The author is Russian and has numerous seemingly popular github repositories. They question Github's decision to ban their account without giving them any reasoning and illustrates how the open source community has lost a lot of value as a result of the comment/asset removal.

The author's comparison to internment camps and other dramatic measures of government suppression seems unfair. Github not providing reasoning is also unfair, but seems to be standard practice among corporations (maybe to help with liability?). The questions Github is asking from the user relate to U.S. OFAC policy, which is how the U.S. enforces economic sanctions. Basically if you've done business with North Korea or a number of other flagged entities you can be held liable criminally or more often for huge fines.

I don't know how the author triggered whatever automatic suspension mechanism github has in place, but I think github should priorize the author's case given their contribution to the community. I don't think Github is an evil organization. I do think OFAC policy is difficult to enforce and the U.S. gov should make it easier. If Github reported the number of suspensions, who was suspended or explain why a suspension happened I would have more trust in them as a platform.

>I don't think Github is an evil organization.

its...getting there. There are good arguments to suggest new Microsoft is the same as old Microsoft and this might be one of them. Github frantically clawing for control of developers, while blindly enforcing things like ITAR are a classic Microsoft case of directionless middle management vying for government rent-seeking and free market capital at the same time.

Either MS fixes this quick, or FLOSS projects will rightly start hosting things elsewhere. free software is free as in speech, and in most cases this crap is interpreted as outright censorship.

[Edit]: Here is another using the BitTorrent protocol - https://github.com/cjb/GitTorrent