GitHub has corrected the issue, restoring our organization access and web site. They have reported that the org was flagged as part of an automated process. The flagging occurred because we have two external contributors from Iran (non GH org members). They told me that there should have been a warning and they are investigating why that didn't happen. The CEO of GitHub also reached out personally to try to speedily rectify the situation.
A few months ago GitHub banned access of Iranian developers (and devs who live in a few other countries) to private repositories and gists and now, with actions like this, even if it's by accident, they are threatening our chance of collaboration to public open-source repos because maintainers would be afraid that if they accept our contribution they may face consequences.
> maintainers would be afraid that if they accept our contribution they may face consequences
But that isn't a result of GitHub's actions, if anything they are trying to protect maintainers by blocking Iranian contributions.
Sanctions are 1) implemented at a federal government level and 2) intended to make it almost impossible for the sanctioned country to get anything done. It's like not letting your kid take their Switch or iPhone with them to timeout. Yeah it sucks and makes everything awful, but that is exactly the point.
So Iran could sponsor programmers to contribute to as many repos as possible? Then they can win a propaganda war of why Iran is progressive and good and the US is bad?
Haven't they already won that war? USA created ISIS, gave ISIS lots of weapons and logistical support, then assassinated the guy who beat ISIS while he was in diplomatic talks with supposed USA ally Iraq. In response, Iran says "we will destroy buildings at the following addresses", allows time for those buildings to be evacuated, then their guided missiles destroy exactly those buildings. USA military brass then downgraded Iran from their "let's go to war now" list...
