Hello:

Because of USA policy, Sourceforge has blocked users from Cuba, Iran North Corea and other "rogue countries".
http://sourceforge.net/blog/clarifying-sourceforgenets-denial-of-site-access-for-certain-persons-in-accordance-with-us-law/

I am from Spain and have a contact in Cuba (we have worked together in some projects, mainly translations into Spanish). I have talked him sometimes about Lazarus, although he is not a pascal guy, he sometimes downloads it and checks it.

I don't mind to download Lazarus and to put it in my site for him. Probably he could use a anonymizer too. But I
think it's a waste of time and resources.

I don't intend to start a flame about USA's foreign policy. But perhaps you could think an alternative. Not necessarily to move away from Sourceforge, but maybe to have a mirror in an alternative repository without such restrictions and link it in Lazarus' site

Regards
Santiago A.

Sourceforge needs some non US server now!
It's a silly law and Sourceforge needs to find a way round it.

I don't intend to start a flame about USA's foreign policy. But perhaps you could think an alternative. Not necessarily to move away from Sourceforge, but maybe to have a mirror in an alternative repository without such restrictions and link it in Lazarus' site

Use http://repo.or.cz/ as a mirror it has a nice web gui for git and it's not in the US or US owned.

Maybe we could just provide some direct links to Sourceforge mirrors outside the US? Like this one in Brazil:
http://ufpr.dl.sourceforge.net/project/lazarus/

Best regards,
Fl?vio

2010/1/31 Fl?vio Etrusco

Same as in Syria and not just sourceforge it is google and many other site (we feel like as Jerry with Tom try to catch us)
SVN not blocked yet and also the mails like Gmail, but i am afraid we will see that in the future.

You can use any antiproxy to download from the blocked site, for sourceforge you can catch the mirror, press escape in the decisive time.

Sorry fo Off Topic.

svaa wrote

I don't intend to start a flame about USA's foreign policy. But perhaps you could think an alternative. Not necessarily to move away from Sourceforge, but maybe to have a mirror in an alternative repository without such restrictions and link it in Lazarus' site

I maintain the FPC and Lazarus git [http://git-scm.com/] mirrors on GitHub. I don't think they block any countries, so you can always get it from there.

GitHub also allows you to download archives (generated on the fly) of any branch or revision of the repository.

For more information on the mirrors:

http://wiki.freepascal.org/git_mirrors

I know there are nightly builds of Lazarus too, but I'm not sure where they are hosted, but I don't think it's a SourceForge download (as far as I remember).

Regards,
- Graeme -

Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

I maintain the FPC and Lazarus git [http://git-scm.com/] mirrors on GitHub. I don't think they block any countries, so you can always get it from there.

Do you think we will block our svn repository? No matter what sourceforge do - it has only a mirror of the main fpc and lazarus code repositories.

Best regards,
Paul Ishenin.

Paul Ishenin wrote

Do you think we will block our svn repository? No matter what

Only after posting my message I realized that the original poster might have been talking about binary setups instead of source code archives. But at least I mentioned the daily build (binary) downloads in my previous reply, though I am not sure where they are located.

Regards,
- Graeme -

SVN on sourceforge not blocked (yet), only the downloads. If thay do it, i will left programming and going to work anything else. For downloading from sf you can use our Firefox addon, it is made by my coworker Jihad

http://www.parmaja.com/sf/

Thanks

Zaher Dirkey
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Maybe making available torrents of the official release might help?

svaa wrote

Hello: Because of USA policy, Sourceforge ?has blocked users from Cuba, Iran North Corea and other "rogue countries".

Thinking about this a bit more, it is totally ridiculous. It's not as if SourceForge created all the projects, it simply hosts them. And probably a crap load of those project are developed by many non-American "non roque" countries. I'm pretty sure SourceForge is now in violation of the GPL as well, which is all about freedom to software (including access to the software and source code).

(I doubt that, the Terms of Service probably exclude that.)

There are American laws regarding a lot of product types such as encryption, data maining, data manipulation etc.. that some countries are not allowed to have.
SourceForge can not guarantee what source codes exists and how view them, so they must by the American law to block all access.

I think it's stupid because it hurts only normal people and not the government of a specific country, but America is a very narrow minded place in the way they do things imho.

Ido
http://ik.homelinux.org/
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Hello:

1) It is unfair, when people from other countries (even Cuba o Iran ) contributed, they thought that sourceforge would be available for everybody, now they have changed the deal unilaterally. Moreover, My contact in Cuba has helped in translating several projects into Spanish, now he can't enjoy his own work. It's not Sourceforge fault, but here we are. I won't ever contribute again in a project hosted only in Sourceforge.

