As of June 25, 2008, sourceforge.net is no longer accessible in the mainland China. I noticed this when I tried to file a bug report to my favorite task management application Task Coach. Then I realized that the headquarters of Open Source Software is blocked again.
It took me a while to figure out why this pure technical, IT related site is blocked by the Great Fire Wall (GFW):
- Sourceforge offers a free web space and a free sub-domain service (your-domain.sourceforge.net), and its vhost function can help redirect other domains to the web space in sourceforge. This makes sourceforge a possible host of the information the Department of Truth does not like.
- It is said the Freenet is the main target of the blockage because it claims “to allow the free exchange of information over the Internet without fear of censorship, or reprisal”.
- The most recent “offender” of Thought Crime is believed to be the text editor Notepad++. Many netizens believe the reason for the blocking is due to the negative stance taken by the Notepad++’s programmer towards the Olympic Games in Beijing. As a result, the whole Sourceforge became inaccessible from the Mainland China.
Then how to visit the blocked sourceforget.net? Here are a few options:
-
Use Tor. It has an overall low bandwidth and the speed is very slow. Only viable for small traffic browsing.
-
Use proxy servers such as Ibypass. But this bypass site and its affiliated sites are sometimes blocked as well.
-
The perfect solution seems to be VPN (Virtual Private Network). The ideal situation would be someone setting up a VPN server in a different country and tunnel all your traffic through it.
There is a free VPN service called
which is based on OpenVPN. It is very easy to install and use, and the speed is fast. It will automatically insert a top frame advertisement banner in web pages opened, but the ads do not bother me at all, and I can close the ad frame by a click.
If you know more tricks and tips on how to bypass the blocking, leave a comment.
Side Notes:
- After all, doesn’t the action to block say enough about the nature of the blocker?
- Today I had this thought that I was running out of topics to write about China, but now I realize that there are so many things to write about. I will post my experience at ticket lobby of the train station very soon.
- I didn’t provide a link to the GFW for obvious reasons. The omniscient Wikipedia.org will give you a clue.
- Unfortunately, I don’t have any luck with Freenet, because it seems too complicated to use.