
GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button - danso
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-06/github-is-microsoft-s-7-5-billion-undo-button
======
notveryrational
Microsoft can not buy goodwill with me, personally. I worked at the company
and was privy to "strategic conversations" whereby they were looking to regain
trust with developers to get them back from Android and Google to Windows
stack.

Microsoft practically forced us to use Windows stack for anything and
everything, even when there were much better tools. Under Satya, it was
better, but the emphasis is still very much on getting, as Steve Balmer said
"Developers developers developers".

Microsoft knows its being challenged in the platform game and that developers
have migrated. But having seen the inside of Microsoft corporate, legal,
compliance and policy I don't have high confidence that this isn't another PR
project destined for death of the startup.

It's also a terrifying lesson about the fragility of the open source movement.

~~~
staticassertion
I kept reading, waiting for the insidious part. So what you're saying is that
Microsoft has a company wide strategic vision to improve its relationship with
developers?

Did you leave some part out?

~~~
notveryrational
Nothing where they are going to gas all the developers or something. Nope.

It's more about priorities and intentions. Microsoft doesn't care about the
developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. It recognizes that
its image makes that difficult.

The GitHub acquisition: Microsoft didn't suddenly get more beautiful. It put
on a mask. It will kill GitHub - or at least let it flounder - if that's
what's best for its business. It will push Microsoft technology into the
GitHub user base if necessary.

Developer relationships aren't an end in themselves - something Microsoft
wants because its good. Developers are a means to an end, and its
Machiavellian in its application of corporate strategy to achieve this end.

Microsoft would happily buy Ubuntu Canonical if they thought it would win them
either a market advantage or a way to push Microsoft stack into the Linux
userbase.

Some people probably don't have a problem with that. I do. But maybe I've got
a chip on my shoulder from seeing this go badly so many times.

~~~
mdpopescu
> Microsoft doesn't care about the developers. It cares about having the
> dominant platform.

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that
we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." (Adam
Smith.)

I don't trust benevolent people. I trust self-interest. I don't need to offer
my undying allegiance to Microsoft - I can like them as long as they do things
that benefit me, and dislike them when they don't.

~~~
dbingham
I don't trust self interest.

Especially not in my butcher, brewer, or baker. Pure self interest gets you
McDonalds, Bud Light, and Debi cakes. I consume exactly none of those things
and have no desire to consume any of those things. They taste terrible, are
bad for me, and the companies themselves are generally bad for their
communities and the world.

A good butcher, brewer, or baker is driven by craft first - care for their
product, care for their customers, and care for the environment. They devote
themselves to their craft. Not out of self interest ("I'll make more money if
I do it this way.") but out of sheer joy of craftsmanship and doing good.

I have known few producers who's products I would rate trust worthy who
weren't driven first by craftsmanship, care for their customers, and care for
doing good in the world. Self interest (of the "I need to make a living" form,
not the "I want to be rich" form) in these situations is consistently a
secondary interest. For these crafts people, if they can't meet their self
interest, they simply stop crafting rather than pollute their product.

That's who I trust. Never the behemoth driven by fiduciary duty and self
interest.

Adam Smith's philosophy is nearly 250 years old and predates the modern
industrial revolution. It's time we stop putting it on a pedestal. We've
learned so much about the way people, markets, society and people in markets
and society function that he simply had no way to know.

~~~
pfortuny
You are conflating self-interest with greed. That is a great mistake in trying
to understand Adam Smith. They are not the same thing.

Values, ethics, morals... are part of self-inrerst for lots of people.

~~~
dbingham
Sure, you could argue that, and maybe Adam Smith was at the time. It's been a
long time since I've read him, I'd have to go back and re-read it to decide to
what degree I think he's making that argument. But that is not how most people
understand self interest in an economic context and that is not how Adam Smith
is mostly wielded today (see the post I'm responding to for an example). Most
people understand "self interest" to be "financial self interest" of the sort
that supposedly is the primary driver of the modern economic idea of the
"rational self interested person" who operates in markets.

Further, the vast majority of stock corporations have no values, ethics, or
morals. They have only the maximization of stock holder value -- which is to
say: greed. We know this from piles and piles of data on corporate behavior.

