China formalizes Gitee as an alternative to GitHub

China just formalized an alternative to GitHub (the American web hosting and software management service) being Gite his commitment to this, in the face of the initiative to free himself from American technologies

Gite it is not new as it has been around for 7 years in China, but it has just been recognized by the Ministry of Industry and Technological Innovation of China as the winner of a tender for an open source software project hosting platform.

A result from a Huawei official regarding this development speaks volumes about the goal:

“If China does not have its own open source community to maintain and manage projects, our national software industry will be very vulnerable to uncontrollable factors. Wang Chenglu's intervention points to repeated sanctions by the US authorities. "

The Gitee formalization has a good side, Ya que create competitiona in an online services sector dominated by US platforms. However, it does not escape duality, China is known as the country where with its 10 million deposits, Chinese authorities are already positioning Gitee as the second platform largest for hosting and managing open source software projects.

The walls continue to rise on both sides and with them the risk that we are increasingly heading towards the end of the Internet dream: communication without borders and knowledge for all.

Since GitHub is (must not be forgotten) a platform subject to US law and which govern technology exports, the platform cannot be used for the development of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons; long-range missiles or unmanned aerial vehicles.

This is probably the reason why Ahmed Saeedi Fard's private repositories were locked. In any case, he was convinced that the United States attributed such activities to him to justify his sanction. As for GameHub, no reason other than nationality had been leaked.

To remember this, we can go back to last year to begin an illustration of what constitutes the fears of the Chinese authorities.

As in one of the reports (which appeared in July 2019) of a user of the web hosting and software management service mainly affects those who use GameHub on Linux.

GitHub blocked our private repositories without any prior notification and now we don't have access to the codes. You should not judge people by their country of origin. You can restrict a government, but you must not ban its active and loyal users without notice.

Since GitHub had been a free platform for everyone for many years, but decided to block Iranian accounts.

I think being from a certain country is not a choice we make, but being a developer and contributing to the open source community is.

GitHub denies us our freedom to contribute and be part of the open source ecosystem because we live in Iran.

These measures can rightly be seen as an extension of those resulting from trade war between the United States and China.

And it is necessary to remember that in mid-May of the previous year, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that lays the foundations to prevent Chinese telecommunications companies such as Huawei from selling equipment to the United States.

The move is aimed at neutralizing China's ability to compromise America's next-generation wireless networks and computer systems.

The order prohibits the purchase or use of any communications technology produced by entities controlled by "a foreign adversary" that could sabotage US communications systems or create "catastrophic effects" on US infrastructure.

After that, the US Department of Commerce took a related action prohibiting US companies from selling components and software to Huawei and 70 of its affiliates (now on the US Prohibited List) without authorization. With the blocking of user accounts in Crimea and Iran, we are discovering a new facet.


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  1.   Carlos Davalillo placeholder image said

    The nature of these types of services will indicate which company will prevail in an eventual rivalry between GitHub and Gitee, and that will be the one that is least punitive with the community of programmers and developers. The company that comes closest to that ultimate goal of internet neutrality will dominate in the long-term future.