Free Software, not as in ‘free speech’, nor as in ‘free beer’
ahmadhaghighi.com
ahmadhaghighi.com
Compare this to any number of other egregious events - like the latest rounds of personal data exposure from various corporations on the front page all of this week - and the fact that things like that have zero repercussions for the corporations who failed to secure our data.
Expose the PII of millions of citizens - zero punishment or repercussions. But oh no, if you happen to have someone in Iran working on your project, then watch out!
Why is there such a gaping, borderline incomprehensible, asymmetry here?
If I understand you right, you're asking why the state prioritizes enforcement of laws that encourage harm to Iran rather than laws that are supposed to discourage harm to US (and maybe other) consumers?
I think that happens because the state is a tool of the overclass and overthrowing Iran is in their interest while protecting consumers is not. In fact, the lalter is likely counter to their interests.
The question of how overthrowing Iran is useful used to be easier to explain so it deserves some attempt given the current situation. Iran acting independently has some ability to effect oil and gas prices, although this has decreased significantly over time. It's still of interest to the US and especially to some of the US's allies though because alternative sources of energy feed not only Iran but other opponents of the US (e.g. NK, Afghanistan, Syria, etc) and can also still threaten if not decimate smaller producers. In other words, it reduces the geopolitical power of the US and they have less ability to coerce other states. Then there's the the geopolitical game more local to Iran, where Iran is funding multiple opponents to Israel in Gaza, Lebanon and opponent of KSA in Yemen. Why care about Isarel's interests? Well obviously there's significant economic overlap but also consider the famous quote by General (and former Secretary of State) Alexander Haig "Israel is the largest American aircraft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk, does not carry even one American soldier, and is located in a critical region for American national security." So, again, defeating Iran is consolidation of power in another way. There's more to it than that and it's become more complicated as time goes on but this is what I can think of off the top of my head.
On the other hand, ask yourself why would most of the powerful lobbies in the US be interested in advocating enforcement of the privacy laws and such that you care about? How does that benefit who pays for them? And where there are interests of outright corruption or coercion, why would anyone pay for that to be in your interest rather than prioritize their own?
You can work the logic backwards from realist rules too: Normally, you aren't going to get any result that doesn't benefit the state and those who have most influence over its use. (See neorealism in IR and public choice theory but also all of anarchist and "Libertarian" theory for why.)
So, in some ways it benefits the overclass directly and in other ways it just sharpens (or keeps sharp) their tool.
The notion that Iran's military threat exclusively down to antagonism of Israel is another conspiracy theory - because their actions clearly are much broader.
The concern over Iran is founded in the fact that since their Islamic Revolution, they've been an open antagonist of the US and the West, they constantly threaten the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, the stability of the Middle East. Since they have embarked on their Nuclear Program which they are using to Blackmail the world, it's become a much more significant issue.
Iran's 'problem with oil' is not their ability to supply, it's that they are literally attacking Saudi Arabia both directly and indirectly (via Houthis) and trying to overthrow House of Saud, Bahrain, and eventually the other Gulf states. They're constantly threatening commerce (mostly Oil) in the Gulf.
This antagonism by the way is rooted in centuries-old Shia vs. Sunni conflict over the righteous claim to 'True Islam'.
Iran's destabilizing and support of terrorism against Israel is of course well founded, but their actions against Saudi Arabia are more direct and have much bigger direct repercussions. Of course, the overthrow of Israel has probably the most indirect knock-on effects which would throw the entire region into chaos.
And by the way 'Big Business' in the world would much prefer to end sanctions. All of that Iranian Oil will be spent on US and German 'stuff' and Tim Cook would definitely want to sell them all iPhones.
Protection of individuals privacy, so that their emails and SS numbers aren't accidentally made public, are basically an orthogonal issue - not even business issues are aligned.
This talk of a nebulous 'overclass' is not helpful to your argument if you conflate their own needs especially 'money' - which most of them wold prefer to make in Iran if they could. The US has a complicated leadership class that's not easily lumped into groups. We're seeing more progress on issues of privacy so cross your fingers.
> The notion that Iran's economic actions on 'oil pricing' is any material threat to anything is totally unfounded, as they don't have the economic power to do such a thing.
The 1979 oil crisis [1] is evidence to the contrary, but as I said, that influence has declined with the rise of American and Russian gas, especially the agile dynamism of American fracking. I also explicitly mentioned that it is a threat to minor producers and aide to opponents of the US (Think about those under sanction.) It would certainly effect Saudi Arabia's bottom line to some extent. The exact degree of any of these effects is something hotly debated in IR.
> Iran's 'problem with oil' is not their ability to supply, it's that they are literally attacking Saudi Arabia both directly and indirectly (via Houthis) and trying to overthrow House of Saud, Bahrain, and eventually the other Gulf states. They're constantly threatening commerce (mostly Oil) in the Gulf.
No, the problem is much older than the Houthi rebellion and I did explicitly mention them. The Houthi rebellion began only in 2004. This conflict has existed since 1979 at the absolute latest. Let's not forget that the CIA and MI6 overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh, replacing him with their proxy the Shah, in 1953. Mossaddegh's most significant policy being the nationalization of oil. [5]
> This antagonism by the way is rooted in centuries-old Shia vs. Sunni conflict over the righteous claim to 'True Islam'.
I can't agree. I think all causes are material and based on the security and economic interests of all actors involved as is basic to modern realist international relations theory. [2] Any flavor of Islam, by these theories, is just a means to an end, just a tool.