People and organizations of people are very different creatures and behave in
very different ways.

~~~
pfortuny
Of course: that is why Adam Smith speaks of people and not corporations. And I
was speaking of people as well.

Corporations are a different subject matter.

~~~
dbingham
Fair enough. However, the context of this discussion -- and the modern
economic context -- is made up primarily of corporate actors.

Which is one more reason why the application of Adam's philosophy doesn't make
sense.

------
arthurfm
With Google recently investing $20 million in GitLab [1] and helping them
migrate from Azure to Google Cloud Platform [2][3], what are developers going
to do when Google inevitably acquires GitLab?

Move their repositories back to GitHub, switch to BitBucket or something else
entirely?

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/09/gitlab-
raises-20m-series-c...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/09/gitlab-
raises-20m-series-c-round-led-by-gv/)

[2] [https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/06/why-and-how-gitlab-
abando...](https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/06/why-and-how-gitlab-abandoned-
microsoft-azure-for-google-cloud/)

[3] [https://about.gitlab.com/2018/04/05/gke-gitlab-
integration/](https://about.gitlab.com/2018/04/05/gke-gitlab-integration/)

~~~
iaml
>what are developers going to do when Google inevitably acquires GitLab?

Fork it and move on with their day.

~~~
some_account
You will not be able to easily move away from any dominant platform because it
will be not just the code but the community you leave behind. Also it's quite
possible that github will add CI stuff directly into Azure and if you start
using that, there may be no other product to move to with the same
functionality.

Vendor lock-in is a strategy that works even if you know its there. I'm
building my code with the excellent CI stuff built into Gitlab today and I
really don't want to move away from it because of its amazing ease of use.

~~~
amelius
> You will not be able to easily move away from any dominant platform because
> it will be not just the code but the community you leave behind.

I find it hard to believe that an audience of developers can't point their
browser to a different url, or search for your project using Google.

~~~
sleepychu
Right but because they're otherwise decentralised it would take co-ordinated
effort and ultimately it fragments the community. What we need, if we want to
solve this issue, is a federated network of servers which provide the
functionality of github today.

~~~
amelius
Then I'm curious what kind of data would be shared on the federated protocol.
Why can't projects be independent?

~~~
sleepychu
I think primarily identity and git locations.

I want stuff like the issue tracker/merge request dialog to be consistent
across the federation (and of course for projects elsewhere in the network to
be able to be the source for those merge requests)

I don't want an account on everybody's git{lab,hub,ea,xxx} instance I want a
single identity that people can trust is me.

I want a way to discover and index other projects on the network. The same way
that I often just go to github without knowing the name of a project just
roughly what I'm looking for.

~~~
tomxor
> I don't want an account on everybody's git{lab,hub,ea,xxx} instance I want a
> single identity that people can trust is me.

I know blockchain is excessively overhyped, but to my limited understanding
this appears to be a good fit...

Look at how cryptocurrencies work, a wallet is singular (i.e your identity),
exchanges and mining pools are numerous and independent (hosts and services
for git repos).

The vital part to make this work is a specification for storing the social
aspects of collaborating on these platforms in a git repo itself - it can
definitely be done, git is so flexible, it doesn't have to interfere with the
project code or even need to be present in the visible tree of any branch -
but we need that for interchangeability. This first step could be made before
figuring out how to make neatly interacting network to add portability to
existing platforms.

~~~
amelius
Yes, I think identity management/authentication/trust is a problem space that
should be separate from version control, because it can serve so many other
interesting applications.

