Sourceforge.net Blocked In Mainland China

gzipped_tar contributed a link to Moonlight Blog, which says that "SourceForge, the world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications, appears to be blocked in Mainland China. The current blocking may be related to the recent anti-China protests of Beijing Olympic Games, which will begin on 8 August. Some days before, a very popular free source code editor in SourceForge named Notepad++ start to boycott Beijing 2008. The project's developer said that the action is not against Chinese people, but against Chinese government's repression against Tibetan unrest earlier in this year. SF.net has once been banned by China in 2002. However, the ban was lifted later in 2003." gzipped_tar adds: "As a SourceForge user in Beijing, I can confirm this first-hand. I also tried traceroute to sourceforge.net, only to find the connection being dropped at a Beijing ISP's gateway router. It appears that the projects' respective homepages are available even if they are hosted by SF, but the summary and download pages are blocked." (As you probably know, Slashdot and Sourceforge share a corporate overlord.)

Wait for it...

... and yes in the "blocking freedom" event, China has already taken the gold!

Re:Wait for it...

zimbabwe? sudan?

Not surprised.

Recently I read that people were arrested and/or beaten because they didn't promote the Olympics. Is it strange that the chinese govt blocks EVERYTHING that protests against it?

*Sigh*

I can see politics entering a free for all site like Slashdot, but Sourceforge??? While I personally think it's disgusting that China even GOT the Olympics and find their regime and it's actions reprehensible, there are proper forums for such matters. Sourceforge isn't one of them.

Sourceforge had nothing to do with it

It was one project page, notepad++. If a person wants to protest on their own personal project page, that's a perfect place to do it.

Re:Sourceforge had nothing to do with it

So, you blame the fellow putting up the protest notice? The boycott notice is a relatively small part of the page. It's not over the top or crazy, simply one guy putting his opinion on his project page. Why is he to blame for this? Should we all censor ourselves lest we offend someone? Maybe we should protest only in the properly marked official protest spaces?

Boycott China!

If there are posts on Slashdot advocating for the boycott of China and the Olympics, would the government block access to Slashdot?

Yes, this is a test.

Good

I heard those lousy pirates in China were downloading files from that site without paying! Another victory in the war against copyright infringement!

I'm in Beijing right now and it loads OK

I just loaded sourceforge.net from Beijing. Admittedly I'm in a hotel, but my connection appears to otherwise be filtered like all the others I've used in China, so I don't imagine there's anything special about this case.

So, perhaps I'm just lucky, or perhaps it's not really blocked...

Re:I'm in Beijing right now and it loads OK

I can't access it from Shanghai. However, if the Sourceforge website is being blocked, it's not from a tcp reset as is typical for most (all?) of the sites blocked by the Great Firewall. Sourceforge is just timing out so it's entirely possible this is all just paranoia. Notably, svn access is working just fine--which is to say, just as slowly as ever.

the Olympic Brand

The Olympic Brand is in very serious trouble [sacbee.com]

Re:How is it blocked

As a SourceForge user in Beijing, I can confirm this first-hand. I also tried traceroute to sourceforge.net, only to find the connection being dropped at a Beijing ISP's gateway router.

Sounds like their router (or firewall) has a null route (or some equivalent device) for SF's IP addresses rather than where they are normally supposed to be sent to, ie the next closest router. DNS is just for IPhostname conversions, which would be done before the traceroute even starts (if he did traceroute sf.net).

Re:How is it blocked

As far as I know, the great firewall of China works by sending RST-packets to both ends of an unwanted connection as soon as one is detected.

Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics?

Their homepage [sourceforge.net] has some information on there asking people to protest the olympics.

Of course a piece of editing software can't itself consciously object to a global event. No software AI is that advanced, not even in a text editor.

... though it's my understanding that Emacs comes close. :)

Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics?

Yea, there's no text editing software that couDOWN WITH COMMUNIST BEIJING! FREE TIBET!ld ever object.

Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics?

Tell your editor that "communist China" has been down for quite some time. "China the generic fascist state" still stands, it seems.

Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics?

They're not fascist, they're totalitarian. Similar, but different.

Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics?

It should be a rule to keep one's politics separate from such projects.

In Open Source? One might as well ask Stallman to run Vista.

Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics?

Why?
Actors feel free to express their ideas on politics, some corporations do not hesitate to sponsor or take position for a given cause.
Why should FREEsoftware refrain from doing so?
It's even distributed under GPL v2 which means they are not even forbidding those with whom they disagree to use it.

Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics?

>I think it's idiotic for these project leaders are attaching their pet causes to software with bunch of
>contributors.

And I think you miss something fundamental about "Free as in Speech." I'd go as far as to say you are supporting the suppression of free speech with your comment.

Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics?

As a conscientious human being, you have a duty to speak out against injustice when you see it. If you have a large audience because of your software, you have a responsibility to use that platform. As the saying goes, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. If you want change, you have to speak out, you may even have to be a bit disruptive. Yeah it sucks for the rest of us, but it would suck even more if no one ever spoke up.

Re:Correct me if I'm wrong...

Except that an OSS project is voluntary. Totalitarian Marxism is not. It is imposed by a central Government and you have no option to fork the code...

Re:Why would we care?

I don't get your comment.

Why would we care if a utility site like Sourceforge is blocked?

Who is "we"? If "we" is the Slashdot readership, then clearly some of "us" care, since some portion of Slashdot readers are in China, and/or use/contribute to Sourceforge.

It saves us the hassle of providing the network traffic to that country

What? So Sourceforge should be happy that an entire country can't access their services, because that reduces network traffic? By that logic, Sourceforge should just shut down completely: then the network traffic would be really reduced! In reality, Sourceforge wants people to go to the site, and so having an entire country blocked is bad for them.

do we really want to answer 'Chinese' informed questions?

I'm sorry if I've misinterpreted this question, but on the face of it, it seems racist.

I wonder how much Chinese projects are hosted on Sourceforge

"Chinese projects"? You do realize that Chinese people use the same kinds of software as everyone else, right? And that Chinese coders can (and do) contribute to the same open-source projects as everyone else, right?

I guess I don't understand your comment because you seem to be saying "good riddance!"... but why should the open-source community be happy that a government firewall is fracturing the community?

Re:Why would we care?

The code [google.com] can be a bitch too.

Re:Why only China?

Well I think the difference is the the US and British gov't stand for the ideals of freedom. I don't think freedom is something that exists... I think it's something we have to work towards. Sometimes we're not always as close as we'd like, but the ideals are still there. China has no interest and no desire for freedom of any kind. Ironically, they don't even like free software. China seems to work on the premise that if you block enough information for the outside people will begin to think they have it better than the rest of the world, and maybe they do... but I doubt it.