> Protection of individuals privacy, so that their emails and SS numbers aren't accidentally made public, are basically an orthogonal issue - not even business issues are aligned.
Yes, as I said, it's not in their interests and contrary to their interests since it would cost, which answers the question that was asked.
> This talk of a nebulous 'overclass' is not helpful to your argument if you conflate their own needs especially 'money' - which most of them wold prefer to make in Iran if they could. The US has a complicated leadership class that's not easily lumped into groups.
That rests on a refuted premise, but I'll say there's nothing nebulous about the section of the capitalist class able to afford lawyers, lobbyists, and bribes to effectively influence foreign policy. [3][4]
Overall, the main thing I think you miss is that all of the Iranian state's actions are perceived by it as being in its material interest. Its goal is to maximize its security and satisfy its economic needs and it's attempting to do that, just as every other state.
Anyway, it was just off the top of my head. The situation is complex and changing. I had no intention of writing a comprehensive dissertation.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_oil_crisis
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Offensive_realism#Main_tenets
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_choice#Special_interest...
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
In short your 'first' concern about Iran's 'Oil' pricing etc. doesn't have any bearing on the situation.
2. Your response re: Houthi's, completely side-stepped the main point, which is that Iran is currently an antagonizing agent, directly attacking Saudi Arabia - literally knocked out 1/2 their refining capability in a military assault, and that the situation in Yemen is considerably worse than it ever was, with Houthis launching Iranian missiles directly into Saudi Arabian airports.
In any other situation - the result of 'missiles knocking out 50% production, and missiles raining down on major airports' would be war.
This is absolutely 'antagonizing' - they are directs acts of war by Iran - which both your 'It's Israel' premise, and your 'Houthi is an Old Thing' premise have ignored.
Of course, they're also grabbing merchant ships, shooting down airplanes (their own) - all that has to be put in the mix.
3. Finally - that a 'class of lawyers and lobbyists are trying to influence foreign policy' - doesn't make your argument.
There are 'lawyers and lobbyists' of every kind, pushing for policy changes in every direction. That's normal.
You have not provided any evidence that the leadership class, as a whole, is acting to maintain Iranian sanctions, because it's completely contrary to the interest of capitalism.
It's irrational that the 'Capitalist Class' wants to maintain sanctions, it does not benefit them in any way.
Here's is Boeing's loss of billions of dollars in contracts due to sanctions. [1]
The argument that Boeing and other F100 CEO's are pushing for sanctions, which costs them billions ... is not going to work.
Ergo - it's far more complicated than your argument insinuates.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/here-are-the-businesses-most-af...
> In short your 'first' concern about Iran's 'Oil' pricing etc. doesn't have any bearing on the situation.
Iran owns 10% of the worlds oil reserves and 17% of the worlds gas reserves. In 2012 before the embargo, Iran was the second largest oil exporter in OPEC. Natural gas production was skyrocketing, growing vertically to 700 million cubic meter/day by 2012. The US currently produces 766,200 cubic meters/day.
If you don't think Iran had the power to effect oil and gas prices before the embargo then I don't know what to tell you. It's just supply and demand. So far you're just making assertions without any analysis or evidence.
> This is absolutely 'antagonizing' - they are directs acts of war by Iran - which both your 'It's Israel' premise, and your 'Houthi is an Old Thing' premise have ignored.
Again, I don't know what to tell you. I'm not really interested in this "antagonizing" (or not) dichotomy. States act in their own interests. All of these states have resource and security conflicts with each other that aren't new and that aren't going to go away. Also, I said that the Houthi rebellion is a relatively new thing, not old. The conflict predates them. The US and UK orchestrated a coup d'etat in 1953 prior to everything you mention. The Iranian Revolution was in 1979 prior to everything you mention.
> There are 'lawyers and lobbyists' of every kind, pushing for policy changes in every direction. That's normal.
> You have not provided any evidence that the leadership class, as a whole, is acting to maintain Iranian sanctions, because it's completely contrary to the interest of capitalism.
I didn't claim anything about "as a whole." If you re-read what I wrote more carefully, you will see that. Whoever's policy was implemented is the dominant section of the overclass. They won, it's how we know they had (or still have) the most power. That's basically a tautology. Moreover, I refuted the premise for this part of your argument rests on twice now, so I hope that works for you.
I'm not trying to be patronizing, but please read what I've written more carefully before you respond and chill your tone.
The Iranian Government is trying to destabilize the Middle East including threatening the world with an nuclear program, attempting to overthrow House of Saud, having destroyed 50% of it's refinement industry by direct military attack (aka major act of war) with the objective turning Saudi Arabia into a Syrian mess, supporting Houthi rebels towards direct attacks on Saudi civilians, destroying Israel, arming terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah towards that objective, and the United States as well, if they could, among other things including state sponsored terrorist attacks around the world including bombings and assassinations in Europe [1].
AT&T has accidently made public some people's phone numbers, it isn't trying to get nuclear weapons to use as cover to overthrow nations in it's periphery.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_and_state-sponsored_terro...
This sounds an awful lot like what the American government is and has been doing for a long, long time...In fact, America's nuclear program didn't just threaten the world, but caused actual harm. Where are the international sanctions?
Which is false of course. It was the key ingredient in ending the worst war the world has ever seen, and since then, major wars have gone by the wayside.