By the way, I'm not sure if something like a blockchain is necessary here. You
could use a simple public key cryptosystem, where your identity equals the
public key, and you prove that you have that identity by using your private
key in a challenge/response scheme, and you can also sign
messages/commits/whatever by using your private key.

~~~
tomxor
> By the way, I'm not sure if something like a blockchain is necessary here.
> You could use a simple public key cryptosystem.

I think you're right public crypto is enough... i'm just applying blockchain
unnecessarily.

I can see this working in a really nice way: right now people are dealing with
"migrating" and having to choose to loose PR/issues starts etc that these
platforms provide, all of that could be implicit to the repo with zero effort
to use a different platform.

\- Public crypto for repo authority (who can commit, who can merge PRs, who
can manage issues etc - preferably more granularity than current platforms)

\- A common Issues/PRs etc format is saved into the repo

\- Hosts are networked, they sync repos with each other allong with any
platform data... anyone can add (sync) a repo from github to gitlab without
being the author (ownership is done by crypto not platform accounts, each
platform/host would verify the repo content when syncing from some other
host).

In other words, platforms like github and gitlab etc just become a viewport
and a node in the network, like there are GUIs for git, github would be just
another GUI for the collaboration protocols... at this point you could even do
it offline with a headless server, the purpose of github/gitlab is to provide
hosting and good UX etc. This would mean that a repo can simultaneously exist
on any platform, there is no platform boundary, you could accept a PR from a
user using gitlab on github... it wouldn't matter where they came from. Or if
you hate all these platforms you can just use the cli and accept a PR from
someone using these platforms (you would just need a public git host that the
other host/platforms can sync with).

How the crypto integrates with the repo would have to be well thought out as
it's essentially completely independent of platform accounts, anyone could
locally clone the repo and attempt to push something to your public server (or
a hosting platforms server on your behalf).

------
yurishimo
I think the author nailed it. This is Microsoft's chance to reach out to
developers and prove that they've had a change of heart regarding open source.

We've seen this over the years with previous code hosting platforms. If the
platforms betrays it's users, developers are not scared to mass migrate to
something else. The onus is now on Microsoft to keep developers happy or risk
losing their $7.5B investment.

~~~
sixothree
That to me is what DotNet Core is, along with Asp.Net, Entity Framework many
years ago, and everything developer related becoming open source.

GitHub is just a signal to people who have been out of the loop, bloomberg and
many linux developers.

When I start dropping my apps on their systems, they might be surprised how
well they run.

[https://github.com/dotnet](https://github.com/dotnet)

[https://github.com/aspnet](https://github.com/aspnet)

~~~
wnsire
> That to me is what DotNet Core

DotNet Core debugger is proprietary . You can only debug apps within Microsoft
environment according to their license.

Same thing for most of the azure tools , you are only allowed to use them
within Visual Studio.

I don't really called that "all in open source" .

It's gimmick to give C# devs the illusion of a choice.

Try to build , run & deploy a C# app on AWS with Atom. You're gonna have a bad
time.

~~~
oblio
You've heard of Open Core, I imagine? That's what everyone does. Even the
GitLab everyone's talking about in this context is Open Core.

And regarding your claim, you can do all of that, even with Vim if you want.
You just have to build some scaffolding.

After all, they can't be expected to implementing everything for everyone.
More than that, they were actually nice and created LSP
([https://langserver.org/](https://langserver.org/)) and now they're thinking
about a Debug Adapter Protocol ([https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-
debugadapter-node/issues...](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-debugadapter-
node/issues/175)) that would do the same thing for debugging.

~~~
wnsire
>You've heard of Open Core, I imagine?

It's not "Open Core" if the core is not open. In this case a debugger is core
part of a language. It's a very clear movement in order to keep C# devs within
their ecosystem and guarantee revenue with Azure. They loose money here , they
must get it somewhere else.

This guarantee a total monopoly over the .NET ecosystem , Rider is probably
one of the only tools that tried to offer an alternative they are stuck with
the exact issue of not being able to bring the debugger because of that
hostile license policy.

>Even the GitLab everyone's talking about in this context is Open Core.

I never talked about Gitlab and I don't care about them.

Don't be mistaken about MS , almost every move they do as a double intention
behind it.

Just to name a few :

One MS engineer is core member to Webpack & Angular , why ? Windows Server
dashboard is written in Angular , it's a critical product, they need some
controller there.

One MS engineer is core contributor to Electron, why ? VS Code is powered by
electron , it's a critical product, they need some control here as well.

One MS engineer is core contributor to Vue.js , why ? Azure is investing
hundred of millions in China and Asia due to insane growth over the past 5
years, they need a good image in asia.

If you think MS has changed , you are delusional about the situation.

