Notepad++ leaves SourceForge | Hacker News Reader

Notepad++ leaves SourceForge

notepad-plus-plus.org

195 pointsmichaelfairley76 comments

SourceForge doesn't have much choice in this, unless they're willing to violate US law.

For what it's worth, SourceForge allows projects to determine whether their downloads are subject to export laws, and to disable the blocks[1]. Support for this was added in early February, several months before the notepad-plus-plus.org domain was registered. There's no technical or legal reason why N++ had to move off SourceForge; they're simply throwing a hissy fit.

[1] http://sourceforge.net/blog/some-good-news-SourceForge-remov...

Agreed. As soon as this setting became available, I simply went it and set it to "does not incorporate ... encryption of any kind" for all of my projects that do not use encryption.

Wait-a-minute. Exportation of cryptography technology is still limited in the US? This law is long obsolete, why does it still apply?

IIRC exporting encryption to the short list of disallowed countries is still illegal.

> There's no technical or legal reason why N++ had to move off SourceForge; they're simply throwing a hissy fit.

What's wrong with moving off the server out of principle? While I'm American, I can't fault these guys if they suddenly felt less secure about the hosting of their work by a US company, especially if it's due to political reasons they'd have no recourse over if at some future point they risk being targeted (even unintentionally) by a future policy.

Acting on "out of principle" could be a quicker way to deep-six your business adventure.

Making political statements with your open source project releases leaves your project, and now political views, completely open to the community.

That is what they wanted, and that is what they will get - good or bad.

I'm curious, has siding with open-source ever actually hurt anyone? It's like saying I believe everyone should be able to use my product, and I'm going to work hard to make that possible...

It's also possible contributors who have been blocked from other projects would think this is one is blocked as well and just avoid all SourceForge projects.

"What's wrong with moving off the server out of principle?"

Nothing, but if that were the case, why move to France? It would be more appropriate to chose a country less infamous for internet censorship, such as Sweden, Norway, or the Czech Republic.

More appropriate for those who know what is the best option in terms of information share freedom. Maybe notepad++ does not know these countries are the best choices, currently, to host what they want.

Regardless, it does not look they went to the best possible option, but instead they went for something that is at least better than their current options. French hosting, in their terms, is better than Sourceforge. It's a step into something direction...

This direction is what is really important. If, they ever become aware of France limitations (and it would be easy to make them aware) they can improve their offerings.

Note however than any project that involves encryption at all - including just linking to encryption libraries or using OS-provided functions - cannot tick that box.

This doesn't seem to apply to Notepad++, but these days it applies to a great deal of apps. Any that can make SSL connections, for a start.

I highly doubt anybody is going to check if a project that has that box checked actually incorporate encryption.

Aside from everything else, I like the new site design. I hate to say it, but the old one on SourceForge was sort of hideous. And it was kind of sad, because I really love this project - it's vibrant, and it's creating some really great things in Notepad++. I recommend Notepad++ to people constantly, but every time I'd find myself having to say "now when you go to this site... just ignore how ugly and confusing it is, and click the link to download." (And I always had to tell them what to click to download - note to devs out there, don't call the download link "binaries," no non-hacker knows what that means, and also it helps to underline and/or highlight links the way every other site on the internet does).

The new site looks kind of like it's a Drupal form, but it's simpler and more intuitive than the old one already. Sections that you can understand, clear links. Yay! It'll be nice to just give people the URL and tell them to check it out.

Sourceforge itself is kind of an eyesore for all the projects hosted there, regardless of the design of their primary website.

Cuba? I'm not a North American, but isn't all the trouble with Cuba over now?

I recall a few months back that Nelson Mandela was on the terrorist watch list in the USA - And as such he wouldn't / couldn't enter the country.

Perhaps this is one of those "laws" that was forgotten?

Unfortunately there's a large, politically-influential group of Cuban exiles in Florida. In pretty much every recent presidential election cycle, Florida has been a crucial swing state that could go to either side, so neither party has wanted to upset that group by normalizing relations with Cuba. From a political standpoint there's a lot to lose and nothing to gain from it, unfortunately.

Why would Cuban exiles want to embargo their former home?

