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Updated 10072022-041642

Dear GitHub,

Almost 4 years ago, a group of open source maintainers wrote you a letter expressing their frustration that the platform they love most was ignoring their request for help. You stepped up your game, and started paying attention, fixing things that were broken, and building new experiences that have gone above and beyond what we asked for.

Now, we are asking you to help again. GitHub's leadership recently chose to renew a contract to provide GitHub Enterprise Server to the Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) division of United States Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE). This government agency is actively committing numerous crimes and human rights violations, in contravention of both US and international law. ICE conducts random violent raids throughout the United States, invades communities and workplaces with military equipment, detains buses and trains, and arrests people solely on the basis of their perceived nationality, skin color, or native language. Their agents lurk outside of schools in order to abduct the children of immigrants and force their families to surrender themselves into custody. ICE imprisons people in deplorable and unsanitary conditions and denies them medical care. They separate the children they imprison from their families and offer them for adoption by others via agencies with shady histories. ICE agents subject both the adults and children they imprison to horrific physical, psychological, and sexual abuse. They continue to commit these heinous acts in defiance of multiple judgments issued by US courts and condemnations by humanitarian organizations. Many people, including children, have now died in their custody.

At the core of the open source ethos is the idea of liberty. Open source is about inverting power structures and creating access and opportunities for everyone. We, the undersigned, cannot see how to reconcile our ethics with GitHub's continued support of ICE. Moreover, your lack of transparency around the ethical standards you use for conducting business is also concerning to a community that is focused around doing everything out in the open. We want to know that the platform we have invested so much of our time and energy in is operating in a way that is consistent with the values of open source software development.

We therefore call upon GitHub to:

We still believe in GitHub as a platform, as a place to help the open source community make the world a genuinely better place. Please, step up and join us.

Signed,

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