~~~
Double_a_92
Influencing the things you care about in a way you like, seems like a sensible
thing to do...

------
jack9
> The WWDC, sacred nerd summit of Appledom, is where they announce things like
> a new “night mode” for the operating system and try to convince programmers
> that Apple Watch matters.

Bloomberg got an honest laugh out of me.

~~~
Razengan
Apple Watch is apparently the best selling _watch_ (not just best selling
smartwatch) in the world [0], with millions of users, and many copycats. Why
shouldn’t it matter?

Of course, there’s only so much you can do and make on such a small screen,
and it _is_ an accessory rather than a “primary” device, but that is another
issue altogether, if one.

I think it may even function as a motion control input for the rumored VR
headset they’re planning.

And is anyone seriously trying to pass off Dark Mode as a MINOR feature? It
can be a significant productivity and wellness boost for many people who have
to look at a screen all day. Microsoft has struggled for decades to achieve
universal consistency across their OS even for a single system theme, and they
still haven’t gotten it right, whereas Apple is already doing seamless
switching of UI appearances across many apps (this is more than just changing
the colors; I’m currently watching their WWDC session about it, and the amount
of thought they’ve put into it and how easy they’ve made it to implement is
impressive imo.)

[0] [http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-outsold-the-entire-
swis...](http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-outsold-the-entire-swiss-watch-
industry-in-2017-2018-2)

~~~
meddlepal
Best selling watch is believable, but who the heck buys and wears a watch for
anything besides fashion these days? It's a totally niche market IMO.

~~~
fiddlerwoaroof
My Apple Watch is surprisingly useful: I can figure out which conference room
my next meeting is in with a single tap of the home screen, control music,
etc. It honestly surprised me how much value I got out of it.

~~~
beefsack
I actually had exactly the same experience with my Pebble. I got it out of
casual nerdy interest and was sure I'd use it for a couple of months and then
pack it away.

Having notifications and basic functionality on your wrist is surprisingly
useful though, and I used that watch until it broke (after Pebble went under
unfortunately).

I've got a Ticwatch E on it's way as a replacement.

~~~
r00fus
Pebble was nice - had one but its uncanny how similar the Palm Treo analogy
goes - I loved my Treo till I got my iPhone. I loved my Pebble till I got my
Apple watch.

Stuff the old ones do better (even today) but the Apple replacements are all
that + constant years of OS upgrades and a stronger app ecosystem.

------
niftich
I can't figure out why everyone seeks to imbue so much meaning to the GitHub
acquisition. Is it not sufficient to suggest that GitHub was looking for a
buyer, and Microsoft took a calculated risk and offered more for them than one
of their star competitors, and perennial sweetheart of developers, Google?

Microsoft is trying to ensure they retain relevance in a world where Google
has successfully shaken their dominance, and having a service that's
effectively become a commonly used piece of web infrastructure be under their
umbrella as opposed to Google's (or Salesforce's, or Oracle's, or Dell EMC's)
is an obvious win for them.

------
marenkay
With there being so much talk how Microsoft is reformed/reforming, I do not
really see the change at all.

Microsoft always was about developers and getting them into their ecosystem
and I do not think this is evil. It's business.

People act like the Open Source strategy is so much different from the Ballmer
days but is it really? From a business perspective they tried to throw rocks
into the paths of Open Source as a thing, and it did not work. It just
alienated more developers. Logical conclusion is to blend in. And so they did.

Apart from that, with Open Source being kind of a de facto default for the
past decade, it just becomes so much harder to find engineers who would work
at a company not respecting the ideas behind Open Source development.

Microsoft is now sitting at the focal point for the majority of Open Source
efforts. And it has a kill switch in its' hands.

The reformed Microsoft is the old Microsoft. It just learned a few tricks from
the Open Source community.

~~~
oblio
I feel we're focusing way too much on this good vs evil debate. Life doesn't
work like that, there's always shades of grey. Everyone has their interests.