2) It won't stop any government from using projects hosted in sourceforge, it's a public resource, so any government has a million ways to get the files. It's against citizens not against governments, as most embargoes. <irony>Wonderful Idea. To punish citizens because of their government.</irony>

Anyhow, I don't think my contact in Cuba will ever download Lazarus again. He wasn't particularly interested in pascal before, he hadn't tested Lazarus in a year, he did it a year ago it just because I insisted a little. In fact, I am afraid he reported it to me just to denounce the facts.

Forgetting policy and going back to the problem:

As far as I know, you only use sourceforge to store files, you don't use any other service of SF (blogs, website, revision system etc), so it will be easy to upload them in other server. I sugest to create lazarus project in http://www.gna.org, that is in France, upload the binaries and sources tarball and add a link in lazarus website with the text "non-USA server" or something like that.

PD: Counting on non-USA sourceforge's servers is a bad idea. Even if now they allows to access from "rogue countries", this may change in a near future. Sourceforge belongs to a USA company.

Regards
Santiago A.

http://ik.homelinux.org/

You can always use public proxy or anonymizers for having different IP addresses.
Even if you are not a government.

Ido
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I think about adding the files on SF to
ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/lazarus/releases. The hard (time consuming) part is adding links to it.

Vincent

Vincent Snijders wrote

I think about adding the files on SF to ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/lazarus/releases. The hard (time consuming) part is adding links to it.

It shouldn't be... In fact it will probably be less work than the current process of publishing software on SourceForge.

With a ftp site you simply create a new release folder "v0.9.28.3" and upload the various files into there. Update the "current" symbolic link. Done! You only need one link on the website.

ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/lazarus/releases/current

"current" will always be a symbolic link to the latest release. At this moment it will be:

ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/lazarus/releases/v0.9.28.3/

The developers can browse "current" and simply download the binary they need for their platform. This process has been done for years by just about everybody. For one, most Linux distros release new versions like that.

Not to mention that the FTP protocol is faster than HTTP, so download speeds should be better too, and have the possibility of reliably resuming a download if your internet connection fail.

As far as I know the already available download binaries are correctly named indicating what it is and for what target or platform, so nothing needs to change there either.

2010/2/2 ik :

You can always use public proxy or anonymizers for having different IP addresses.

Have you ever found a reliable anonymous public proxy? I haven't! Yes you can Google for them and you will get list with 100's of proxies, but then when you try and use them they don't exist etc.. Those proxy lists are always outdated.

http://ik.homelinux.org/

I use TOR or public ssh shell servers personally :)

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Graeme Geldenhuys wrote

On 2 February 2010 20:02, Vincent Snijders wrote: > I think about adding the files on SF to > ftp://ftp.freepascal.org/pub/lazarus/releases. The hard (time consuming) > part is adding links to it.

It cannot hardly be faster than mkdir releases and rsync frs.sourceforge.net/some.path/lazarus.

That is a good idea, just what I had in mind, except that will need some restructuring of the current directory layout, because currently you choose first the OS and the version, so links in the wiki (per OS) don't need to be updated as much.

Vincent

Many projects, as Lazarus, use Sourceforge only for downloads. I suppose that there are two main reasons:
1) Visibility (People search software in SF)
2) Save bandwidth from their own servers. If a project becomes popular and many people downloads it, SF has resources and specialized systems for downloads (a lot of bandwidth and many balanced servers).

Of course, I think that hosting files in your own servers is a good alternative , I proposed another server like http://www.gna.org because I supposed that you were using SF in order to save bandwidth. If you don't care to use your own servers, that is the best option.

By the way, showing a web page with a well organized the list of downloads is necessary. You can just upload the files in the right directory and a simple program scans the directory and shows it organized in a web page. I think it is not a good idea to show just a minimalist list of files as browser show FTP list, it looks too amateur even abandoned.

Santiago A.

Feel free to create an account and project and upload lazarus installers. I'am sure, the main lazarus site will link on it.

Vincent Snijders wrote

It cannot hardly be faster than mkdir releases and rsync frs.sourceforge.net/some.path/lazarus.

Oh, I haven't released something on SourceForge in ages. The last time I had to ftp files to SourceForge. Then go to the Admin pages. Create a new section/category for the new version. Then select the file out of all uploaded files to SourceForge. Finally we are done.

I guess things improved since then. :-)

Regards,
- Graeme -

Santiago A. wrote

organized in a web page. I think it is not a good idea to show just a minimalist list of files as browser show FTP list, it looks too amateur even abandoned.

Not necessarily if the files on the ftp site have self-explanatory names - which I believe they already have.

Remember our target audience is developers - not end-users new to computers. Surely they know how to read and can pick a target and platform binary from a list. ;-)

Regards,
- Graeme -

Santiago A. wrote

organized in a web page. I think it is not a good idea to show just a minimalist list of files as browser show FTP list, it looks too amateur even abandoned.

