
Microsoft acquires Github - okket
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/06/04/microsoft-github-empowering-developers/
======
sanbor
This is a wake up call. Too many things are relying on Github right now.

Microsoft was part of the PRISM program. If Microsoft shares SSL certs with
NSA they could do MITM attacks. What if in some very specific cases you
download dependencies from GitHub and they give you a different version with
malicious code?

It's the NSA. They could be smart enough to only deploy those attacks on
production servers were nobody is going to manually review npm packages.

~~~
sushisource
They could also do it regardless of whether or not Microsoft owns them or
whatever favorite acronym authorizes them, or whatever. I've never understood
why people love freaking out about this stuff. If the NSA felt like spying on
you, pro tip, they're gonna be able to do it. If you care about keeping your
shit secure, it shouldn't be on the internet at all.

~~~
amelius
> If the NSA felt like spying on you, pro tip, they're gonna be able to do it.

True, but I suppose it matters how easy/difficult it is for them to do that.

~~~
cdelsolar
The NSA is not god, they can't break 2048-bit TLS encryption no matter how
many computers they have.

~~~
2trill2spill
> The NSA is not god, they can't break 2048-bit TLS encryption no matter how
> many computers they have.

2048 bit TLS encryption? You mean 2048 bit RSA encryption? Also what source do
you have that says the NSA can not crack a 2048 bit RSA key? Last I checked
that info was non public and there is no definitive, credible source saying
whether they can or can not crack 2048 RSA keys.

~~~
cdelsolar
Yes I meant RSA key, sorry. My source is that 2^2048 is an enormous number and
the time estimate for a desktop computer to crack it is in the quadrillions of
years. Yes, I know the NSA has higher computing power than a desktop computer.

~~~
tfha
Don't need 2^2048 to crack RSA 2048. There's a saying "every time a grad
student looks at rsa the recommended key length increases."

------
codetrotter
> And Microsoft is all-in on open source. We have been on a journey with open
> source, and today we are active in the open source ecosystem, we contribute
> to open source projects, and some of our most vibrant developer tools and
> frameworks are open source. When it comes to our commitment to open source,
> judge us by the actions we have taken in the recent past, our actions today,
> and in the future.

It’s a fair point but I still cannot read this without thinking of someone
saying “yeah I did some things in the past but I’ve totally changed I promise.
Look, for the whole past week I’ve been really nice to people haven’t I?”

~~~
Totoradio
I can understand those concerns, but what can they do to convince you they
have changed?

~~~
jhasse
* Drop DirectX for Vulkan

* Drop MSVC for Clang or GCC

* Drop Edge for Firefox or Chromium

because they love open-source, right?

~~~
Someone1234
Vulkan is just a 3D graphics and compute API, it cannot replace DirectX
because it doesn't support most of the things DirectX does.

Did you mean to say Direct3D? That's still leave you with input, sound, maths,
and 2D missing.

~~~
jhasse
Yes, I meant Direct3D.

------
nimbius
Friendly reminder: this is the same Microsoft that "empowered" skype and once
called open source a cancer. Its the same Microsoft that ruined open document
standards and started the browser wars.

I wouldnt be surprised to see next years release of "Github Pro Platinum with
Minecraft 3D and Windows Store integration"

For those looking to move, [https://gitlab.com](https://gitlab.com) is an
excellent open source alternative that can easily import all your github
projects. [https://gitea.io](https://gitea.io) is also available and runs on
as little as a raspberry pi.

~~~
rkangel
> once called open source a cancer

There are some really good arguments as to why we should be worried about
Microsoft so can we please stop ruining them by using this complete misquote
as a component.

This comment covers it well:

> This is disingenuous. He was referring to the licensing model of certain
> open-source projects, where the introduction of a single line of code coming
> from an open source project would require the whole of the Windows stack to
> be open-source, effectively "contaminating" the rest of the stack. To this
> day this is still a problem to many companies and legal department must
> carefully review the licensing of the libraries used by their devs.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17225806](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17225806)

~~~
pera
To be more precise, this is what Steve Ballmer said back in 2001:

> [...] _Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property
> sense to everything it touches. That 's the way that the license works._

[https://web.archive.org/web/20011108013601/http://www.suntim...](https://web.archive.org/web/20011108013601/http://www.suntimes.com/output/tech/cst-
fin-micro01.html)

~~~
cup-of-tea
But in fact, copyright is the cancer. There is no way to disable copyright.
Even if you put something in the public domain, copyright will reattach itself
and future users can be legally denied full access to it. Copyleft is the cure
for copyright. It's the only cure we know.

