Reporting by XinZhiyuan
Editor: Yuan Xie is sleepy
When the war in the black land of Eastern Europe was in full swing, Microsoft, EA, and CD Projekt said that they would completely ban the sale of products in Russia, and the open source community was no exception.
Recently, the big companies in the technology industry and the open source community have joined the "political game" in Eastern Europe.
Some are openly on the sidelines, and some are shut down in Russia.
As with yesterday's opening ceremony, the sanctions have also extended to the arts, sports, medicine and other fields.
Note: The following paraphrasing basically retains the original text
Banned by Microsoft
On March 5, 2022, technology giant Microsoft announced that it would stop new sales of all products and services in Russia.
The U.S. company, which uses its software on more than 1 billion devices worldwide, said its products would temporarily withdraw from the Russian market and "suspend sales of all new Microsoft products and services in Russia," but has not elaborated on how it will be implemented.
Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, said in a blog post announcing the matter: "Just like the rest of the world, we are shocked, angry and saddened by the images and news from the war in Ukraine, and condemn Russia's unjustified, unwarranted and illegal aggression."
Microsoft sees withdrawal from Russia as "necessary." According to President Brad Smith, a "forceful" move like this can have enough results, and depending on the development of the situation in Ukraine, Microsoft has many more actions to take.
Microsoft said it had taken action against the harmful cyberattacks on Ukraine. "Since the beginning of the war, we have taken action on the positioning, destructive or disruptive measures taken by Russia against more than 20 Ukrainian government, IT and financial sector organizations," Smith said in a blog post.
In Russia, like most countries in the world, most users rely on Microsoft's Windows, Office, and network services like Microsft 365 or Azure. How Microsoft's ban will affect Russia is not entirely clear, especially whether the subscription service can be renewed.
However, it should be certain that the newly shipped computers in Russia will not be able to carry the Windows operating system, which will cause a lot of trouble to new users.
Online advertising ban
Meta's social networking platform and Google's audio-visual platform YouTube have banned ads from official Russian media, and Twitter has stopped all advertising purchase rights in Ukraine and Russia.
On February 27, 2022, a YouTube spokesperson issued a statement saying that the company is taking relevant actions in view of the special situation in Ukraine, "In view of the current special situation, we will suspend Google advertising in Russia." The situation is changing rapidly, and we will continue to share the latest information in due course."
A YouTube spokesperson also said, "Our team has begun to suspend certain channels that monetize YouTube, including Russia Today's YouTube channels around the world." Russia Today (RT) is Russia's main state-run media.
In addition to limiting profits, YouTube will also limit recommendations for these channels and "continue to actively display credible news content in Russian-Ukrainian-related search results."
A YouTube spokesperson stressed that "our team continues to closely monitor new developments as usual, including assessing what any new sanctions and export controls might mean for YouTube."
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, also previously announced that it would ban Russian state media from advertising or monetizing on any of its platforms.
In addition, in order to protect the safety and privacy of Ukrainian users, Facebook also opens the "lock" profile function for Ukrainian users, and users in Ukraine can prevent strangers from viewing posts and downloading profile photos with a single click.
Twitter officials also said that it has suspended all ads in Russia and Ukraine to ensure that it will not affect the safety of public messages on Twitter. In addition, Tweet recommendations (from unnoticed accounts) that appear in user feeds will be restricted to reduce the spread of misleading and abusive content.
Banned in the game industry
On March 5, 2022, in order to show its attitude towards the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict, gaming giant EA announced a ban on the sale of products and services in Russia and Belarus:
We have decided to stop selling our games and content, including virtual currency bundles, in Russia and Belarus while the conflict continues.
As a result, our games and content will no longer be available for purchase in EA Origin stores or EA apps in Russia, including in-game purchases.
We're also working with our platform partners to remove our games from their stores and stop selling new game content in the region.
EA had earlier announced that it would make adjustments to its FIFA and NHL games.
In FIFA 22, FIFA Mobile and FIFA Online, players will no longer see the Russian national team. This is very close to the reality of the situation, after FIFA and UEFA have made decisions to ban Russian national teams and club teams from participating in international competitions.
