Sourceforge.net Blocked In Mainland China 279
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.)
How is it blocked (Score:3, Interesting)
at the DNS entry?
Could you just enter the hex of the IP instead of the DNS name?
Re:How is it blocked (Score:5, Informative)
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I have seen some blocking done pretty sloppily and I have used this method to get around it.
Thanks.
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opendns?
Re:How is it blocked (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How is it blocked (Score:4, Funny)
Re:How is it blocked (Score:5, Informative)
Posting from Shanghai.
There are at least a couple of methods to the GFW. One, which you mentioned, is the bi-directional RST packet method. This is typically reserved for the higher infractions, such as searching in google or yahoo for the religious group "Fa1unG 0ng" ( i can't actually spell it out, lest the RST packets disconnect me from slashdot for a while). Or sometimes, there will be something similar, like tÂbet (inverted exclamation used here for 'i' - ) in a web page - the page will load halfway, the GFW will see that and then the page will disappear with a "the connection was reset" (in firefox, of course). Different keywords are bad at different times for different people. Lack of reliable and clear No-No words keeps people unsure and reluctant to take chances, which is undoubtedly more effective than telling people exactly what they can't do. For the *most* part, domains are not blocked this way. There *are* some exceptions, like xanga.com, for whatever reason.
Second: Usually, IP blocks (or full-domain/subdomain blocks, which i think are just IP blocks) come in the form of a connection that times out, or firefox resulting in a "The server at sourceforge.net is taking too long to respond." (IE produces the same error for both the above mentioned situations). It is my belief that the method in one of the parent posts (null-route or something to that effect) is used for these type of blocks.
The reason, I guess, is that the first kind of block, where the server is sending out lots of RST packets, and has to *SCAN* the entire payload of each POST/GET, and its entire response, is very resource-heavy, and having to scan for too much stuff would be a lot more expensive than just Null-routing a bunch of IP addresses.
For the second kind of block, a proxy server works quite well (furthering my suspicion that it's actually just an IP block). For the first kind (RSTpacket kind), you need a secure connection like a VPN, or other terminal-type connection where plaintext is not so visible.
Re:How is it blocked (Score:5, Interesting)
Idea: could you split packets between "Ti" and "bet"?
Reassembling the whole TCP stream for every flow would take a heap of memory and quite a bit of CPU, so I really doubt anyone they'll try that.
I'm in China and i'm not blocked (Score:2, Informative)
at the DNS entry?
Could you just enter the hex of the IP instead of the DNS name?
how can a text editor boycott the olympics? (Score:2)
This puzzles me.
I rather like notepad++, and use it constantly. I haven't noticed anything about this.
Mind you, I have been wrapped up in coding and haven't been following the China thing.
Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics? (Score:5, Funny)
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? (Score:5, Funny)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Fascism is also totalitarian, so that is no objection.
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The interesting thing is that their homepage (http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm) is very well accessible via the Beijing proxy of my company network; nicely showing the Beijing Olympics handcufs logo to every Chinese citizen who stumbles upon it.
www.sourceforge.net and Sourceforge's download pages are blocked.
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See here [sourceforge.net]
I think it's idiotic for these project leaders are attaching their pet causes to software with bunch of contributors. It should be a rule to keep one's politics separate from such projects.
Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:4, Insightful)
In Open Source? One might as well ask Stallman to run Vista.
"In Closed Source? One might as well ask Gates to run Debian."
Whether a project is open source or closed source is irrelevant in this context and people who continually pretend that open source is any more political than closed source are talking nonsense.
All decisions, including monetary decisions, that affect other people are political decisions, whatever marketers might like to pretend.
---
Beware deceptive astroturfers [wikipedia.org].
Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Actually I am still trying to figure out why I should care more about what an Actor has to say about some political idea than my barber.
I have less of a problem when a hard working programmer puts us a little political statement than when some rich actor with a private jet tells me that I need to cut my carbon foot print:)
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Yes, but actors are the people least capable of discussing politics. I present Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey, and Al Gore as exhibits A, B, and C.
