Access to public repositories was not blocked, so those who wanted to work with open source projects were unaffected. For a while after the GitHub block, many used GitLab. In fact many people who needed private repositories were already using GitLab because of the limitations of GitHub private repositories and its pricing. Also many companies in Iran are using a self-hosted GitLab. After recent blocking of Iranian accounts on GitHub and GitLab, even more companies started using self-hosted GitLab.
The blocking of GitHub accounts was unexpected and presumably took into account the usage history, so many accounts were blocked and had no further access to their private repositories and gists even if they used VPN after that.
GitLab was blocked in Iran after they migrated to GCP, but was accessible with VPN. A few month ago GitLab also started blocking some Iranian accounts, so our company moved all of its repositories to a self-hosted instance just to be safe.
The blocking of GitHub accounts was unexpected and presumably took into account the usage history, so many accounts were blocked and had no further access to their private repositories and gists even if they used VPN after that.
GitLab was blocked in Iran after they migrated to GCP, but was accessible with VPN. A few month ago GitLab also started blocking some Iranian accounts, so our company moved all of its repositories to a self-hosted instance just to be safe.