At the same time, EA will also remove the national and club teams from Russia and Belarus from the ice hockey game NHL 22 in the coming weeks, after the International Ice Hockey Association, like FIFA, banned teams from both countries from playing.
"EA Sports, like many people in football, stands out for the Ukrainian people, and we call for peace and hope that the invasion of Ukraine will end soon." The EA wrote in the announcement. At the same time, he also said that he is "actively evaluating relevant changes in other aspects of the game" and will keep players informed of the latest situation.
Due to the intensification of the Russian-Ukrainian firefight, CD Projekt, the developer of "The Witcher 3" and "Cyberpunk 2077", which is headquartered in Poland, announced on March 4 that in addition to donating money to aid Ukraine, it also announced on March 4 that it would cut off the sales channels of games to Russia and Belarus and join the ranks of international sanctions.
"In view of Russia's military invasion of our neighbor Ukraine, until further notice, the CD Projekt Group has decided to terminate the sales channels of its games to Russia and Belarus."
CD Projekt's Twitter announcement said: "Today, we and our partners began to stop selling products to Russia and Belarus, including all game sales channels on the GOG platform."
According to cd Projekt Group Investor Report, in the past 12 months, total sales in Russia and Belarus accounted for 5.4% of CDPR game sales revenue, and GOG platform revenue also accounted for 3.7%.
CD Projekt said that this money is not earned.
The open source community is openly on the side: Github, Node.js, React .js
GitHub clarified its position through text and logo "color matching": "GitHub stands in solidarity with Ukraine and the international community to condemn these horrific acts of violence against a sovereign country and its people, and will continue to pay attention to Russia's illegal military invasion of Ukraine."
As the home of open source and home to all developers, we take our role seriously, protecting the free flow of information in open collaborations and our interconnected communities. This includes keeping the platform open and usable to all developers, regardless of where they live.
We believe in the power of open source, so we will continue to work hard to ensure that developers around the world can access GitHub. At the same time, we continue to ensure that free and open source services are available to everyone, including developers in Russia.
Our legal team scrutinizes various official regulations and complies with evolving export control and trade regulations.
This includes the imposition of strict new export controls aimed at severely restricting Russia's acquisition of the technology and other items it needs to maintain aggressive military capabilities.
In addition, any officially requested notice of removal/removal of a project that we process is publicly available because we believe that transparency is essential for good community governance.
Understandably, during this particularly tense period, our communities have had a strong response to the conflicts in Eastern Europe. The policies and community guidelines we are implementing will make GitHub safe for everyone.
The community and product operations teams are monitoring the conversations in the forums and making assessments. Please follow our Code of Conduct for Community Forums and Public Feedback, otherwise we will block discussions.
Node .js briefly posted on the front page of its website: "We stand with the Ukrainian people. We encourage compassion and hope for peace. Please provide humanitarian assistance through the International Committee of the Red Cross."
As an open source cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment, Node .js is the world's largest open source package management system, and the development entities involved in contributing and using it are all over the world.
Another major open source JavaScript library, React.js added support for Ukraine to its description of its GitHub repository. He also briefly replaced the banner of "providing humanitarian assistance to Ukraine" at the official station.
React's ability to help developers create large web applications that can change data without having to reload pages is popular with many developers in the industry.
Now both Node and React's official website announcements have been taken down. The React team said on GitHub that its position of supporting Ukrainian civilians in the crisis had not changed, but the replacement of banner "caused trouble for some people", so it was temporarily withdrawn to continue to measure what to do later.
Resources:
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/4/22961673/ea-halting-sales-games-content-currency-russia-belarus
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/4/22961445/microsoft-russia-ukraine-sales-ban-xbox-azure-windows-office
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/4/22961302/google-pauses-all-ad-sales-russia-search-youtube
https://github.com/nodejs/nodejs.org/pull/4467
https://twitter.com/EASPORTSFIFA/status/1499057030857777154
https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/3/22959975/cd-projekt-red-gog-cuts-off-sales-russia-belarus-mykhailo-fedorov