Corporations have known for a long time that only 535 people control a country of 300 million. But, their "sponsorship" is balanced and offset by the equally loaded special interest groups. Democracy in action, and candidates get campaign funds - win-win questionmark?
But, that doesn't mean the developers of open source software have no right to an opinion, publ
Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics? (Score:4, Insightful)
As it stands right now, entire sourceforge is being punished because of actions of some idiot who decided to tie his political grievances into a notepad application that has fuckall to do with Tibet.
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See here [sourceforge.net]
I think it's idiotic for these project leaders are attaching their pet causes to software with bunch of contributors. It should be a rule to keep one's politics separate from such projects.
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Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics? (Score:5, Insightful)
>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.
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yes. but the patch probably won't be accepted.... if you were the project leader and the majority of the other developers disagreed with something that you were forcing onto the project, then that is where forking happens, whether it is political, technical or even personal.
porl
Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure were suppression comes into it unless you mean that rejecting your patch would be suppression. You can publish you patch or a forked version of the package all you want. You've no right to expect other to publish your work though. I'm free to not repeat what you say.
Unless you expect someone to hunt you down and destroy all copies of such a patch. If thats the case, I'm not qualified to help you. Maybe you need to move?
Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:how can a text editor boycott the olympics? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Are you running a TOR proxy on your PC? (Score:2)
No?
Something similar?
No?
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If its their software project why not? If sourceforge doesn't like it they could always tell Notepad++ to take a hike as well. Unlike China is a free country :).
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Yea right.
There was a KDE program that had a pro us message in the about dialog that got pulled because it was too "political".
In this case it is more the author than must a project leader. IMHO it is his code and his site. If you don't like it write a better program and don't put in any politics.
Wait for it... (Score:5, Funny)
... and yes in the "blocking freedom" event, China has already taken the gold!
Re:Wait for it... (Score:5, Insightful)
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America for the Bronze?
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and north korea, the middle east or cuba come in what place?
Re:Wait for it... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not surprised. (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Sources? (Score:4, Informative)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080623/ts_nm/olympics_mosque_dc [yahoo.com]
China demolishes mosque for not supporting Olympics: group
Mon Jun 23, 3:56 AM ET
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities in the restive far western region of Xinjiang have demolished a mosque for refusing to put up signs in support of this August's Beijing Olympics, an exiled group said on Monday.
The mosque was in Kalpin county near Aksu city in Xinjiang's rugged southwest, the World Uyghur Congress said.
The spokesman's office of the Xinjiang government said it had no immediate comment, while telephone calls to the county government went answered.
"China is forcing mosques in East Turkistan to publicize the Beijing Olympics to get the Uighur people to support the Games (but) this has been resisted by the Uighurs," World Uyghur Congress spokesman Dilxat Raxit said in an emailed statement.
Beijing says al Qaeda is working with militants in Xinjiang to use terror to establish an independent state called East Turkistan.
Oil-rich Xinjiang is home to 8 million Turkic-speaking Uighurs, many of whom resent the growing economic and cultural influence of the Han Chinese.
Dilxat Raxit added that the mosque, which had been renovated in 1998, was accused of illegally renovating the structure, carrying out illegal religious activities and illegally storing copies of the Muslim holy book the Koran.
"All the Korans in the mosque have been seized by the government and dozens of people detained," he said. "The detained Uighurs have been tortured."
The Olympic torch relay passed through Xinjiang last week under tight security, with all but carefully vetted residents banned from watching on the streets and tight controls over foreign media covering the event.
(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie)
(For more stories visit our multimedia website "Road to Beijing" at http://www.reuters.com/news/sports/2008olympics [reuters.com]; and see our blog at http://blogs.reuters.com/china [reuters.com])
Re:Sources? (Score:4, Insightful)
The reporter on this Reuters piece, Ben Blanchard, has lived and worked in China for many years and is widely regarded in China as one of the best of his generation in terms of China expertise. He speaks Mandarin fluently and reads and writes both traditional and simplified.
No one, including China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has ever suggested that he is "anti-China" not biased against either China or its government.