Decade by decade in the US-backed world order, there have been fewer and fewer major conflicts.
The world is inherently unstable, it's barely held together by somewhat organized powers of which the US is by far the biggest pillar.
The world as we know it with open seas, open Panama, Suez, Gulf, peace between Egypt, Israel and Saudi, relative freedom of movement and commerce is an artifact of that order of which the US is the biggest pillar.
Without that order (and possibly just without the US alone, as it's hard to know if Europe+Japan+Korea+Aussie etc. could step up in a coordinated way), it would be something completely different, and in almost every scenario, much worse.
The Iranian Regime is a toxic entity that literally their own citizens would overthrow in an instant given an opportunity to do so - we're all waiting for the time when they collapse so everyone, especially Iranians citizens such as the author of this article, can move forward and participate in FOSS without getting caught up in geopolitics.
I can rightfully see this leading to questions about how "free" Red Hat really is when it needs to bow to military interests like this for commercial reasons (they want to keep those enterprise support contracts with the DoD). Software freedom was always meant to refer to freedom for users, though, not freedom for developers.
I think it's a very apt question. Free Software isn't free if you can only use it as long as the US doesn't deem your country as hostile. (Note: your country, not even you as a specific individual. It's that crazy). Free Software isn't Free-as-in-friendly-to-the-US, or at least it shouldn't be.
I can write a FLOSS app and decide to distribute it only to people whose name is Amy, and it will remain 100% FLOSS as long as these Amys have all their freedoms guaranteed (including the freedom to redistribute that software to anyone else).
The only thing that seems at odds with software freedom (at least as understood by FSF and OSI) shown in this article is Fedora's "By clicking on and downloading..." screen. IANAL, but "you can't redistribute this to XYZ" sounds like "this software is non-free" to me.
This is actually an interesting problem. If I make a FLOSS app, but my government decides against my will that neither I nor anyone I shared it with can share it any further, is it FLOSS anymore? I guess no, but what if I break the law and share it anyway?
> You can use all these software even in Iran though. You just have to get it from somewhere else.
I think using the distro or even getting access to the source code is not the issue. This dev likely already has a local copy. But how is he going to legally get newer copies of the source code or meaningfully collaborate with other contributors?
Let's say he says "screw this" and manages to somehow host a fork in an Iranian server. How are other contributors based in the US going to share their contributions without legal risks?
Also, being able to get newer copies is not an issue from the Free Software definition point of view. All it cares about is whether you're free to do things with a copy you already got.
Don't get me wrong, taking away the ability to collaborate and having to jump through hoops to be able to participate in modern world are real and severe problems - it just has nothing to do with software freedom per se (at least unless you're prevented from sharing the obtained software with someone else).
Honest question, what is your source for this? Is it opinion or is it part of some declaration from some group?
What happens when a developer is also a user? As I get it, for this particular developer, the end effect is the same.
For me, a developer and a user are one in the same here, just different parts on a spectrum with many shades. I am extremely sympathetic to the author of the article because I really don't agree with the position alleged here:
>They're trying to keep Iranian contributors out of the code base because they fear the Iranian government can lean on him to plant malicious code.
This is not a threat vector, not really. Crytpo has made it that any developer with the skill and will can become the vector for such an attack. We can see this in ransomware readily, with almost weekly articles on how relatively unsuspecting developers are bought up and used to develop/spread ransomware, and I see absolutely no reason why a truly interested government couldn't do the exact same. If it's good enough for the billions of dollars the crypto-gangs are running, I'm sure a government could make it work all the same...
I'm not sure I can see sanctions like this as anything but political posturing, and I question the efficacy of it when in practice, the result is stuff like this that just denies simple freedoms that the US has no right denying to anyone.
Edit: Just to clarify, I am not proposing you are personally responsible for the above claims or expecting you to defend them, my question(s) are in earnest and combined with some personal opinions of course. So if some of the statements seem challenging towards you, it is not intentional, just a late friday post for me.
> What happens when a developer is also a user? As I get it, for this particular developer, the end effect is the same.
I think the parent comment's point was that open source doesn't mean everyone is entitled to contribute back to the main project. As a user you may be a developer by trade, and you are certainly free to modify and share the source code, but the project maintainers are free to not include your changes back into their repository. A prime example of this is SQLite, which is open source despite the fact that they don't accept code submissions outside of the core team.
>> They're trying to keep Iranian contributors out of the code base because they fear the Iranian government can lean on him to plant malicious code.
> This is not a threat vector, not really.
It really is. The Linux kernel has itself thwarted what appeared to be an attempt by U.S. intelligence services to inject vulnerabilities into the kernel source code. Now the fact that the U.S. government was itself the threat may make worries about Iran doing the same seem rather silly, but in this case I think the fact that Fedora source code is used by the DoD makes sense.
All this to say, I'm certainly not happy about this situation. A big part of the spirit of open source is to overcome our differences in an attempt to solve shared problems. That's why the OSI definition of open source requires that open source licenses not discriminate against persons, groups, or fields of endeavor. That being said, however much open source may not want to be interested in politics, it is certainly true that politics is interested in open source.
>It really is. The Linux kernel has itself thwarted what appeared to be an attempt by U.S. intelligence services to inject vulnerabilities into the kernel source code. Now the fact that the U.S. government was itself the threat may make worries about Iran doing the same seem rather silly, but in this case I think the fact that Fedora source code is used by the DoD makes sense.
