The directory of open source software at SourceForge.net is the heart of a controversy. Indeed, on its official blog, the team tries to clarify its terms and conditions and said that the law of the United States requires the site to filter the content from certain regions and downloads. Specifically, developers residing in Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Sudan or Syria have no right of access to SourceForge.net.
Returning to his motivation to play a major role in the distribution of free software or open source, SourceForge team explains: "However, in addition to participating in the life of the open source community, we also live in a real world and are governed by the laws of our country. Our duty to obey them far exceeds all our dreams of creating a united community. "
The U.S. agency financial control OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) has in effect created a list of people and countries that have no access whatsoever to U.S. products. For this reason "last week, SourceForge.net began to automatically block certain IP addresses to force these conditions of use.
This initiative raises many questions, starting with whether the content posted on SourceForge.net may truly be considered American products. In addition, many general conditions SourceForge simply does not meet the definition of the term itself open source that no descrimination should be practiced.
Ironically the situation a few days after the secretary of state Hillary Clinton spoke about cyber-attacks on Google and denied by China. It stated: "The country does not respect free access to information or violating the rights of Internet users are likely to close the doors of the progress of the next century." She added: "Last year, we observed a peak of threats targeting the free exchange of information. China, Tunisia and Uzbekistan took steps to censor the Internet.
SourceForge.net then seems caught between two fires and the filtering of IP addresses to force these terms seem to have cooled rather the developer community.
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