China is attempting to mirror the entire GitHub over to their own servers, users report

infosec.exchange Still (@still@infosec.exchange)

Attached: 3 images tldr: GitCode or China is attempting to mirror/clone the entire GitHub over to their own servers and there's nothing you can do about it, even if your license somehow disagrees with it. Apparently China now has their own GitHub/public Git repository hosting service called GitCod...

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/176888

GitCode, a git-hosting website operated Chongqing Open-Source Co-Creation Technology Co Ltd and with technical support from CSDN and Huawei Cloud.
It is being reported that many users' repository are being cloned and re-hosted on GitCode without explicit authorization.
There is also a thread on Ycombinator (archived link)

6 comments

Good luck with my crappy code China

Can someone please point out some specific licenses and projects which disallow this kind of action?

When they mirror it, does they uses a different username? If so I'm totally fine as that's just a fork, otherwise it should count as stolen. Not the project but the name and reputation of the owner.

When I type "Beej" in their search bar, my network guide shows up in the pick list, but then it 403s when I try to go there.
Didn't see any other of my repos there. I'm confident they don't have my private repos. And even if they did, I don't have any sensitive information stored there, of course.
I guess I could worry about this or be mad about it, but there seems to be literally nothing actionable here.

It's only for repositories with a certain number of start, iirc?

A mirror of a privately controlled website hosting lots of opensource code. I wish they did it on a forgejo instance. They could've contributed so much to forgejo to enable this level of detailed cloning. It could help people wanting to move their entire profile over to forgejo and retain all issues, PRs, etc.
Maybe somebody who speaks Chinese could float it to them. They could be a force for good.
Anti Commercial-AI license

6 comments