I think this is tangential though to what I'm saying. It's not about whether or not attacks like this __are possible__, it's that there's absolutely no reason that a contributor from a specific region is any more of a threat than any other. Nothing stops Iran or any other sanctioned country from getting US based VMs + crypto and slipping/sneaking in some code. It's not about if a specific country makes a backdoor, it's "is there a backdoor at all?" Any secret backdoor snuck in for sale by an interested party is just as usable by a given government as one made by Iran.
For me, it just falls flat as a real security analysis; heck, I imagine a sick irony where a US created back-door inserted by one agency ends up being used to leak data from another agency. A backdoor is a backdoor.
That doesn't quite explain why you don't even have read access in Iran though:
> Through Iran’s IP range, you cannot even clone a simple project from GitLab or pull the Nginx image from Docker Hub or Google Container Registry!
By making the lives of Iran citizens miserable, the US government expects the Iran citizens to go against their government.
If citizens put enough pressure on the Iran government and go rebel against it, the US government can justify a military intervention to protect "human rights" or something like that.
It's the same Cold War playbook over and over again.
During the recent Cuban protests, republican pointed towards the fact that some protesters were waving american flags as a proof that the cuban government was Satan and any measure was justified in trying to bring them down.
Anybody pointing out that US sanctions were responsible for a fair share of the suffering of these protesters was denounced as a commie sympathizer.
You don't.
You can't reasonably ensure that, so by induction the only solution is to sanction (read: blockade) the entire population and its real economy. Which is a massive human rights abuse.
It is selfish and demanding and bullying, but it's not pointless. Iran and its people can change things to pursue further interaction with the US sphere of business influence or they can choose to go their own way. It is nonviolent pressure towards one of two outcomes where either is acceptable to the US.
Violence isn't restricted to physical harm, though. Bullying people is a violent process.
All my sources seem to disagree with you.
ethically I don't agree that inaction is as bad as action, only that it's close.
silence could be apathy and apathy + inaction cannot reasonably can be considered violent
For instance, it's also a very contemporary thing to avoid calling war vets wimps, but it's better explained by the evolution of our understanding of their condition than by an ideological plot to reframe discourse.
You seem to have read a lot into what I wrote. You're in basic agreement that "violence" in contemporary understanding has evolved to include non-physical contexts but you seem to have imputed that I have the belief that it is due to an "ideological plot to reframe discourse". That's odd and completely absent from any statement I've made.
My apologies, then. That part of the answer was in response to the general reaction to what I meant to be an uncontroversial statement. I should have clarified that it wasn't yours.
> Other definitions are also used, such as the World Health Organization's definition of violence as "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation."
Sanctions _are_ backed by the threat of very real physical force and power. Pretty much all state violence is.
Why do people insist on making these trite comparisons between businesses and literal governments, especially governments that are straight up among the most powerful entities on the planet?
Then again I keep forgetting that I am often talking to people who are so removed from the ill effects of the state that they can even begin to think that a company's actions can ever compare.
> Violence isn't restricted to physical harm, though. Bullying people is a violent process.
Where even the WHO definition requires physical force to be a part of the calculation. Calling someone insulting names could easily be considered bullying, but that has nothing to do with violence.
All that aside, I'm fine with words being 'abused' to help make a rhetorical point. My issue was attempting to redefine the word rather than acknowledge it as an attempt to borrow the connotation. I.e. borrowing violence to describe bulling by name calling is fine, but saying that bullying is violent by definition does a disservice to both.
Of course, you may want to use a dated definition of violence, which doesn't account for the evolution of our medical knowledge. You may find out that it's not very helpful to establish an open discussion.
> even the WHO definition
A quick lookup at the WHO page [1] further clarifies this point by listing different types of violence:
> This typology distinguishes four modes in which violence may be inflicted: physical; sexual; and psychological attack; and deprivation.
This is not an invitation to debate the definition of violence, though, and my initial message isn't an appeal to a rhetorical debate. This topic is covered by an extensive litterature, and my initial message was merely a reminder of what people currently understand to be violence.
[1]: https://www.who.int/violenceprevention/approach/definition/e...
The word literally also includes the definition for the word figuratively. Just because a word happens to include additional definitions doesn't make those additional definitions reasonable or beneficial.
> Of course, you may want to use a dated definition of violence, which doesn't account for the evolution of our medical knowledge. You may find out that it's not very helpful to establish an open discussion.
I never claimed to want to use a dated definition of the word violence but I think you'll find that straw manning an argument is also counterproductive to establishing an open discussion.
I 100% agree that it is not peaceful, I think I just (incorrectly) assumed a specific definition of the word.
It's big picture and definitely not pointless to do this to the ITAR countries.
It's not possible. If a country enacting sanctions has a large enough economy (and thus significant global influence)*, the sanctions are essentially a siege of an entire country. Those who advocate or consent to them in policy should be aware that they are waging a war of attrition and the goal (and only possible effect) is for the castle to run out of food and water or, before that happens, for the peasants to revolt and fight their war against the king for them.
* This is because that country can force all other countries it trades with to get in line with those sanctions by refusing to trade with them if they don't. If those countries are dependent enough, then they have essentially no choice. Even if they are not, they may end up facing their own internal revolts by giving up that trade.
Iran has an actual civil society unlike the gulf oil slave states we've sucked up to for ages, so they way we've picked sides with that regional rivalry in particular is also a pointless mockery of good planning.