So, based on this underlying assumption, what does Microsoft by gaining by
using this kill switch? Heck, what does it even gain by appearing to threaten
people with this kill switch? It's worse that no benefit, it's actively
harmful for them.

So, why are we discussing about them this way? They're not irrational.

~~~
marenkay
I should probably added a few irony tags here, the "kill switch" picture was
just meant to exaggerate what seems to be the primary concern going around.

So to add two things to clarify: personally I do not see any of this as
good/evil. It's business.

But one catch: business is comprised of human beings, thus it often _is_
irrational :-)

------
jlgaddis
Since the announcement, I’ve been trying to figure out what the most evil uses
of “telemetry” that could be incorporated into Github in order to invade
user’s privacy are.

I’ve had a few (small) ideas but I’m confident that Microsoft already has
people much more evil^W^Wsmarter than me working on this very problem (if it
wasn’t already figured out beforehand).

~~~
blub
They also have LinkedIn.

Microsoft realised relatively recently, like Google did a long time ago, that
they can give away the sources to the non business-essential stuff and make
money through services and exploiting user data.

.Net core, a text editor, those are the trinkets that keep the naive
developers happy and content that they support a company that is open-source
"friendly".

That's why open-source is no longer enough today. The big corps are working
around it and locking in customers with their SaaS products (which surprise
surprise are closed).

~~~
fjsolwmv
That's why FSF tried to move from GPL to AGPL. But companies are obviously not
interested until they have a next gen business model and SaaS/PaaS is
commoditized.

~~~
adrianN
Your hear many people here on HN actively discouraging the use of the AGPL
because it prevents software from being used by companies. Goes to show how
well the PR departments work.

~~~
robocat
Or maybe people have their own reasons to avoid AGPL - no need to assume they
are victims of PR.

For example I avoid the GPL for our business because I use JavaScript, and it
seems to me _all_ of our JavaScript code would need to be open sourced if we
used _any_ GPL based JavaScript code (because JavaScript is source code and it
isn't linked).

------
TomK32
We might see the day when Nat Friedman rises to the top job at Microsoft.
Imagine that, a ex MS-intern who made his fortune with an open source support
company running the company that was "celebrated" in hate partys (we have a
1997 poster of that at our hackerspace).

GitHub will be the only Microsoft product I use, but I'll give them a chance.

------
hliyan
I'm listening to the audiobook version of Nadella's _Hit Refresh_ these days.
It does sound like he had thought through the open source strategy from very
early on. There he says something to the effect that Microsoft had so many
things in-house that were better than what some other companies were publicly
showcasing, but they were hiding them away for some reason.

~~~
oever
> they were hiding them away for some reason

Why sell better things when your customers are locked-in and you can force
them to buy garbage?

Big companies are reactive. They have no need to innovate. In fact, innovation
usually harms business. Domination via lock-in is much more lucrative. GitHub
offers lock-in via the social developer graph.

------
collinf
Sent this to all of my non-techie friends who asked wtf GitHub was and how it
was worth $7.5b.

Great read.

~~~
jlgaddis
And when they still didn’t “get it”?

It’s a great read (and good for a few laughs) for “nerds”, sure, but it still
doesn’t explain to non-techies what Github _is_ (besides “some thing that
programmers use instead of e-mail”) — or, more importantly, why it’s worth
$7.5B.

~~~
chris_wot
It does explain it. He wrote that “Git keeps track of changes in sets of
files.”

~~~
jlgaddis
That doesn't really _explain_ it, though.

"You mean like 'Track changes' in Word?"

~~~
statictype
Well, yes, that's kind of what it is, isn't it?

------
hunter2_
> Computers are mercurial

No pun

~~~
bcatanzaro
This one was the funniest joke of the piece, IMO.

------
phoenix24
if it's about developer love, then next acquisition target for Microsoft
should be StackOverflow.

