Still (@still@infosec.exchange)
infosec.exchange
Attached: 3 images tldr: GitCode or China is attempting to mirror/clone the entire GitHub over to their own servers and there's nothing you can do about it, even if your license somehow disagrees with it. Apparently China now has their own GitHub/public Git repository hosting service called GitCode; it is owned and operated by CSDN under the company name "重庆开源共创科技有限公司". It is being reported that many users' repository are being cloned and re-hosted on GitCode without authorization - meaning your project may very well be on this service without you explicitly allowing.

GitCode, a git-hosting website operated Chongqing Open-Source Co-Creation Technology Co Ltd and with technical support from CSDN and Huawei Cloud.

It is being reported that many users’ repository are being cloned and re-hosted on GitCode without explicit authorization.

There is also a thread on Ycombinator (archived link)

  • bionicjoey@lemmy.caEnglish
    37910·
    5 months ago

    Solution: create a GitHub repo with Markdown articles outlining human rights abuses by the CCP and have a large number of GitHub users star and fork the repo.

    • Colonel Panic@lemm.eeEnglish
      1712·
      5 months ago

      You’ve heard of CamelCase and lowercase and intVariableName variable naming styles. Get ready for:

      for (int Taiwan == 0; Taiwan < HongKong; Taiwan++) { int TianamenSquare == 0; … }

    • Tramort@programming.devEnglish
      903·
      5 months ago

      That’s the whole point of this: they will automatically filter that out, and this is an impotent, though well intended, gesture.

      • Morphit @feddit.ukEnglish
        781·
        5 months ago

        How will they filter it out? If they just don’t mirror anything with ‘forbidden’ terms, we can poison repos to prevent them being mirrored. If they try to tamper with the repo histories then they’ll end up breaking a load of stuff that relies on consistent git hashes.

        • jorp@lemmy.worldEnglish
          28·
          5 months ago

          I feel like the effort to make such a repo and make it popular enough to be cloned and rehosted is a lot more effort than someone manually checking the results of an automated filter process.

          The “effort economy” is hugely in favor of the mirroring side

      • bionicjoey@lemmy.caEnglish
        25·
        5 months ago

        Yeah I figured as much. It was mostly a joke. At the end of the day, if stuff is on GH, people can take it. It’s barely even stealing. Unless the license disagrees of course but then you were putting a lot of trust in society by making it public in the first place.

        • jaybone@lemmy.worldEnglish
          71·
          5 months ago

          That’s what I don’t get about this. Why does anyone care? Even this Chinese company, why do they care to clone it all? It’s already all hosted and publicly available.

          • bionicjoey@lemmy.caEnglish
            9·
            5 months ago

            Apparently they aren’t respecting licenses. It’s possible to have source code publicly available on GH but have it not be truly FOSS. But that’s generally not a great idea since you’re effectively relying on the honour system for people not to take your code.

          • irreticent@lemmy.worldEnglish
            2·
            5 months ago

            Even this Chinese company, why do they care to clone it all? It’s already all hosted and publicly available.

            Until it isn’t. Perhaps they are preparing for a future war with the US and assume their access to all that code will be blocked. They want to copy it now while they have access.

      • Azzu@lemm.eeEnglish
        252·
        5 months ago

        The real solution is to include a few tiananmenSquare variables in all the repositories. Either they exclude the entire repository or just the specific file, in either case the entire project may be unusable.

        • BeigeAgenda@lemmy.caEnglish
          151·
          5 months ago

          It’s a new coding paradigm, I will take some time getting used to looking for libraries in the uyghur/tianamen folder.

        • Tramort@programming.devEnglish
          32·
          5 months ago

          China filters every byte of Internet traffic in and out of the country.

          It seems naive to think they can’t accomplish the same thing for a GitHub mirror.

          • Azzu@lemm.eeEnglish
            51·
            5 months ago

            They’re not supposed to, it’s just about blocking them from using the software :)

        • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
          1·
          5 months ago

          So… You’re saying instead of “main”, “app”, or “core”, we should change the convention to make tiananmenSquare the entry point for apps?

          Or maybe make it the filename for utils, so it’ll just break

          • Azzu@lemm.eeEnglish
            1·
            5 months ago

            For example.

            But honestly I was more joking. The thing that makes most projects useful is the developers developing it, and they can’t clone that

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.worldEnglish
      189·
      5 months ago

      create a GitHub repo with Markdown articles outlining human rights abuses by the CCP

      Once you have logged “China killed 100 Zillion people! End CCP now!” in Chinese GitHub, everyone in China will realize that their lives are actually very bad and they need to do a Revolution immediately.

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.eeEnglish
        1·
        5 months ago

        And here I was thinking that might prevent them mirroring the repo but whatever

    • Asherah@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1226·
      5 months ago

      Maybe we should consider the same for the US government instead of being afraid of the big Chinese boogeyman across the sea? Because I guarantee you the US has just as many, if not more. But China bad. 🙄

      • bionicjoey@lemmy.caEnglish
        202·
        5 months ago

        I was making a joke about abusing Chinese censorship in order to stop them cloning GitHub repos (assuming that was something you wanted to do). The joke being that the CCP suppresses information about their human rights abuses. That is not true of the US. You could absolutely make a GitHub repo detailing the crimes of the US government. Nobody will stop you.

      • x4740N@lemm.eeEnglish
        42·
        5 months ago

        50 Cent Army Repellant:

        六四

        1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre

      • bionicjoey@lemmy.caEnglish
        713·
        5 months ago

        Tankie whataboutism strikes again.

        Two things can be bad at the same time. Wild, I know.

        Edit: also, the point of my joke wasn’t the human rights abuses. It is that these things are censored in China. So your comment is even more irrelevant. One could very easily create a repo outlining American crimes and put it on GitHub. But doing so in China with CCP crimes will have you sent to a Gulag

              • bionicjoey@lemmy.caEnglish
                421·
                5 months ago

                Lmao it’s literally the name of a logical fallacy. How is the term itself fallacious?

                Also I harbour no racism or ill will toward the Chinese people. My girlfriend is Chinese and I care about her a lot and love learning about her culture. I just don’t abide the human rights atrocities (or censorship thereof) committed by any government.

                  • bionicjoey@lemmy.caEnglish
                    35·
                    5 months ago

                    It’s funny how much effort you’re going to debating my word choice instead of the meaning and content of my rebuttal to your stupid comment. Do you have an actual point here? Are you claiming that what you were doing above wasn’t whataboutism? That it’s somehow a valid counterpoint to my joke about CCP censorship to say that the US also does bad things?

                  • gaylord_fartmaster@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    15·
                    5 months ago

                    1.it’s a euphemism for “And You Are Lynching Negroes” - that’s literally what people used to say instead of whataboutism

                    lol who do you think was saying this, and how is “whataboutism” in any way of a euphemism for it? Did you even bother to read the article you linked?