This seems to be a like pointless tradgedy that will in no way benefit the citizens of the United States.
Do you think that to occupate the nazi germany was wrong? Or that Cuba was a fine democratic place when ruled by the dictator Batista? Are you aware that the British Company of East India assasinated anybody that would stand in the middle of their way or that US United Fruit Company assasinated more than 1800 people and promoted coups in several countries?
If everybody is evil there is not any difference when people in power change.
Americans thinking that Cuba is a terrible place now and should be punished by that (and it IS a terrible place in lots of ways, for sure), forget that living under the iron fist of the big fruit companies was a slave distopic nigthmare. But this never was a problem for them, for some reason.
Is ridiculous if we think about it. Americans are taxed since that "to keep alive, generation after generation, the flaming revenge of a bunch of great-grandpa mobsters that everybody today would find despicable". A terrible business for US that were paying good money to people for things like to infiltrate and put concrete in the milk truck of Cuban scholars. Benefit to the operation for American people: Zero; here is your bill. How many years the US people will need to pay still for this dusty "revenge business" nonsense?
Perhaps Iranians will be forced to use the Chinese versions of Github, Fedora and kernel.org. Is that the future anyone wants? I don't think the Iranian engineers will quit and become plumbers or farmers.
Are you sure about that? This sounds pretty clear as day that sending source code to embargoed countries is illegal:
https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?mc=true&node=pt15.2.73...
> (6) General Prohibition Six—Export or reexport to embargoed destinations (Embargo). (i) You may not, without a license or License Exception authorized under part 746, export or reexport any item subject to the EAR to a country that is embargoed by the United States or otherwise made subject to controls as both are described at part 746 of the EAR.
https://www.ecfr.gov/cgi-bin/text-idx?mc=true&node=pt15.2.73...
> (a) Except as set forth in §734.17 or §734.18, Export means:
> (1) An actual shipment or transmission out of the United States, including the sending or taking of an item out of the United States, in any manner;
> (2) Releasing or otherwise transferring “technology” or source code (but not object code) to a foreign person in the United States (a “deemed export”);
Yes, on paper it's politics and military and sanctions, but the real effect is that nobody wants to get burned by ITAR or EAR so if your country is on that list, you're just going to get banned, period.
It's not great, but it's also not something you can easily solve. It does affect a lot of people, but in the end, a country is represented by its government and policies, and a sanction against breaking of some arbitrary rule isn't effective if it isn't applied to the country as a whole.
Freenet
IPFS
MaidSAFE
Dat + Beaker Browser
Scuttlebutt
Tor?
Blockchains
Cryptocurrencies
BitTorrent
Matrix
MastodonThe law prohibits transfer "in any manner". Fedora isn't going to implement any of those in violation of the law.
Rather, it's about autonomous networks, that are run by global nodes. Such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, MaidSAFE, Freenet and others. You can't really stop them -- unless you ban encryption and packet sniff all the traffic, and then prosecute people running the local nodes. Most countries, not even China or North Korea, do all of that. There are countries that ban encryption, such as Monaco or some of the Emirates, but they really don't go after people running nodes.
And even if they did, all that has to happen is that the files have to end up being hosted and retransmitted by nodes in countries which don't block Iran. So file gets uploaded onto IPFS or MaidSAFE or BitTorrent, it's game over. To access it in Iran, you just need to access a node in Iran, which is communicating with nodes in those other countries. How are you going to prevent that?
Inserting intermediaries into the custody chain is not always a solution. This is typically referred to as "sanction circumvention" and is often also illegal. I am not sure whether it would be in this specific case, but I do know one thing for sure: If the law does require a particular type of compliance, choosing a technology that makes it impossible to comply (or easier to hide) is not a defense.
For another example: Using bitcoin does not absolve people in the US from their legal obligation not to send money to sanctioned entities. If you do so, you can be prosecuted. The protocol isn't above the law. None are.
Even if I give you the benefit of the doubt and assume this type of sanction circumvention is legal in the scenario -- does Fedora allow, or think it's a good idea to have anonymous contributors? Solely for the purpose of circumventing US law? I just can't see this being a reasonable decision.
I am NOT talking about me intending to send Bitcoin to people in Iran when I pay someone in China. Just because someone makes something available to people in China, doesn't mean they are responsible for what other people in China will do later. So, if someone ORIGINALLY uploads a public domain file on BitTorrent, for instance, and sometime later, that file winds up being downloaded (via Chinese nodes) by Iranians or North Koreans, does that mean the original uploader broke ANY law?
> If I send Bitcoin to someone in China, and they happen to send Bitcoin to someone in Iran, who broke the law?
There are some cases where a scenario like this could violate the law. Particularly if one of the parties is a financial institution subject to anti money laundering laws.
But yes, someone in China could download Fedora off of the internet and send it to someone in Iran. But this still doesn’t have anything to do with using a fancy technology, nor is it relevant to OPs scenario.
What if they disagree with your interpretation of the meaning and requirements of the GPL?
Aren't most of the sanctions against Iran related to the UN resolutions against their nuclear weapon program? Doesn't the EU also have their own set of sanctions against Iran?
The US violated the JCPOA, not Iran. Both the Rouhani and Raisi governments have the stated policy that they will return the the JCPOA if the US first reverses its violation.
The fact that they have the power to bully the rest of the world into complying with their unilateral 180 decision is infuriating.