~~~
caymanjim
Stack Overflow was founded by Joel Spolsky, who is a Microsoft veteran from
their era of peak dominance. I suspect it's a passion project of his that he'd
like to hang on to, but he's also pragmatic and everything has its price. And
it's profitable. I wouldn't be surprised if someone bought it. I can envision
synergy between Stack Overflow and GitHub. Satya Nadella seems to really "get
it", though, and I don't anticipate any dramatic changes to GitHub, or to
Stack Overflow should they take it over.

~~~
icebraining
Spolsky certainly had a strong influence with his ideas and feedback, but I
don't think he was ever very directly involved in the project - the main
driver was Jeff Atwood. At least that's what I got from listening to the
podcast, back in '08.

~~~
fjsolwmv
Is "co-founder" and "strong influence with ideas" not direct involvement?

Spolsky has a long and impressive resume. What was he doing during the SO era
if not working on SO?

~~~
icebraining
The idea I got was that he had opinions on how it should work, but that he
wasn't involved in the actual development. He's actually written recently on
it:

 _" Jeff started working on the code in April 2008, recruited two other
programmers to join him (Geoff and Jarrod, who are still here), and the three
of them heroically launched what became Stack Overflow in September 2008."_

I'm guessing he was running Fog Creek Software, as its CEO.

------
reacharavindh
The best case for GitHub would've been for Redhat to acquire them :-( Just
feeling sad for what has happened. Microsoft is in it for business. Talking
about "change of heart" for a company is bullshit. It's all associated with
the business model one way or the other. RedHat would've been the best model.
Imagine. Buying GH, open sourcing it, selling a self-hosted version of it for
paid support....

~~~
fetbaffe
Redhat? Company that is currently infiltrating every Linux distro with systemd
bloatware? No, thanks.

~~~
reacharavindh
I never understood the Systemd argument in the Linux ecosystem. Sure, it may
not be what everybody wants in the Linux ecosystem. But, that's the point of
having so many independent distributions right?

Red hat is not secretly pushing anything on anybody. If something is better
than Systemd, clearly other distributions will go that route and try to
outcompete Redhat... No?

I see Redhat as the enterprise seller of Linux. They are catering to
Enterprise needs and supporting where they go (even Systemd) what is wrong
with that?

If you're mad that Debian followed RH's steps and adapted Systemd, then you
should be mad at Debian not Redhat?

Disclaimer: I have no association with RedHat in any sense. Just trying to ask
why Redhat is always blamed for Systemd.. I don't particularly enjoy systemd
either.

~~~
cthalupa
> Just trying to ask why Redhat is always blamed for Systemd

Probably because Lennart Poettering is a Red Hat employee and wrote systemd
while working for them?

Not a comment on whether systemd is good or not, but... the author being paid
to write it as an employee of the company is a reasonable reason to believe
they are responsible for it's creation.

~~~
reacharavindh
But, my real contextual ask was Why RedHat is blamed for Systemd in Linux
Ecosystem...

Sure, a RedHat employee built something that Redhat wanted for their major
Linux distribution. Why does the community direct hate at RedHat for it being
everywhere? If it is deemed as not good by the community, the distributions
are free to develop alternatives...

~~~
nullify88
IIRC, Upstart was briefly used by distros before systemd came on to the scene.
It's stay was short though as distros began migrating to systemd.

------
partycoder
The difference between "the old Microsoft" (monopolistic, openly
insulting/abusive) and "the new Microsoft" is like the difference between
colonialism and neocolonialism.

\- Colonialism consisted in annexing territory, forcing them to use your flag,
sing your anthem, and work for you under penalty of violence.

\- Neocolonialism consists into forcibly indebt countries, so they direct all
their productive efforts into paying you a never-ending debt. A country can
keep its flag, its anthem, its culture, can celebrate its independence day...
but for economic purposes it is indistinguishable from a colony. This is done
by gaining influence over those countries, so they act in the best interest of
a foreign power: lobbying.

The idea of Microsoft is to allow open source to happen, but to happen in
terms that are favorable to them. Like having people work with their OS, their
tools, their APIs, their cloud, use their authentication services, etc.

This is achieved by gaining influence over the governance of high profile open
source projects. Either by having their full time employees collaborate into
an open source project, or by directly buying companies, like the case of
Github. In either case, in the end, the idea is to obtain control over open
source projects to steer them into a direction that benefits Microsoft.