Another positive point for a ftp list is that you get to see the file sizes. I *hate* websites that have download links on web pages but do not list the file size.

Regards,
- Graeme -

svaa wrote

Not necessarily to move away from Sourceforge, but maybe to have a mirror in an alternative repository without such restrictions and link it in Lazarus' site

You can download the latest release from
ftp://ftp.hu.freepascal.org/pub/lazarus/releases/ too.

Feel free to update the links in the wiki.

Vincent

A little good news in the whole "blanket blocking" discussion:

SourceForge seem to have changed the policy regarding the block - perhaps the Free Pascal project and Lazarus should look into these changes:

http://sourceforge.net/blog/some-good-news-sourceforge-removes-blanket-blocking/

Kind regards,
Torsten Bonde Christiansen.

I am not sure that FPC and therefore Lazarus (we offer FPC packages in and with Lazarus packages and installers) is not subject to US export regulation, if exported from some US SourceForge server.

Vincent

I wouldn't know about that, but as i could read from the link the default setting is to deny access to the mentioned countries. So if the export regulations do not apply, then perhaps the settings should be changed... :)

Kind regards,
Torsten Bonde Christiansen.

Vincent Snijders wrote

I am not sure that FPC and therefore Lazarus (we offer FPC packages in and with Lazarus packages and installers) is not subject to US export regulation, if exported from some US SourceForge server.

We are (developers) are sitting in another countries and have no relation to only hosts our projects.

Best regards,
Paul Ishenin.

Hello:

I have registered a project in http://www.gna.org. There is a little problem with ssh, as soon as we solve it, I will upload Lazarus binaries.

Regards
Santiago A.

The export is disallowed by international contracts, i.e. not only US servers are affected. But only the export of strong encryption code is regulated, no other software is affected.

So somebody should reset the "export" flag for Lazarus (and FPC) on SF. Other servers may follow...

DoDi

The literal text is:
This project does NOT incorporate, access, call upon, or otherwise use encryption of any kind, including, but not limited to, open source algorithms and/or calls to encryption in the operating system or underlying platform

The current (default) option is:
This project DOES incorporate, access, call upon or otherwise use encryption. Posting of open source encryption is controlled under U.S. Export Control Classification Number "ECCN" 5D002 and must be simultaneously reported by email to the U.S. government. You are responsible for submitting this email report to the U.S. government in accordance with procedures described in:
http://www.bis.doc.gov/encryption/PubAvailEncSourceCodeNotify.html and Section 740.13(e) of the Export Administration Regulations ("EAR") 15 C.F.R. Parts 730-772.

Because FPC contains for example a blowfish unit,
http://svn.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/trunk/packages/fcl-base/src/blowfish.pp?view=markup, I think I cannot choose the first option.

Vincent

Vincent Snijders wrote

Because FPC contains for example a blowfish unit, http://svn.freepascal.org/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi/trunk/packages/fcl-base/src/blowfish.pp?view=markup, I think I cannot choose the first option.

Does that still apply to FPC, even if the original author of FPC (Florian), and most contributors to FPC are all non-American citizens?

Either way, such "American" restrictions are ridiculous. Host your own projects on your own server or move the project to somebody like BerliOS (hosted outside USA) and be done with the issues. SourceForge is simply passing the liability onto the project admins - very sneaky!

Regards,
- Graeme -

Either way, such "American" restrictions are ridiculous. Host your own projects on your own server

Getting servers with pipes like SF is not easy.

or move the project to somebody like BerliOS (hosted outside USA)

... where schily is admin? No :)

and be done with the issues. SourceForge is simply passing the liability onto the project admins - very sneaky!

... which could become indeed a problem for the project admins as soon as they visit the US.

Florian Klaempfl wrote

... which could become indeed a problem for the project admins as soon as they visit the US.

So be careful when you plan your next holiday. The US Government might just extend your trip by a few years.

Regards,
- Graeme -

The regulations apply to most countries, only the procedures may vary.

Either way, such "American" restrictions are ridiculous. Host your own projects on your own server or move the project to somebody like BerliOS (hosted outside USA) and be done with the issues.

Not very likely :-(

SourceForge is simply passing the liability onto the project admins - very sneaky!

It's the best a hoster can do. It depends on local law, whether a hoster is liable for hosted content (not very common, IMO), but in any case the provider of the content is responsible for conforming to the international regulations, as implemented in his local law.

DoDi

2010/2/3, Vincent Snijders :

And http://michael-ep3.physik.uni-halle.de/Lazarus/releases/ which may be faster because ftp.hu.freepascal.org has a download bandwidth limit of 100 kB per second per connection.

Feel free to update the links in the wiki.

Vincent