A bar can't give literal free beer to a 20 year old in the US either.
But the biggest problem with sanctions is that people in the sanctioning country are so removed from the problem that it never quite seems to become a priority to remove them. Americans typically don't know a thing about Iran, the people that live there, the problems that they themselves have with their own government, and the problems we cause them by sanctioning them. We cannot put a face to the name. So because it costs us nothing, we do nothing.
While I do think that sanctions can be an effective tool against authoritarianism, I do think that we should be forced to put a face on those who we are sanctioning. Since in the US our sanctions are applied at the Executive Branch level, I would propose a Legislative Branch check on the issue: If we sanction a country, for whatever reason, we automatically remove all Refugee visa and green card quotas for that country.
I believe this could actually enhance the power of a worthy sanctioning action: it not only causes the standard economic harm to the country's trade system, but it also imposes a brain drain on them as well. It also gives the voteless a way to vote against their country's leaders. And if the sanctions aren't actually effective or worthy enough of a cause, then we at least are exposing that via the cost of supporting a large refugee population.
We've already effectively done this with Cuba, and it has turned out extremely well, IMO. Cuban refugees very quickly adapted to our country and have become an economic powerhouse of their own, while depriving undemocratic cuban leaders from the benefits of those people staying in their country. Let's make that the standard.
"First, the west should formulate and recognise a special category of “countries that encourage corruption”, which will enable the taking of uniform measures against groups of countries, rather than imposing sanctions on particular states.
"Second, the main sanction – the main tax on corruption, if you will – for this group of countries should be “enforced transparency”. All documentation relating to contracts concluded between western companies and partners from countries representing corruption risks should be published if the contracts are to the slightest degree connected with the state, its officials, or their relatives."
Frankly, I think you'd have to extend that to "the slightest degree connected with the country." Money laundering is a thing. That's going to make tourism a bit less appealing.
"Third, combating corruption without combating corrupt individuals is the merest hypocrisy and undermines voters’ trust. Until personal sanctions are imposed on oligarchs, primarily those in the entourage of Putin – the role model for all the world’s corrupt officials and businessmen – any anti-corruption rhetoric from the west will be perceived as game-playing and hot air."
As I said, money laundering is a thing. And at some point you're going to catch innocent people in that net. Further, at this point you are no longer in the position of one government opposing the actions of another government; you have governments punishing the actions of individuals in that country that may not have ever committed a crime outside that country. Kinda makes me nervous.
"Fourth, the US, UK and Germany already have excellent tools for combating foreign corruption, such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the Bribery Act, and so on. Guess how many cases have been brought following reports by our Anti-Corruption Foundation, now categorised as an extremist organisation by Putin’s government?
"Fifth, obstructing the export of political corruption clearly deserves the establishment of an international body or commission. Take a look at what is going on right now. By investing relatively small sums of money, the redoubtable Putin is buying up extreme-right and extreme-left movements throughout Europe – turning their politicians into oligarchs and agents of his own. Legalised bribery is flourishing, often in the form of board memberships at state-owned companies. A former German chancellor, or a former Italian prime minister, or a former Austrian foreign minister, can act as background dancers for the Russian dictator, normalising corrupt practices. All contracts linking former or current western politicians with business partners from corrupt authoritarian countries should also have to be open to public scrutiny."
I absolutely agree that corruption is the major international problem. And it would be really nice to at least enforce current laws against it and even better to stop enabling it intentionally. All of those steps, in some form would likely improve the situation.
But I'm not sure that targeted actions against the officials of a foreign government is the appropriate way to oppose the deliberate decisions of that government. Corruption, sure. Trying to embarrass and bankrupt Iranian government officials because they approved a project to build nuclear weapons? I'm not even sure it would be effective.
Most of the officials take holidays in Europe and US spending their dirty money. They will definitely suffer from personal sanctions disallowing them the entrance or money storage there.
Would "The West" then impose sanctions on itself?
Sanctions, as imposed on various countries in the Middle East, are a form of warfare. They aren't imposed "for corruption", they are imposed for being an enemy. After all, all of the USA's friends are at least as corrupt as Iran.
Does "the export of political corruption" include covert operations to overthrow duly-elected governments in faraway places? Who arranged the overthrow of Mossadeq, I wonder?
Well, on the other hand...
There is an Enlightenment-era principal that the legitimacy of a government comes from the assent of the governed. I know it sounds twee and "rah-rah", but it's actually a difficult position. (But consider the effects of alternatives like the divine right of kings and force majeure.) The bottom line is that the Iranian people are responsible for the behavior of the Iranian government just like the American people are responsible for the behavior of the US government---even if they don't have any official input into the choices of that government.
On the other side of that coin, it means that the Iranian people are the only ones who can legitimately force change on their government. (Yes, the US's tendency to jack around with other governments is the political philosophy equivalent of a mortal sin.) It's both their responsibility and their power to do so. Yes, the attempt would suck. It would be costly and painful. As my mother said, the world wasn't created to make us happy.
And on the third side, the rest of the world has exactly three options if they do not care for the behavior of a government: do nothing, diplomatic and economic sanctions, and military force. They're all flawed in various ways. Most places are taking the first option with China in response to, say, the Uyghur situation; is anyone happy and satisfied with that? The second option is applied by the US here to Iran and Cuba. Sanctions suck, yes. The military option is taken far too often by the US and previous imperial countries, who also don't tend to follow through. It's a blunt instrument, no matter what the military says. In the best case, it causes as many problems as it addresses. But anyway, those are the choices; pick your option.
