Jul

24

SourceForge Unblocked in China

Filed Under censorship |    4 Comments

After a month hiatus, SourceForge, the world’s largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications, is again accessible from China on the eve of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Chinese authorities has never admitted to blocking access to SourceForge, the only way for people in China to reach the site was by using a proxy server based outside of the country. There has been also no official confirmation that the website has been unblocked, but China unblocked it anyway. The Chinese authorities had promised to give foreign journalists more freedom in the run-up to this summer’s Olympic Games.

China censors internet content that it finds objectionable, usually political material and occasionally pornography. The SourceForge blocking may be related to the author of SourceForge’s anti-China protests of Beijing Olympic Games. China programmers needs SourceForge, and SourceForge is a professional technology website without political material. Now, SourceForge has been unblocked in China, Chinese programmers should enjoy SourceForge while it’s available because we may never know when it will disappear.

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Comments

4 Responses to “SourceForge Unblocked in China”

  1. gary Miguel on July 26th, 2008 8:50 pm

    Yay! Finally I can download some open source software. I was too lazy to figure out how to download things through a proxy, and it would probably crap out halfway through. Stupid government

  2. Cameron on August 11th, 2008 7:46 pm

    It seems that SF can be accessed weeks before the Olympic Games not the eve of it. At least I can. I am not sure whether the unaccessable issue totally relate to politics since SF servers are making a migration recently. Anyway, I am so glad that SF can be accessed in China now:)