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Comment by m3kw9 | Hacker News Reader

They can’t block GitHub because a lot of chinese tech firms depend on it. That is something very hard to develop locally because the entire world can contribute

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They try to really degrade GitHub though to encourage non-GitHub use and probably weaning off of it. clones, pulls, etc. are very slow and unreliable and it's definitely not due to the size or reliability of the pipes.

They can't block GitHub, but all it takes is one phone call to Redmond, and their problem will go away.

Microsoft has no issue with getting rid of politically problematic repos.

https://www.technadu.com/github-removes-protest-organizing-a... - when Microsoft won't respect the right to protest in Spain, they won't give two figs about that same right in China.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vice.com/amp/en/article/8xe... - for another example, this time in the US.

What I can tell you is that GitHub is barely accessible in Mainland.

If you can't see how the two examples you cite are problematic, i don't know what to tell you.

There's a difference between protest and sedition, and the Catalan independence movement went full in on treason.

The second is doxxy, so it is understandable to an extent.

> the Catalan independence movement went full in on treason

There's a few hundred million mainlanders, and the entire leadership of the CCP who feel the same way about Hong Kong. Perhaps Madrid and Beijing should compare notes?

I support the Catalan movement as I believe in all people’s right to self determination but that is fundamentally different.

Catalonia does not have a legal right to just break free from Spain. It would also be difficult for any country if the richest region could break free at will.

On the other hand Hong Kong has a legal right for local rules for at least 50 years after the handover in 1997. That treaty was broken last year.

So legally Spain is in the right and China is wrong.

Legality is meaningless when there was no meeting of minds when the law was drafted. Catalonia's current situation was created by an authoritarian, fascist government. The law in question was drafted without the consent of the governed, and is thus illegitimate, if it does not have ongoing consent of its constituents.

> Catalonia's current situation was created by an authoritarian, fascist government

No, significantly more authority was devolved to the region from the democratic governments following Franco. However there was no point in history where Catalonia breaking away was an explicitly allowed option (of course).

and current situation in HK has what you are saying should be a requirement for a law (let alone an act of force ) : the "without the consent of the governed," you are citing..

I think legality still matters.

But more importantly it is a joke to compare the situation in Catalonia with that of Hong Kong. It’s not like we see trains full of people on the way to torture in concentration camps leaving Barcelona.

> There's a difference between protest and sedition

Is there? Please elaborate, because to me it merely looks like a matter of perspective.

Protesting is within the legal framework of the country. In France, i have the right to protest under certain conditions (organisers have to receive an authorisation from the police on the route the protest will take, things have to be kept civil, e.g. no running around burning cars). I do not not have the right to start an independence movement and/or rebellion in Brittany.

So it's not the perspective, it's the legality of goals and methods. For instance in Russia, you can't protest the war in Ukraine, so going on the streets about it isn't "just protesting", one is willingly breaking the law for the cause.

They are trying with https://gitee.com

Off-topic, but their “pretty” design is surely an anti-pattern for attracting developers. (Then I looked at https://github.com/ and it has an inane graphical world that looks like a designer’s folio project too!)

Gitee also put the site language choice in the footer - odd choice. Plus some UI bugs on the page. Yuck.

I'm not sure the choice in the footer is that odd here. It appears as another code collaboration service to me and I assume it defaults to Chinese in China. I would likely not realise it's a project under Chinese protection if it wasn't mentioned here in context.

Ypu would if you didn't just read the homepage. There is Chinese all over it.

Maybe we get a different version for some reason, but the only indication I get is oschina.cn in the footer. Not a Chinese character on the whole page.

For me it's almost entirely English, but with a small bit of Chinese language and references references:

>Opensource to China

>Founded in ShenZhen, China in 2013

>The leading SAAS provider in China

>git@oschina.cn

>12377@2x 违法和不良信息举报中心粤ICP备12009483号

gitee is a startup project.

The use of "They" seems inappropriate here, which is belittling the entrepreneurs' ambition. The culture of code sharing in China is indeed different from US. So I bet gitee has a lot of features tailored to that market.