What about those in Iran protesting their government's actions? They get punished by their government as well as by the sanctions. I have a lot of respect for those willing to protest what they consider unjust. I do not have a lot of respect for those don't agree with their government's actions but just want to go along with it for various reasons.
"While I do think that sanctions can be an effective tool against authoritarianism, I do think that we should be forced to put a face on those who we are sanctioning. Since in the US our sanctions are applied at the Executive Branch level, I would propose a Legislative Branch check on the issue: If we sanction a country, for whatever reason, we automatically remove all Refugee visa and green card quotas for that country."
That is a brilliant idea!
"We've already effectively done this with Cuba, and it has turned out extremely well, IMO. Cuban refugees very quickly adapted to our country and have become an economic powerhouse of their own, while depriving undemocratic cuban leaders from the benefits of those people staying in their country."
On the other hand, the Cuban refugee community in the US is one of if not the most important power blocs maintaining sanctions against Cuba, particularly after the death of Fidel Castro. So, yeah.
> On the other side of that coin, it means that the Iranian people are the only ones who can legitimately force change on their government.
This is extremely naive. Populations that rebel against authoritarian governments get slaughtered. Even Americans protesting get gassed and beaten. Imagine the state and military turned against the majority of Americans. You wouldn't stand a chance. Labor disputes in Iran, fuel cost protests, all have been absolutely brutal. Look up footage and then come back and tell unarmed Iranians who are just getting by to go to war with that.
Furthermore, the last time Iranians chose their own government, the CIA and MI6 immediately overthrew that government and installed their own puppet. [1]
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
Now I'm confused. Who is responsible for the Iranian Revolution and the installation of Ayatollah Khomeini as the Supreme Leader?
Would it have been against the relevant laws to send him a notice that his accounts are going to be locked/deleted within a week, for example?
If you do it knowingly, there may be additional provisions that you're breaking, or additional penalties, and you increase the length of time that you are out of compliance. This doesn't mean that you're totally in the clear if you "didn't know", which would be hard to demonstrate anyway, considering their own wiki had this information listed.
That's the point, to make you angry enough to change your government.
They don't want a better government, they want a puppet state.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9ta...
No, not really. Originally the US government considered crypto-cipher implementations — including FOSS implementations thereof, if done by domestic parties — to be munitions and carefully regulated their export.
That specific interpretation was struct from the books, but the spirit of it lives on. Rather than manually white-listing both FOSS projects and export partners (a lot of work for some government agency somewhere), the process is now simplified: it’s a blacklist of countries to which one is not allowed to export pretty much anything of use.
It is my understanding that this wide net isn’t there because the US government really believes that random FOSS libraries are useful to the Iranian military; but rather because there’s no way to keep track of every time someone creates another FOSS implementation of a crypto-cipher, or military-precision GNSS receiving, or an atomic clock VLSI, etc. — the types of things that would actually advantage an “enemy nation”’s military to not have pre-made well-tested implementations of. The US government cannot — without work that it doesn’t have the time/money for — tell your FOSS library apart from one of military value. So it’s prohibited from ITAR-blacklisted countries by default.
This measure seems to only make the life of ordinary citizens in the open. Not only that, but the measure seems to cause the opposite effect: the Iranian government seems to be making efforts at censoring its users, censorship which just serves the control of the regime.
Isn't this a blatant GPL violation?
It's up to you to decide if that threat is enough to intimidate you. Most people won't blame you if it does.
(Also, probably talk to a lawyer)
> And separately, we took our case to the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), part of the US Treasury Department, and began a lengthy and intensive process of advocating for broad and open access to GitHub in sanctioned countries.
Over the course of two years, we were able to demonstrate how developer use of GitHub advances human progress, international communication, and the enduring US foreign policy of promoting free speech and the free flow of information. We are grateful to OFAC for the engagement which has led to this great result for developers.
And I bet that if Fedora wanted to do the same, they couldn't simply invoke GitHub as a precedent, they would have to do the whole process again.
On the other hand, there is a tendency of projects to massively overshoot the target just to be on the safe side - see Project Gutenberg blocking all access from Germany because they got sued over 3 (three!) books.
Do I remember correctly that the German courts wanted those three (3!) books removed from Project Gutenberg entirely?
In any case, here's your two choices:
* At a minimum, block access to those three books in Germany, allowing German courts' decisions to apply the Project, which is officially based on US copyright law, where those decisions are more stringent than US law.
* Block all access to Germany. (If Germans want to complain, let them complain to their own government.)
Which precedent do you choose?
Not going to jail is not an exclusively 'corporate' interest.
Of course, this has nothing to do with the developers' personal opinions, but presenting OP's issue as unilateral bullying from the US government is dishonest IMO.
This isn't who we're talking about in this case, we're talking about the actual producers.
> why it should be “set free” remains unclear.
This is like a layman saying why quantum tunneling occurs remains unclear. It's well documented, despite anyone's ignorance. People have written volumes on their reasons for producing free software. A lot of the people involved in Fedora and GNOME blog about it daily.
This is a great podcast episode on the subject of sanctions. I'm pretty uneducated about this stuff and found it really informative.
Further, I am going to take "what the sanction is targeting" at face value here (lifted from the article), as that is not what I want to argue: I am just looking at the definition of "providing service". If it were the case that the sanction doesn't say Iranians in general, but targets something more narrow, that is irrelevant for my comment.
