Bug 513425 - Entire KDE is intentionally blocked in Russia due to hardcoded dependency on libopenh264 from Cisco's server
Summary: Entire KDE is intentionally blocked in Russia due to hardcoded dependency on ...
Status: RESOLVED DOWNSTREAM
Alias: None
Product: Qt/KDE Flatpak Runtime
Classification: Developer tools
Component: general (other bugs)
Version First Reported In: unspecified
Platform: Other Linux
: NOR grave
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Aleix Pol
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2025-12-16 07:10 UTC by Sergey Kondakov
Modified: 2025-12-18 21:07 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed/Implemented In:
Sentry Crash Report:


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Description Sergey Kondakov 2025-12-16 07:10:31 UTC
SUMMARY
KDE can no longer be installed or updated via discover/flatpak due to dependency on libopenh264 which is exclusively pulled from hostile third-party server with no way to pre-download by any other way or ignore it.

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Try to install/update anything that depends on KDE while being in Russia.
2. Get 403 error from Cisco server (ciscobinary.openh264.org) when sudden dependency on libopenh264 fails.
3. Don't even have a way to feed flatpak "libopenh264-*.so.bz2" manually downloaded via some last remaining usable VPN.

OBSERVED RESULT
Get locked by third-party server from a corpo.

EXPECTED RESULT
Use your own servers, support proxies and local mirrors & caches.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Operating System: Gentoo Linux 2.18
KDE Plasma Version: 6.5.3
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.20.0
Qt Version: 6.10.1
Kernel Version: 6.18.1-zen1-fox (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Flatpak known about it for months and views this as intended, tacitly support this and gags protest:  https://github.com/flatpak/flatpak/issues/6232

Also, KDE's own bugs.kde.org/enter_bug.cgi page hangs (not the viewing of the rest though) and doesn't allow to write here without VPN either. Not sure if this is result of Russia-side censorship (due to insanely aggressive DPI-filtering, de facto "Iron Curtain 2.0") or server-side.

Also see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=509636
This also may be happening in Ukraine: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=508509
Comment 1 Timothée Ravier 2025-12-17 13:20:23 UTC
New runtimes moved away from using openh264 so this should no longer be an issue. If you are still seeing this when installing an app then it means that this app using an older runtime version and should be updated. Please report this issue to the app directly on flathub.