Christian, of course Google has every right to do whatever he wants with his money. But let me quote Rocky Bernstein:
“This is a non-sequitor. I don't think the issue is just this year or
within the confines of the timeframe of the summer of code. For example,
should some other organization want to follow google's very generous
example, they might be tempted to make the same (perhaps arbitrary, or
worse, wrong) restriction.
Governments especially bad ones, often work by intimidation and innuendo.
If it is the case that there is no applicable law but you/google just
don't want the possibility of a hassle, in a sense the repressive forces
have succeeded in repressing as they have too often in the past.“
I don’t think it’s about frustration. For me, it’s about oppression. US and Iran not on good terms? Who knows that more than the likes of me who are oppressed by both of the governments? I have to deal with it? I am, but I’m also trying to change some things, at least by trying to raise some minimal awareness.
Ah, and the sanctions are quite effective. I would appreciate it if you take a look at this older post of mine to get some ideas. If the goal of the US government is increasing the power of the Iranian government over the Iranian people and making sure Iranians can’t thrive even outside Iran, they are effective.
Iranian government working on atomic energy and at the same time saying things about Israel? Iranian people lose. US government worried that Iran may develop atomic bombs, so increase the sanctions? Iranian people lose. This is a lose-lose game for the Iranian people (who are not even players in the game, some of which don’t even care about Iran or US or atomic energy), living both inside and outside Iran. And Google is helping the governments to make Iranian people lose more.
BTW, I really don’t know how happy or unhappy Iranian students living abroad are about this. It’s been a long time since I’ve been a student, and I’ve never lived abroad. I know some Iranian students are participating in Google’s SoC under their foreign friends’ names and some have even applied to GNOME under these fake identities. How do you like that? Somebody doing open source work and not being able to get the credit?
Behdad may know, and he has promised to write about this with a lot of background information on recent sad things happening to Iranian students in the US (some of which are related to Google).
PS: Chris DiBona is probably the sanest guy involved in this matter at the Google’s side. He has helped more than I had expected. Google’s lawyers are the guys who started this situation, and they are simply sticking to it for not even wanting to think.