As a mentioned earlier, the modus operandi is to either infiltrate projects or
buying a company. When they've decided to acquire companies, the results are
more aggressive and more visible, and are in my opinion not good:

\- Skype: Linux version is largely unmaintained relative to other versions, UX
is inferior.

\- Xamarin: Standalone Windows IDE was abandoned, now you should use Visual
Studio. Xamarin Studio for mac was rebranded Visual Studio for Mac. No Linux
version is planned despite community requests.

\- Minecraft: Java client development left behind with inferior investment, no
feature parity with native Windows client.

\- Microsoft R Open / MRAN: Encourages people to adopt a vendor specific
flavor of R, and use vendor specific repositories, moving away from R and
CRAN.

And for Github, I would not be surprised if it starts getting coupled with
Microsoft products, like Azure, Visual Studio, etc... to the detriment of
other tools.

Even if it doesn't happen at all, I am not over punishing Microsoft for what
it did in the past. Without provocation, they attacked noble and altruistic
developers sacrificing man years of their own personal time to the benefit of
open source software, providing this generation with the tools they use today
to put food in their table. Like the Linux kernel team. Microsoft called Linux
and open source licenses "cancer". Never forget.

~~~
oblio
Honest question: Is there any app from another Big 5 company that has a good
Linux version? I'm especially interested in desktop apps.

~~~
partycoder
There's good proprietary software on Linux.

Web browsers (Chrome, Firefox...), Math packages (Mathematica, Maple,
RStudio)... and others like Spotify, Steam...

------
kumarvvr
I am a developer, use git, but don't use too much GitHub.

I am genuinely curious, are the users of GitHub really that tied in to the
site?

Is the cost of moving to another platform, really that difficult??

~~~
bad_user
> _I am genuinely curious, are the users of GitHub really that tied in to the
> site?_

For open source projects of multiple contributors, yes, because that's where
the community is, along with all relevant traces, e.g. issues, comments, PRs,
all linked to their user's accounts.

I've seen people here suggest that GitLab's import tool is pretty good in
importing the history of issues. It's also a copyright lawsuit waiting to
happen, but beyond the import, the problem is that the community isn't there.

Not to mention that many projects have been uninspired enough to use GitHub as
their homepage, which means that the web is littered with links to GitHub that
aren't replaceable.

I've seen people here downplay the difficulty of moving off GitHub. Such
people do not maintain popular or multi-contributor open source projects.

~~~
bigger_cheese
Aren't a lot of open source communities based around IRC channels or is that
old hat now?

I remember back in the day IRC was the place to be for Debian. Ditto for when
I was doing stuff with Perl.

~~~
bad_user
Well now that you mention it, in the communities I care about, IRC was
replaced by Gitter ([https://gitter.im/](https://gitter.im/)).

Which is also linked to GitHub accounts and repositories. Ironically, Gitter
was bought by GitLab and open sourced, but they haven't changed the
implementation to allow for chat rooms linked to GitLab repos. At the glacial
pace it is evolving, it wouldn't be unfair to say that Gitter is probably
relying solely on OSS contributions at this point.

~~~
herbst
While gitter generally is a good idea I have yet to land in a active channel.
The partly abondened IRC channels often still show a lot more activity even
when they link to their gitter in their meta.

~~~
bad_user
Not my experience, it depends on the community you're talking about I guess.
Here's some channels I'm on, all being so active that I have a hard time
keeping up:

\- [https://gitter.im/scala/scala](https://gitter.im/scala/scala)

\- [https://gitter.im/scala-js/scala-js](https://gitter.im/scala-js/scala-js)

\- [https://gitter.im/typelevel/cats](https://gitter.im/typelevel/cats)

\- [https://gitter.im/typelevel/cats-effect](https://gitter.im/typelevel/cats-
effect)

\- [https://gitter.im/monix/monix](https://gitter.im/monix/monix)

\- [https://gitter.im/http4s/http4s](https://gitter.im/http4s/http4s)

------
happertiger
Three words: Github for Business.

------
lowkeyokay
What I’m missing from GitHub is an easy way to search for repositories by
subject. Say you need to create a user admin front end you should be able to
find that easily. I always end up using Google or DDG instead. Maybe MS can
fix that. (insert Bing joke here.)

