A better way instead, would be to do what all other projects like GNOME, KDE, Tor, wireguard, etc have done before and that is to just self-host the repositories instead.
Github complies to sanctions by removing all repositories owned by sanctioned organization. Doesn’t mean you can’t have a copy of their code.
This seems to be a core misunderstanding of people on this thread.
My understanding is that GitHub voluntarily took down the repo, which is a no-brainer from a business perspective and well within their rights.
Freedom of speech protects you from your government. It does not guarantee you a platform.
In the US, the 1st amendment prohibits the US government from infringing on a persons natural right to free speech.
"Freedom of speech" is not a law, or provision. Pointing out that a platform "has the right" to violate peoples freedom of speech (and yes it is an infringement of the principle) is both obvious and pointless. People that actually support the principle also have the right to express their deep disappointment that GH would abuse their position of power, abuse the privilege bestowed upon them by the community of open source developers by cowering to the US government and refusing to stand up for the principle of Free speech
First Amendment is the application of the principal of free speech to law
However freedom of speech is also a larger principal then just the first amendment. People seem to only want to focus on the first amendment and government censorship as if that is the only type of censorship
With the original takedown, Microsoft would be worried that the relative nobodies disappear with Microsoft left holding the bag. If Microsoft instead knows that it’s backed by the EFF who is itching for a Supreme Court fight, they might instead tell the USG “here’s their mailing address, you guys settle it in court”.
There are already many forms of protected speech that are banned from GitHub, this is not proving anything.
Anyone is free to host their own repos on their own servers
If we don't like that we need to enact regulations
> I’ve worked with this code as a researcher and I use it to teach my classes, so it’s important to me that it stays easily-accessible on a major site like GitHub. (This is not the only copy, in fact it’s a fork of someone else’s.)