SF.net Is The Third, FedoraHosted Was Already There…

When I figured out that SourceForge has blocked users of banned countries like Iran to access its services (downloading/uploading content), it made me really angry that it has followed in google code’s footsteps… but at that time I had not noticed that FedoraHosted is already blocking ANY access to such users. At least SourceForge STILL allows everyone to browse content, but if you are comming from an IP address belonging to Iran, you can’t access FedoraHosted at all. And this is not new, as there were always problems accessing FedoraHosted from inside Iran AFAIK, but I was not sure if it is blocked from inside Iran or outside of it (some people have said that they had problems accessing some HTTPS sites from inside Iran).
But today, that I was looking for SourceForge alternatives in this wikipedia page, I noticed the actual reason. FedoraHosted just blocks any access from Iran and other banned countries, just like Google Code. So disappointing… 😦
Who knows, maybe soon I will be hosting some linux projects on Microsoft CodePlex 😉 (I was joking! It might do the same thing sooner or later!).

Well, the world is far from Ideal even in the Free/Open Source world, so I’ve decided to stop relying on any USA based product or services and be prepared for “Access Forbidden” messages.

So, for project hosting I’m currently looking at some promissing options: BerliOS, SourceForge.JP, KnowledgeForge, etc. But things will not stop here, who knows when GMail and other USA email providers will stop providing services to Iranians? I’ve started looking for non-USA free email providers too. However, USA might prefer to keep track of our email content, and also it might prefer us to have access to services like email and twitter which can be used in the ways they like (remember a few months ago that USA government asked twitter to postpone their hardware upgrade a little so that their service will be unavailable when it is midnight in Iran; so that Iranians can use it to communicate. But I think twitter should ban Iranians from accessing their services in the legal point of view!!!).

Have Fun!

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