On Tuesday, the company Pure Labs was able to regain access to it after its GitHub account was shut down on December 30 due to a breach of Iranian sanctions.

This happened after an employee opened his laptop during his visit to his parents in Iran. That was enough for Microsoft’s GitHub to ban Pure Labs’ account as it didn’t comply with US trade sanctions on Iran.

Hence, it is possible that visiting a country under US trade sanctions could affect the account status, although availability can be gained back once the person has left the sanctioned region. The individual would also have to submit a successful account appeal request or an organizational account appeals request.

However, according to the U.S. rules, this shouldn’t be necessary for simply visiting a relative in Iran.

GitHub CEO then started to look into the situation and restored Pure Labs’ GitHub account. Moreover, following this, it was announced that GitHub has secured a license that provides service to developers in Iran, for individuals and organizations, public and private, with a paid or free account.

GitHub CEO declared that they aim to show that by using GitHub, developers were able to advance human progress, international communication, as well as promoting free speech and the free flow of information.

Hence, GitHub is trying to remove any trade rule compliance measures it put in place in 2019 and giving back access to accounts blocked due to these rules. GitHub is also currently discussing with US officials about getting licenses for developers in Crimea and Syria. This makes GitHub more accessible than its competitor GitLab, which still cannot be used in many countries such as Cuba, Iran, and North Korea among others.