes," GitHub said in an online post.

On Friday, Russian developer Anatoliy Kashkin, based in Crimea, said that he was unable to create and access private access private GitHub repositories. Kashkin revealed that his website, which was hosted on Microsoft's service, had also gone down.

Kashkin had earlier hosted on GitHub the code of a programme, GameHub, which allowed users to download and run games from different sources, including Humble Bumble and Steam.

Another developer Hamed Saeedi Fard, from Iran, complained that GitHub had blocked his account without giving any option to back up his data.

In an online post on Medium, Fard said that his code repository had been disabled and he was unable to access parts of the GitHub site.

"I don't think the sanctions problem is going to be solved in short-term but I really think such actions will directly effect on people's lives here and people need to react to things like this," Fard said.

"You cannot simply label people guilty just by their nationality. This is not a new story for us but this latest one really bothered me cause GitHub was an essential tool for my job as a developer. I hope someday they figure out who they are really hurting by such actions, Ordinary people."

However, GitHub said that blocked users who believe their accounts were wrongly suspended can appeal the ban by filling out an appeal form.

"If a user believes that they have been flagged in error, then that user has the opportunity to appeal the flag by providing verification information to GitHub," the company stated.

"If GitHub receives sufficient information to verify that the user is not a resident of a sanctioned territory or otherwise restricted by U.S. economic sanctions, then the flag will be removed. Please see Appeals Request Form."

Microsoft-owned GitHub is the world's largest host of source code. It is popular among developers for hosting and sharing code and software. The company was acquired last year by Microsoft for $7.5 billion.

Last month, GitHub announced that it was acquiring Pull Panda, a start-up behind code review tools for GitHub developers. As part of the deal, Pull Panda's three products - Pull Reminders, Pull Analytics, and Pull Assigner - were made available in the GitHub Marketplace for free.