SourceForge Clarifies Denial of Site Access 396
Recently there were some complaints from certain users outside the US stating that they were no longer able to access SourceForge.net. SF.net (who shares a corporate overlord with Slashdot) has outlined the reasons for these bans, and until someone with sufficient power to alter US law or the lists governing who is allowed to access what data from where, there is unlikely to be a change in these bans. It is worth noting that SF.net is not alone in these difficulties, as the same problems have been reported from other repositories, like Google Code. "As one of the first companies to promote the adoption and distribution of free and open source software, and one that still puts open source at the center of its corporate ideals, restrictions on the free flow of information rub us the wrong way. However, in addition to participating in the open source community, we also live in the real world, and are governed by the laws of the country in which we are located. Our need to follow those laws supersedes any wishes we might have to make our community as inclusive as possible. The possible penalties for violating these restrictions include fines and imprisonment. Other hosting companies based in the US have similar legal and technical restrictions in place."
No Helium for Nazis (Score:3, Funny)
With any luck this will force Bin Laden to have to use Windows O.S. and programs from downloads.com to do his twisted interpretation of Allahs will.
There could be some justice in this yet.
I blame Bush (Score:0, Funny)
When are we going to impeach G.W.Bush so we can get someone else in the White House?
Re:Time to move the servers? (Score:3, Funny)
Or, if you aren't cool enough for that, you'll join the long list of journalists and rabble rousers who just get shot in the street.
Relocate SourceForge to China (Score:3, Funny)
I don't think it has any problems with connection to any of those countries....
Maybe you can swap servers with Google...:-)
Re:Anyone who can use SourceForge (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately, all of the good OSS proxies have their source code hosted on sourceforge.
10 PRINT "CIRCULAR REFERENCE"
20 GOTO 10
Political Asylum (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Failure of thought (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Ah, that old law again. (Score:2, Funny)
One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
Perhaps policy makers should read the Evil Overlord list before making policy. :-)
Seas between US and Canada (Score:4, Funny)
These [wikipedia.org] sure look like seas to me...