My understanding is that many of them fled following the Cuban Revolution and subsequent nationalization of property; the ones who were in Cuba at the time are likely either very old or dead by now, but presumably their descendants still harbor resentment over it. From the associated Wikipedia article:

"Cuba began expropriating land and private property under the auspices of the Agrarian Reform law of May 1959. Cuban lawyer Mario Lazo writes that farms of any size could be and were seized by the government. Land, businesses, and companies owned by upper and middle class Cubans were also nationalized, including the plantations owned by Fidel Castro's family. By the end of 1960, the revolutionary government had nationalized more than 25 billion dollars worth of private property owned by Cubans."

The angry Cuban ex-patriots are generally from that middle or upper class that had their property nationalized.

From what I recall, later immigrants and second-generation Cuban-Americans tend to be significantly less supportive of the hard-line stance towards Cuba. The original generation of immigrants dying off over time is likely what will lead to normalization with Cuba.

Because they hate Castro and they think, rightly or wrongly, the embargo helps.

The idea that the Cubans in Florida are mostly immigrants from 50 years ago isn't supported by data, there's a constant flow of Cubans fleeing Cuba. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_American#Demographics)

US citizens are still forbidden from travelling to Cuba, and an embargo forbidding US companies from trading with Cuba is still in effect.

Passed in 1996, not that long ago:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helms–Burton_Act

A lot of restrictions have been lifted, but not all of them. http://www.america.gov/st/texttrans-english/2009/April/20090...

Google does the same:

http://code.google.com/projecthosting/terms.html

Pretty ridiculous in this day and age.

The law is ridiculous or complying with it?

I think some people live in a fairy tale world. North Korea, for example, recently sunk a South Korean ship killing 41 people. There really are bad people in the world.

Personally, I think the Cuba issue is legacy and it's probably time to resolve it. The fear of communism is long gone. Now I think it's just a matter of a bunch of rich voters in Florida who want their nationalized land back, which probably isn't going to happen.

The US has killed far more than 41 people with lethal injections alone.

But that is irrelevant. Why shouldn't North Korea's residents be allowed to work on Free Software?

Open source developers working at the one, heavily monitored, most likely site-restricted cybercafé in Pyongyang?

Syria, Iran and Cuba are different matters entirely, but people in North Korea are limited by having no Internet connectivity in the first place, than by being blocked by sites in the US. You may as well ask why the civilizations of Andromeda are stopping us from selling our wares there.

So if they're already blocked off, why is it a legal requirement for US companies to block them?

I can't speak as to the policies of the US government, but aren't blocks like these related to the more typical physical sanctions of delivering products to a country? With the Internet, you can just VPN around these blocks anyway, so anyone in NK who wanted to access this stuff and had a connection could do so.

That said, since the only people in North Korea who are likely to access the Internet are the people in charge (who we "don't like"), it doesn't seem unreasonable to block their access to software they might use even if it's easy to circumvent anyway.

I agree, it's a law and they're following it. Sourceforge and Google are not responsible for that.

As far as North Korea, um... so, when the US kills 25 Afghans at a wedding ("oops! my video-game like predator drone readout made it look like they were definitely terrorists") what does that mean? I guess France should stop exporting Notepad++ to the US. Correct?

No, the issue is whether 'exporting' a text editor to N. Korea would REALLY make any difference. Perhaps the clueless, bribed, caviar-stuffed and prostitute-sucked morons in Congress think so, but most of them can hardly even send an email.

"No, the issue is whether 'exporting' a text editor to N. Korea would REALLY make any difference. Perhaps the clueless, bribed, caviar-stuffed and prostitute-sucked morons in Congress think so, but most of them can hardly even send an email."

Think about this for a few milliseconds before ranting. How would you write a law that blocked the bad "exports" while allowing the good "exports" through? It's much less work to write and administer to just to block them all to countries like North Korea.

I'd wager it's even less work not to block anything. Answer me this:

1) Can you point to scientific evidence, or even a carefully-reasoned argument, that blocking U.S.-hosted free software from "rogue" states like North Korea, Syria, or Iran either A) is a meaningful deterrent to the governments of such states or B) has a desirable effect on the citizens of those states?

2) Do you think it's likely that the people with power to make decisions about this actually thought rationally about any evidence or reasoning?

My provisional answers are 1) Not likely and 2) Fat chance.

1) No I can't. Can you prove the opposite? No. Pointless argument. Yes! So why even make it?

Can you find North Korea on this map?

http://paradoxoff.com/north-korea-night-map.html

I bet there aren't too many hackers staying up until dawn hacking on Notepad++. Why does a country with no electricity want to be on this list?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_with_nuclear_wea...

People in power, or anyone else for that matter, really don't have the time to debate the finer points of the export laws (which includes free software), so it's probably better that they just made a simple law that even developers can understand.

