Sourceforge ignored users from Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria saying that it has to deal with USA laws. USA has very hard relationships with those countries, that is why open source, free software, hackers and people loving freedom must suffer, and Sourceforge is not against that.

The Obama Administration has forced Sourceforge to deny service to its anti-terrorism sanction list. In practical terms this means people in Cuba, North Korea, the Sudan, Syria and Iran get “403 forbidden” messages when they try to access sourceforge.org addresses. (Here’s how the Armenian Private School in Toronto, Canada displays 403 errors.)

Source Forge has banned downloads from Syria, Iran, Sudan, Cuba, and North Korea. Funny enough, the decision came after US Secretary of State speech on Internet's freedom.
In Syria, the Open Source community is upset and felt that the decision is against principles of software freedom.

Sourceforge.net provides ability to move export control (relating to US laws) regulations to project administrator's hands. This can be used to move responsibility about providing access for ``baneed'' countries from themselves to projects leadership.

SourceForge, the world’s largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications, appears to blocked in Mainland China on the eve of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. A screen copy of the command “tracert www.sourceforge.net” shows that the problem is a router inside China Telecom.

"Sourceforge just became the latest US-based entity to censor Syria along with five other countries. Despite being one of the leading proponents of Free Software, Sourceforge has succumbed to pressure from the US government to deny access to its products to millions of people.

Since 1999, SourceForge has the 'go to place' for all open source downloads, but in the last couple of years, Google Code has put up a bit of challenge. Remember also for a while there was this constant thread in media about how SourceForge had 100,000 project, though most had been abandoned.

SourceForge has now changed their policy regarding their ban on users from "sanctioned countries."

Dr Richard Stallman, the global crusader for the freedoms of computer users, will be embarking on a lecture tour during February and March.