~~~
herbst
I haven't thought about that one. I really hope they keep the current search
instead of replacing it with Bing :/

------
dkobia
The GitHub acquisition feels like losing a piece of ones "coding" childhood if
there's such a thing. When we grow up, find out how things work and the
innocence is lost because it feels like there is a malevolent undercurrent.

~~~
fjsolwmv
GitHub's past 3 years didn't already lose that piece of childhood?

Also, my impression was that young coders don't have Microsoft loathing that
is held by programmers who were new before Git/GitHub were invented.

------
unabridged
Part of me is hoping this is in preparation of releasing an open source
version of windows

------
trisimix
Personally I see nothing but discourse in hosting my code with a company that
is anything but inpendent and dedicated to hosting my code with no alternative
motives.

------
usermac
All that banter here aside, that was a really well written story. It's not
often I enjoy a read from start to finish but I did. Thank you Paul Ford. -
Brian

------
makapuf
However, like git itself, you can undo and branch to something else but for
some you cannot rewrite history. All is kept and some developers will not
forget.

------
ramijames
Microsoft kills everything it touches. Look at Skype.

~~~
pluma
Skype was acquired by MS in 2011. At that point Skype had already gone through
the hands of eBay and several investors.

Additionally -- unlike GitHub or LinkedIn -- Skype was acquired for its
technology. Microsoft used Skype to replace both Windows Live Messenger and
Lync. They integrated it into Windows and extended it with various features to
fit their use cases.

They already announced they will keep GitHub independent much like they did
with LinkedIn. We will likely see some minor integrations like deploying to
Azure or maybe GitHub Enterprise with Office 365. But this isn't anything like
Skype where Microsoft pretty much bought the company to scrap its technology
for parts.

EDIT: Also when criticizing MS don't make the mistake of mixing up complaints
about MS with general complaints about acquisitions. GitHub was going to be
acquired by someone. It's difficult imagine GitHub having a better fate after
being acquired by Facebook, Apple or Google. The only other alternative I can
think of would have been Amazon, who would likely have integrated GitHub fully
with AWS much like they did with Cloud9 IDE.

~~~
beagle3
> Skype was acquired for its technology.

No, it was not. The technology was NOT worth billions of dollars.

It was bought for the existing userbase and network effects. And rumours are
that also for some payment-or-something-in-kind from the NSA, which wanted it
to be run by a friendlier-to-the-NSA company.

There were quite a few competitors at the time, some with comparable firewall
penetration ability and call quality, which could have been bought for a
fraction of the price. But none had the ubiquity, userbase or network effects
of skype.

------
Dowwie
This time may be different, but everyone needs to think about next time, too.

------
bad_user
These threads are so funny — let me do a TL;DR:

\- " _Microsoft does this and that_ "

\- " _Oooo, that 's not fair, Google has been doing it too_"

\- " _Patents_ "

\- " _Oooo, that 's not fair, Oracle has been doing it too_"

\- " _Privacy_ "

\- " _Not fair, Facebook has been doing it too_ "

Predictable arguments that for the purposes of judging Microsoft are
irrelevant.

Look, we all know that companies are meant to turn a profit. People are meant
to survive too, but in society you don't get a carte blanche to act as you see
fit in order to survive or make money.

When you do shit to others, some people will never, ever forgive you. That's
just how society works. So you know, in case you're in management, might do
well to consider the long term ramifications of the company's actions. That's
just life, sorry.

~~~
oblio
So you mean there can be no redemption, ever? Kind of a harsh perspective...
By this logic Germany, Italy and Japan should have been nuked forever.

~~~
bad_user
Germany, Italy and Japan have paid war reparations and suffered both during
and after the war. That's probably the dumbest comparison I've ever heard.

But to answer, yes, if I were alive and if I would have suffered through the
war like my grandparents before me, I couldn't have forgiven them as it would
be my prerogative. So what can I say, I guess Microsoft will have to wait for
those alive during the Halloween Documents to be either dead or really old.

