GitHub says that it will now sell its complete spectrum of services in Iran, after putting limitations on the site for Iranian developers due to US sanctions. The amendments are due to the exemption given by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the sanctioning arm of the US Treasury Department.
The CEO of GitHub, Nat Friedman said in a blog post that was posted on Tuesday that they have gotten a license from the government of the United States for the purpose of selling GitHub to Iran’s developers, which consists of all the programs for organizations as well as individuals, for both private and social—for free.
“Over the course of two years, we have been able to demonstrate how the development of GitHub advances human progress, knowledge production, and the enduring US foreign policy of promoting free speech and the free flow of information.”
GitHub has been functioning in a very modified sense in Iran since 2019, mainly by having some open code databases available, due to US trade barriers that forced Microsoft’s open-source hosting platform to likewise limit its operations in Crimea and Syria.
The organization is now “in the process of figuring back all limitations on developers in Iran” and “re-introducing full access to affected accounts,” and Friedman says GitHub is still working on obtaining exceptions for Crimea and Syria.
Over the weekend, GitHub CEO Nat Friedman wrote on Twitter that, like every other “company doing business in the US,” GitHub is expected to comply with U.S. export law. The confirmation comes months after the job communication service Slack has also placed similar limitations on its website.
Friedman said that all the programmers should feel absolutely free when it comes to using GitHub, no location restrictions are for any programmer, and at the same time Friedman made sure that GitHub follows all the rules and regulations set up by the United States at the same time.