Someday, this will go away: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Demilitarized_Zone

Then software developers can find another problem that they can solve from the comfort of their Aeron chair.

The reason I made point 1 is because our default decision should always err on the side of freedom. Why would you bother restricting anything unless you can identify some benefit to restricting it? It's more work, and maximizing freedom often results in positive results when the freedom turns out to be useful in a way you didn't expect.

For all I know, not a single man in North Korea knows what the hell Notepad++ is. Maybe no North Korean citizen would have any use for any U.S.-hosted software at all. If that's true, then isn't that yet another reason not to restrict it?

Is it really too complicated to say: "Data is not subject to export control laws, unless it's in category X or Y (like cryptosystems are, under current law) in which case the following rules apply: so-and-so." I think it's disingenuous to suggest that officials writing export laws "don't have the time" to make any distinctions on such a large class of exports. Our federal laws are rarely guilty of having insufficient detail.

Additionally, I'd reiterate what other people have already mentioned, which is that if the (yet to be justified) goal is actually to stop these entities from using all this software, the goal is impossible. The law burdens U.S. hosts as much as it burdens foreigners, who can just use a proxy or a mirror in another country.

After reading through the other posts, I don't think Notepad++ was ever restricted by export controls. Sourceforge initially didn't allow them to specify that the software was not restricted by law so they restricted everyone.

So, other than software that contains encryption, what software is restricted?

Any software that uses encryption. If you link to OpenSSL, or call out to /usr/bin/gpg, you're toast.

I'll have to agree with you here. Banning physical exports may make sense - if North Korea can't import plutionum it's not very likely they'll get it. Or at least it's posssible to police the ban.

If the North Korean regime really wants to download notepad++ it's as good as impossible for anyone to stop them. All they need is a proxy in another country. Or someone travelling with a USB stick, or just two people using dropbox on either side of the border. Code is very different from physical good in this regard.

This is the same well where zero tolerance policies come from.

It's impossible to block open source software exports. Anyone in the entire world can download anything from anywhere; an attempt to block by country reflects a lack of understanding of how the internet works.

Blocking export of closed source/commercial software is more realistic, but still, the targets can always pirate or obtain what they want through a third party.

I wouldn't. I'd just take all of the open source projects like notepad++ and host them outside the US giving non-US hosting companies business, and leave all of the text editors using super-secret hi-tech military encryption on US hosting servers.

So, you are arguing that an accidental killing is the same as an intentional one?

You do realize that the US killings were an accident, correct? Friendly fire...kind of like this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Tillman

Here's a friendly fire list on Wikipedia. Most probably don't get cataloged.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_fire

So, it's safe to assume it will happen again in every current and future war.

The point is that wars are very ugly and imprecise. Now, I'm pretty sure that it is a war crime to intentionally kill innocent civilians, so yes, if the US starts doing this, I expect the rest of the world place embargos.

At any rate, you are free to leave your comfort zone and make the world a better place. It's easy to complain and have all the answers. It's an entirely different matter to effect change. I'm sure at least half of those morons in Congress would have nailed you to the wall for making such a flawed case trying to prove your point.

[Edit] I guess I only focused on his first statement. I addressed the common statement "Why does it hurt to allow the export of a text editor" in another post. In short, it's easier to make a blanket law. gcc, for example, could be used for weapons software development. Emacs? Well, it can run a version of Lisp! :-) Notepad++? Never used it. Anyway, who has time to evaluate every piece of software for export restrictions. Yes, people can get around them anyway, but that doesn't mean there shouldn't be speed bumps.

Ugh. We should forbid political posts on Hacker News. Such a time suck...

I think you may have missed his point

The point we should all take away from this is to avoid inflammatory comments that segue into the point you actually want to make. They serve only to distract and weaken the opinion.

A simpler statement would have sufficed - say, "I believe these laws are too broad and should be rethought, as the impact of violating it in this case would be negligible." Civility is key.

I don't think the point was to attack your example. I think the point was that some governments might be doing bad things, but why does this have to condemn the people?

They don't send email, as we've learned. They send an internet.

"I think some people live in a fairy tale world."

You're also in a fairy tale world if you think that 'axis of evil' countries are not going to get their hands on whatever opensource software they like. Most of this stuff is mirrored all over the place and so there is little one can do to stop this (assuming it is worth stopping them in the first place).

This stuff is mirrored all over the place precisely so that it remains available. And that is how it should be, imo.