> US law does not force companies to block IPs, but only prohibits them from providing services and trading with Iran, which goes back to politics, but my current argument is not commercial or political.
It is my understanding that sanctions also apply even ignored you provide service to someone without compensation for said service, and it is also my understanding that providing access to a hosted copy of software is also a service (and one you are even providing to users at some cost; like, you are paying money for servers and bandwidth and disk i/o capacity to provide that service to users).
If someone is thereby told that "Iranians are routinely using your hosting service to do X, Y, and Z" and, taking on face value that "Iranians" are sanctioned in a way that prevents providing them service, then you need to be able to do what you can to minimize that usage. I know... it sucks :(.
(I say this with some force as I once was involved in an extended conversation with a lawyer about stuff like this where someone was asking about dropping a plane load of USB keys into a sanctioned area that eventually led to someone asking am exasperated question about what if we just let a bunch of balloons--with no payload!!--our over a sanctioned country, and the lawyers started being concerned that we were giving people free rubber ;P.)
FWIW, someone else here mentioned GitHub got around it... by negotiating with OFAC to get a license, a solution that doesn't automatically apply to other services and which sounds like it might not even be available to other near-identical services that operate at a smaller scale or provide some slightly different set of services or don't have some other negotiating chip we don't know about. It is not clear to me that it is fair to argue that everyone needs to fight that particular fight.
> I am talking about free and open source projects that are increasingly restricting the access of Iranian users and in the most ridiculous case, they are blocking all Iranian IPs! which, as far as I know, is not mandatory, and US law does not force companies to block IPs, but only prohibits them from providing services and trading with Iran
OK. I guess these companies have lawyers telling them that to be safe they should block Iranian IPs, and they take their word over that of some Iranian programmer.
And what is the alternative? To make a special version of your website for Iran, minus everything that could be thought of as providing a service?
The blame for this should fall squarely on the sanctions.
Such a project can only make it best effort and choose to rely on domains where it thinks it will have the least problems. Sometimes that isn't the US, and sometimes it is.
It's not global. It's unilateral.
> There's nothing stopping anyone from forking / rehosting these things outside of the US.
How can this be done legally, when access to the git repo was removed because he was an Iranian?
More importantly: FOSS projects thrive with global collaboration. If access is unilaterally restricted, while it's true the author could just take his local copy of the repo and host it someplace else, he will lose access to many of his collaborators. I'm going to go out on a limb and risk that Americans contributing to software projects hosted in Iran or in countries friendly with Iran are also going to be at risk.
This isn't being global, which was my point: this is being US-centric.
That's fair. Interpreting or framing this as [the US valuing a specific kind of influence on Iran over them valuing the benefits of collaboration] makes sense.
Basically false advertising.
Tell me more about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
"The nuclear program of Iran has included several research sites, two uranium mines, a research reactor, and uranium processing facilities that include three known uranium enrichment plants.[1] In 1970, Iran ratified the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT),[2] making its nuclear program subject to the IAEA's verification. ... In the 2000s, the revelation of Iran's clandestine uranium enrichment program raised concerns that it might be intended for non-peaceful uses. The IAEA launched an investigation in 2003 after an Iranian dissident group revealed undeclared nuclear activities carried out by Iran.[5][6] In 2006, because of Iran's noncompliance with its NPT obligations, the United Nations Security Council demanded that Iran suspend its enrichment programs. ... However, in July 2019 the IAEA stated that Iran had breached the agreement.[19] Iran has, since its breach in July 2019 of the JCPOA,[20] embroiled itself in controversy with half of the JCPOA signatories because a November 2020 IAEA report said that Iran had further developed centrifuge technology, the novelty of which was explicitly prohibited by the JCPOA.[21] The IAEA report also said that Tehran "holds more than 12 times the amount of enriched uranium permitted under the JCPOA, and that "work has also begun on the construction of new underground facilities close to Natanz, its main enrichment facility".[22]"
I don't think the Iranian government is "blameless" in general. (If countries were individual people, all of them would be in jail, with most of them about to hang for war crimes.)
But in the very specific context of embargoing software devs (versus weapons), I do think all of the blame for that is on countries on the imposing end of embargo. Big difference between "systemWMD" and actual WMDs. ;)
The horribly broken crypto we all had to deal with in the 2000s was partially due to US trying to treat it like a "munition" and thus weakening everyone - even themselves - by the mere existence of the hobbled "export-grade" ciphers.
"If soldiers are not to cross international boundaries on missions of war, goods must cross them on missions of peace." - Mallery, Economic Union and Durable Peace
Thus, embargoes are acts of war. Also, as evidenced by this very article, they don't tend to have the desired effect on their targets anyway, instead largely affecting innocent people and especially those of lesser means.
Sorry - not going to play that game.
> Sorry - not going to play that game.
You assume bad faith on my part for no good reason.
You accused me of "playing games". How else should I have interpreted that?
> I could write a lengthy explanation, but as I said: You're not offering anything to the conversation.
You're assuming bad faith again.
Funny thing, international law. Nobody's in charge.
Between countries, everything resembling law is held together by diplomacy, persuasion, agreements, treaties, etc. Sanctions are part of that network, for better or worse.
Treaties are generally treated as law by signatories. So, "illegal". Not that it really matters any; who's going to arrest a country?