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https://lobste.rs/s/8xsdln/github_codespaces#c_ym7c4j
Well, some people live in countries under sanctions for one,
The international sanctions regime is arguably broken and/or evil, but GH/MSFT are bound to follow US law, as that’s the jurisdiction in which they are incorporated. The correct way to fix sanctions is through political action, not for software companies to change their product launches.
or are banned from having microsoft accounts.
Again, while GH/MSFT would love to have more customers or users, they can’t force organizations to support them.
Once projects start to depend on these environments, this will almost certainly increase the barrier to entry for people who don’t want to, or cannot use them.
Like many people online, you seem to confuse the right of free expression with the ability to monetize that expression. The real violation of human rights is not that a citizen of North Korea cannot compete in the global software marketplace, but that the regime of North Korea is denying its citizens of the human right of free expression.
Straight out of the microsoft play book will be to add proprietary extensions to these code envs and encourage projects to rely on them.
This is just normal competition in the free market. This behavior is what Google and Facebook do too, in their respective properties. Again, it’s arguably bad in a broad societal sense, but the solution is probably political action or enforcement of existing legislation, not voluntary restrictions from the companies themselves - something that is against their fiduciary duty as corporations.
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