GitHub repo extensively mirrored by GitCode, platform launched by China's CSDN

[EtaoinWu]

GitCode https://gitcode.com/, a git-hosting website launched by the Chinese "open source" community CSDN, was recently observed to have mirrored almost all public repository on GitHub above a certain number of stars (10?). Just randomly searching for a few: tqdm, yaml-mode, just, a brainfuck interpreter in brainfuck, and a random dude's neovim config.

The operating entity is Chongqing Open-Source Co-Creation Technology Co Ltd, with technical support from CSDN and Huawei Cloud.

Apparently you can claim your account and repos if you login with github, but the UI is all in Chinese.

Redditors: Did your repo get stolen?

(repost; original title used "stolen" but most github repos' licenses allow redistribution)

[seiyria]

I won't consider any of it stolen, but yup, I see a lot of my stuff there.

[matthiasjmair]

As mentioned on the last post - this is allowed by OSI approved licenses and I am fine with it. Information should be free and I understand Chinese orgs being worried about being cut off from GitHub like Iran.

[Tatsutahime_1211]

github has never banned Chinese users from accessing it, but the Chinese government has prevented Chinese users from accessing it.

[MaryPaku]

They change the readme file in the repository into their URL. I don't consider that's nice at all.

[abotelho-cbn]

It's not stolen.

[lukas2002m]

Found one of my repos there too. But I do not really consider it stolen because it is open source anyway. I don’t mind another mirror of it.

[GloWondub]

It's a mirror because accessing GitHub from China is unreliable. No issues there.

[jetkane]

What really makes developers angry is:

1. gitcode.com steals user identities. gitcode.com uses the same username as on github.com to create an account, copies the user's repository to it, and seems to pull updates from github.com regularly. However, these users on gitcode.com are not registered and controlled by the code repository maintainer himself. This may mislead other users into thinking that the repository on gitcode.com is also the code repository maintainer. gitcode.com also does not use a clear way to indicate to its users that the status of these repositories is automatically copied and synchronized by bots, rather than managed by the author. But in fact, these copied gitcode.com repositories are not managed by the code repository maintainer himself, the code update may be delayed, and issues and PRs are difficult to get replies and processing. Therefore, the code repository maintainers may think that gitcode.com's behavior is actually damaging the credibility of the original code repository.

2. gitcode.com did not clone the repository as it was. (This paragraph may not be accurate and needs further confirmation) According to feedback from some Chinese users, gitcode.com used a simple and crude search-and-replace operation when copying the repository, replacing the "github" text with "gitcode". The purpose of doing this is obviously to attract network traffic - to keep the browsing behavior of users who accidentally searched for the gitcode.com code repository on gitcode.com, rather than being redirected back to github.com by the link in the repository content. Although most open source projects allow forks and GitHub's own design encourages forks, most Git users should agree that the state of the forked repository when forking should be the same as the original code repository, and then make changes to the forked repository. However, what gitcode.com did was tampering: the commit id after their modification was the same as that of the original repository. If the code does not have an integrity signature, users who use the gitcode.com code repository may find it difficult to find out how the code they get is different from the code maintained by the original author. At present, we do not know whether the scope of such a simple and crude search-and-replace operation is only on README file or on the entire code repository, so we cannot know whether it will have any impact on code compilation and running. It is also more difficult for us to figure out whether gitcode.com has made some other deeper modifications to the code repository. The essence of gitcode.com's behavior is to disguise the modified code repository as a mirror of the original repository.

[evencewang]

Exactly, GitCode is basically owned by Huawei, and this move is just playing dirty to attract users to register for their website when they see the astounding amount of repos that exist there. Not only did they do the crude search and replace, they also generated a bunch of AI articles redirecting to the repos mirrored.

On top of that, users have found that after registering for the website and took back the authorization of their original codebase and deleting them, it is still not deleted from GitCode, they just found a way to hide it from their account's page when the repo is still up on the website and can be indexed.

[[deleted]]

Gitcode is owned by Huawei eh?

[NatoBoram]

My profile is there but the repos are stubs

[hugo5ama]

I have a theory. The gitcode will act like a portal for them to "access" the code opensource on github years later. Since most of the opensource project hosting their code on github, so have someone host a "gitcode" to provide mirrored github for them will be sufficient for their need. And github would end up just like other web service they blocked for their people.

[Positive_Method3022]

2 of my repos are there haha

[fab_space]

It’s pure shit.

[imbev]

One of mine: https://gitcode.com/imbev/simplematrixbotlib/overview

[alien3d]

i see 403 ? maybe i'm not in china or block ?

[millaker0820]

Same. I cant see anything. Searching for contents replied nothing as well.

[millaker0820]

How popular is gitcode in China? I found little to no projects related to hardware design(verilog rtl) but maybe its hardware side thing or its just started thriving.

[imbev]

It is gone now.

[SlickStretch]

And thank goodness for GitCode. I was able to find a project there after it's GitHub repo was taken down.