How censoring #China’s open-source coders might backfire

Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/05/30/1052879/censoring-china-open-source-backfire/

Li went through the manual review for all his projects on Gitee, and so far 22 out of 24 have been restored. “Yet I assume that the #review process is not a one-time thing, so the question is if the friction of hosting projects will increase in the future,” he says. Still, with no better domestic alternative, Li expects users to stay: “People might not like what #Gitee is doing, but [Gitee] will still be required to get their daily job done.”

China is ruining everything for good with its autocracy. The knowledge transfer of the Linux kernel as free open-source software was the biggest aid ever given to development. Now that they need their own operating system for mobile devices in the trade war with the US, because they are no longer allowed to use Google's software, it is very stupid to scare their own open source developers. Source code should always be apolitical and the fact that so many projects are subsequently released shows that the censors have no idea what they are doing.

#censorship #censor #fail #os #software #opensource #freedom #politics #news #problem #autocracy #system #future #floss