Ooooh kay, lets look at the practicality of this:

If North Korea (as a government) wants something from Sourceforge's site, will blocking access to the site really prevent them from doing so for more than a second?

Meanwhile, if a North Korean wants something from Sourceforge's site, why are you blocking it? Similar to above, they can still get it, but all you're doing is punishing the civilians, most of whom have little to nothing to do with the government. How is this helpful?

Now, which of those two is the US Government at war with?

They were implying the law is ridiculous. Complying is the cost of existence in a nation.

Even if are any "civilian" internet users in North Korea (unlikely since using the internet requires government approval), I think it's safe to say that being stymied by US export restrictions on Sourceforge is the least of their problems...

From section 5 of http://code.google.com/projecthosting/terms.html: "regulations require that all postings of open source encryption code be simultaneously reported by email to the U.S. government"

Makes me want to organize a protest where everyone posts an implementation of ROT13 on GitHub and sends email to the govt. Of course, it would probably fall on deaf ears...

That's about the stupidest waste of time and energy I've every heard of. Also France is not neutral... they have their priorities too.

Good excuse for giving the site a much needed facelift.

I used to use it as a decent super-lightweight IDE with the "Explorer" plugin locked to the right side and the all the icon toolbars hidden. I mainly use Eclipse now that I finally configured it how I want, but I still used Notepad++ today to teach a graphic designer HTML and CSS. Due to Notepad++, I can't use an editor that doesn't have highlight-on-click for matching opening<> and closing</> tags anymore out of annoyance.

Barring coders from specific countries from using open source sounds totally wrong to me. The people are not the government in those countries, this ridiculous law harms the people more than the government. Still anyone able to read code will probably have no problem accessing the projects hosted in US based servers anyway.

Gah, I wish there was a contact link on there that wasn't twitter. The typo "fondamental" bugs me, then when looking for contact info I found "Developper" done over and over.

Just for the sake of explanation, "fondamental" and "développeur" are French words.

and 'aply' and 'gorvernment'?

Impatient Hacker English?

No it's just bad English and lazy. When I publish something that I write in German and expect people to read it, I go through the trouble of running it through a German language spellchecker. Doing otherwise is lazy and rude to your audience.

...and after running a spell checker on your text, put one or two insingificant but noticeable typos to let your readers know you're so cool you don't need a spell checker ;)

I figured because it was repeated it was simply the same word in a different language, but having it presented as English bugged me some =P

Sadly, Notepad++ has never been the most professional project out there. It's decent, though I tend to think people who are obsessed with it need to back away from Windows for a second and try Kate.

So, I think this might illustrate that high on their features list should be 'English Spellcheck'.

Ha. Try a professional project named "Kate".

I don't understand, do you mean there's something wrong with the name 'Kate' (KDE Advanced text Editor), that the appearance and conduct Kate developers are not professional, or that there is something unprofessional about the program?

The name, obviously. Doesn't matter what it stands for, it's a girls first name.

So is "Cat".

So is "Vi" ... well, it's short for Violet. Can't imagine calling a girl "Emacs" though ...

Damn right! Girly program languages suck. That's why I never even bothered to try Ada, and why my favourite is Python.

(you nong)

Well, Microsoft Bob isn't a very professional name either.

Well, it's just a text editor. I've had good experiences with girls named 'Kate', so for me, this is a bonus.

>It's decent, though I tend to think people who are obsessed with it need to back away from Windows for a second and try Kate.

You can run Kate on MS Windows now (in common with the rest of KDE4, http://windows.kde.org/).

Doesn't that violates the GPL? I remember reading that it can't discriminate who can download the code...

I know Sourceforge has to comply with US laws, but they still need to follow the GPL too.

No. The GPL says you have to give the source to anyone you give the binary to. If Sourceforge doesn't distribute a binary to anyone from those countries, they're in the clear.

On the other hand it means that if I give a GPLed binary to an Iranian, I can't satisfy the GPL just by saying "oh, the source is up on Sourceforge".

Good on them.

"You can access to all versions of Notepad++ on Download page of Sourceforge."

Way to be consistent, dudes.

Wow, impatient, aren't we? See: http://notepad-plus-plus.org/content/notepad-new-site-notepa...

  "The site is built by Drupal, some new features are added in the site, such as newsletter and multilingual system, and more functionalities might be added if need. It's not yet complete, and it'll be done ASAP."

"It's not yet complete, and it'll be done ASAP."

Chill.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com