On Monday, the Chinese government began blocking the country’s Internet users from accessing GitHub, a popular code hosting service for developers.
Why would the government take such a move? One forum commenter speculated, “I believe the blocking is directly related to an automated train ticket polling plugin that had brought down Github just days ago. Due to upcoming Chinese New Year, newly released train tickets are sold within minutes. That plugin introduces huge traffic to already crumbling ticket vending site, and it has obviously made railroad bureau angry. Blocking Github makes that plugin immediately malfunction because it makes reference to javascript files hosted on Github pages. The bureau has also paid a visit to the plugin’s author, for the purpose of intimidation perhaps.”
GigaOm’s Barb Darrow commented, “As many on Twitter commented this morning and as GigaOM has reported before, these roadblocks not only hinder the flow of news and information for citizens, they hurt the ability of Chinese developers to compete — and in this case collaborate — on a global basis.”
