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Comment by TazeTSchnitzel | Hacker News Reader

That does not seem wise. China vs. GitHub, China will win.

It would be interesting to know how important Github is for China's economy and how important China is for Github's.

China's GDP is 10 Trillion dollars. Github is not at all important to China, other than a source of tools to citizens use to circumvent their authoritative regime.

> Github is not at all important to China

If that were the case, I don't think they would have backed down and allowed access to Github again.

Or maybe by blocking it during the timeframe they did, they have accomplished their mission and there was no further need for blocking.

I sincerely doubt github is at all important to China.

again, then why did they unblock it? it is important, we're in a new paradigm for software where developing in the open leads to higher quality software written faster than previous ways

It's hardly a new paradigm, it's just a place with a lot of software that you'd otherwise have to write from scratch. It's merely software development catching up with everything else.

I'm sure Github and free software is a goldmine to the country that built its economy on copying other people's stuff.

On the other hand, the capitalists running the communist party might scoff at the idea of software that everyone is allowed to copy, because that offers no advantage to the unscrupulous. At least I'd imagine they would scoff at copyleft, just like Github does.

That is true, even Google can't fight against China.

I imagine they have the technical resources to – they just don't because as a public company they are obligated to maximize shareholder value.

I would put it more on the fact that attacking a foreign government is kinda usurping the role US government and they won't take kindly to that.

...in China. Outside of China, my money would be on Google.

Google made a choice.

You can always fight, even if you believe you will lose.

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