Early this week it appeared that the US was insisting that content developed on GitHub needs to comply with US export laws, including the Export Administration Regulations (EAR), the same regulations used to restrict exports to Huawei and affiliated companies.

Liu Chen, director of operations for Open Source China (OSChina), feared that would mean an end to access to the world’s largest open source community in China.

However, Github has been on the blower and says that there is nothing to worry about.

A spokesman told us that the provision of software services over the Internet, such as the code collaboration activity in repositories on GitHub.com, is not subject to the new US export control mandates related to local companies in China, and developers can continue to engage in these repositories.

“While GitHub is committed to full compliance with applicable law, we also examine government mandates thoroughly to be certain that users and customers are not impacted beyond what is required by law”, he added.

This confirms what the  Apache Software Foundation (ASF) said that open source software and collaboration on open source code are not subject to the EAR.