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*Sigh* (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Additionally on the olympics note, i think it is great that they got the olympics specifically because it raises the issue of their human rights abuses to the world wide stage. It's going to be hard to ignore when everyone is looking, however, when
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I see your point, but I am one who goes way out of his way to NOT buy products made in China, even if it costs me more to buy the equivalent made in S. Korea, Taiwain, the U.S., etc., so your last sentence doesn't apply to me. Yes, if I need something and a product made in China is the only option then I will buy it or go without, but I've been known to pay substantially more for options made elsewhere.
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The trouble is afaict "made in" only represents where the "last significant manufacturing process" was carried out. Not where the bulk of the work was done.
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Yes it is. I wasn't aware that I had to spell out that I was expressing my opinion. Maybe I need a new sig.
Sourceforge had nothing to do with it (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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True, very true, but it hurts Sourceforge (and the Chinese people) far more than it hurts one project.
Re:Sourceforge had nothing to do with it (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
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I didn't say that either. I said it just doesn't seem like an appropriate forum to me, and the value of having contributions from and to China via OSS is high and was at least temporarily damaged by this. Relax :)
I blame the Chinese more for blocking it than the project for protesting it, just for the record.
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Good thing the US is already training their citizens to think this way by inventing the "free speech zones". If someone in, say, the 80s would have told us this would happen, would anyone have believed it?
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How does it hurt Sourceforge?
Are there that many Chinese contributers?
I really hate politics as a rule but this really is pretty tame and I feel that it is within his rights.
It is his project so big deal he can do what he wants with it. If you don't like it then just done use the program or contribute any code to it.
Heck I don't even like it when protesters try to yell down speakers at political events but this little protest doesn't interfere with anybodies rights.
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Totally O/T, but I saw your sig and it really made me think:
>Scientology is a greedy cult founded by a second rate science fiction author. It is bad fiction.
Isn't this true of virtually every religion except The One(s) you happen to believe in?
Boycott China! (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Funny)
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Why only China? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why only China? (Score:5, Insightful)
Lacking culture awareness (Score:4, Interesting)
I agree that China is very bad when it comes to freedom, and that the country would have been better off if the Coomunist Party hadn't turned on the revolutionary partners they had in overthrowing the Monarchy. However, China hasn't had free thought in probably a millenia or more.
You cannot use European filtered glasses and understand the Chinese mind (although there were visionaries in China during the revolution). Sure, there are many enlightened Chinese now, but life in China is still much the way it has been for over a thousand years (altough probably better for many and worse for some). Freedom is a new concept in China, not even a hundred years old. I think over all, they aren't doing too bad for a people just discovering free thought. Japan too struggles with this foreign concept. In Japan it is still often "the nail that sticks out that gets hammered down". Whereas, in many European cultures, "the nail that sticks out" often gets pulled out to see how it works (although, from what I read - the younger generation in Japan has made the transition).
So, while we should continue to pursue a path to bring China and the other freedom denying countries into the light, one should try to keep a mind on the cultural heritage and other other factors when approaching them.
In the end, free thinking will win out, because it open up many more avenues than any other mind set. Of course with free-thinking, I think you also get more crime. It's all Yin-Yang in the end. Eventually there will be a tipping point and a cascade event in China, much like I think Japan has recently undergone.
Of course, I could be totally wrong.
I call this is stupid. (Score:2)
Ignorance leads to fear
Fear leads to anger
Anger leads to hate
Hate leads to short sight
Short sight leads to paranoid
Paranoid leads to prejudice
Prejudice leads to ignorance
It is the cycle of stupidity
It is us who keep it rolling
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Fear leads to anger
Anger leads to hate
Hate leads to the DARK SIDE
And in other totally unrelated news... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm in Beijing right now and it loads OK (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Interesting)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they think it's "free" as in Tibet ... (Score:3, Funny)
"Silly ChiComms never learn, Napalm(TM) sticks to kids!"
Tempted to put up pro-Tibet things on my website (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm tempted to put up pro-Tibet / anti-Chinese government things on my website just so they block me. Maybe it will help cut down on hacker attempts and spam email.
Spread a good message and hinder the jerks.. it's win-win if you ask me.
Re:Tempted to put up pro-Tibet things on my websit (Score:4, Informative)
extreme paranoia (Score:2)
Broken record, check! (Score:4, Interesting)
How often do I have to say it ? To hell with the Chinese government. They punish their own, then expect us to shake their hand and play nice ? They promised the IOC things would change for the better, then days after they secured the 2008 events, they turned around and bragged about how they were going to eliminate the Falun Gong movement, the Dalai Lama and the muslim separatists. So why the fuck are we still letting them host the olympics ? Does no one remember Moscow 1980 ?
I've boycotted Chinese IP ranges for years, and I'm boycotting the Beijing Olympics. What that country needs is a coup d'état, and the Chinese people need to know the rest of the world will take side with them when the walls fall.
Every nation is guilty of crimes against humanity, but at least the others have the decency to bow their heads and lie about it. The Chinese gov't parades around, flaunting their total disregard for equality. I don't see why we should tolerate it.
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Do you boycott Chinese goods?
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Dude I don't like the Chinese government but the last think I want to see is coup. It will be bloody.. I mean really bloody. Yes I think the Chinese government needs to be opposed but to do that we need to stop giving them money.
I don't protest much but I sure try to find things not made in China. I hunted long and hard to find a Lawn mower that wasn't made in China. I finally did.
If all people start not buying Chinese goods that will do more than all the ranting and yelling in the world.
And maybe we will
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What that country needs is a coup d'état, and the Chinese people need to know the rest of the world will take side with them when the walls fall.
Considering the debt and other economic ties many western nations have to China, as well as size and military power compared to most of its eastern countries, I think that support will amount to a "well done" pat on the back after it's clear the old regime has really fallen. The truth is that people might complain about lack of freedom, but it's poverty that brings out the pitchforks. How many really cared about US independence compared to British taxes? Was it really oppression or the collapse of the Sovi
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Every nation is guilty of crimes against humanity, but at least the others have the decency to bow their heads and lie about it.
You're right to a certain degree, yet I don't know whether I personally would like to see the Chinese government lie about their deeds. It's a side effect of a lack of democratic process -- those in power don't need to please the unwashed masses with sugar coated words, and obviously that translates to a relative lack of ability to please foreign audiences. But that in itself doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing.
I mean, if you accept that every nation is guilty of crimes against humanity (from time to
Blocking party .. come on FREE whatsoever (Score:2, Interesting)
off the net(or even blocking
here it comes
a.) Free Tibet
b.) down with the one-party-system
c.) democracy for china
d.) back to communism
e.) Tienamen == red place of Bejing
f.) Nukes for Taiwan
g.) Nukes in Taiwan
Now
Post this on your site and you will not suffer chinise hackers
and now some terms
So Let Me Get This Straight. (Score:2)
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Yes, the committee is known for it's tolerance of complaints~
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You DO know what happens in China to people who complain [wikipedia.org] in China, right?
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They win there freedom on a tropical island?
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That was so last century. Now the Chinese simply use their snazzy new mobile execution units. [usatoday.com]
Re:Why would we care? (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Interesting)
The code [google.com] can be a bitch too.
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Er, there's nothing ungrammatical about "speak good Chinese". "Good" is an adjective there, modifying the noun "Chinese"; "good Chinese" is what comes out of your mouth when you correctly apply the rules of the Chinese language.
If there is a problem with that name, it's semantic, not syntactic: one might argue that a person who speaks "bad Chinese" isn't really speaking Chinese at all, but their own language that sounds similar to Chinese.
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By the same token I could say that free software is a perfect capitalist market with an entry cost only proportional to the difficulty to read the code.
Anyone can bend the concepts like that.
Re:Correct me if I'm wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
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Newsflash! (Score:2)
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OSS, on the other hand, is more of the flavor of volunteerism. Or the "pro bono" work many lawyers do.
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One application, which it is likely that most Chinese people don't use, is causing nearly all users of the internet in China to be blocked from a wonderful source of software that many more Chinese and foreigners alike will use.
No, the Chinese Government is being silly. They are the ones who instigated the block, not sourceforge. They are the ones who are depriving chinese Internet users of a wonderful resource. Take it up with them. Protest. Sign petitions. Take up arms. Whatever. Don't blame us for the ce
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