~~~
dkersten
Except that GPL comes with its own set of restrictions and it forces these
restrictions on every bit of code it touches. LGPL is a bit better but I find
the line confusing and blurry often. Many people do not believe it to be the
cure at all.

~~~
cup-of-tea
Many people don't understand what they're talking about. Those restrictions
you talk about are purely to stop copyright reattaching itself in the future.

Anyone who uses copyleft really wants to declare the following: "This is not
copyrighted and derived works shall never be copyrighted." That is not
possible with current copyright law. Copyleft is the only way to get that.

GPL is not about enforcing restrictions, it's about doing what's necessary to
neutralise the damaging effects of copyright. The fact that is uses copyright
to achieve that makes it one of the greatest hacks of all time.

------
strogonoff
Seeing GitHub acquired, I can’t help but imagine that Gitlab would go that
route sooner or later. Their free offering is even more extensive than
GitHub’s, and I don’t think there’s visibility into whether their revenue from
paid plans is enough to offset that.

Since becoming backed by a major player is both a blessing (cash reserves to
fuel the free offering!) and a curse (drive to increase shareholder value
could go against longer-term community interests), I have mixed feelings about
this trend.

Slightly tangentially, Gitlab has nearly caught up with GitHub and is arguably
ahead in some ways feature-wise. I’m happy having built my small agency’s
workflow around it.

I enjoy being able to drop a dotfile into repository root and have the product
tested and deployed by CI to (in my case) AWS S3 or EC2, or get an email
report if something prevented that from happening, after subsequent commit. On
my roadmap is Terraform integration and having the automation provision all
resources, but even in its current state I don’t think I can overstate the
difference it makes, especially with a smaller team of engineers.

Some features of Gitlab at the moment are objectively inferior to GitHub’s
implementation (simpler protected branch model with no way to mandate signed
commits comes to mind), but many others appear stronger (issue tracker &
boards, milestones, merge requests, the above-mentioned CI).

Feel free to give me a shout if you’re considering moving your business to
Gitlab and I’ll share my experience.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _Seeing GitHub acquired, I’d speculate that Gitlab will go that route sooner
> or later._

Bingo. It's bizarre to hear people stampeding to GitLab when they're subject
to the same financial and revenue pressures as GitHub or any other business.
Somebody's paying for those servers and bandwidth and that somebody is
expecting a return on their investment.

~~~
Kudos
Whatever happens to Gitlab, you have the option of hosting the open source
edition yourself. If they get acquired by Oracle in the morning, a fork could
conceivably rise to take its place.

~~~
ThrowawayR2
> _Whatever happens to Gitlab, you have the option of hosting the open source
> edition yourself._

The whole _point_ of Github was that you didn't have to host anything
yourself. Just create an account and, bam, off you go.

On top of that, even if you did want to host Gitlab yourself, it's "open
core", not open source. You'd lose a ton of functionality.

~~~
Kudos
> The whole _point_ of Github was that you didn't have to host anything
> yourself. Just create an account and, bam, off you go.

So, just like gitlab.com?

> On top of that, even if you did want to host Gitlab yourself, it's "open
> core", not open source. You'd lose a ton of functionality.

That functionality is geared towards enterprise. If you are one, you should be
doing your own risk evaluation. If not, you're probably fine with the open
source edition.

------
netsec_burn
I still see Microsoft's predictable behavior in 2018. I have a friend who owns
a Surface, and I was thinking it would be useful to put Linux on it (it was
older ARM hardware). Well you can't, it's a Surface RT and Microsoft not only
locks the bootloader but it also only runs Microsoft approved apps. That's
their endgame whenever possible. Apparently people didn't like having fully
locked down computers and they discontinued the product, shocker.

~~~
Someone1234
The Surface RT was discontinued in 2015, and was manufactured in 2012. Is this
an six year old anecdote?

Sorry, but these days I feel like there are more anecdotes involving the
Surface RT to prove that "Microsoft hates Linux" than there are actual Surface
RT devices still in active usage, but yet people still eat this stuff up.

> That's their endgame whenever possible.

Their "endgame" was six years ago and hasn't come back since..?

~~~
jopsen
> The Surface RT was discontinued in 2015, and was manufactured in 2012. Is
> this an eight year old anecdote?

The current year is 2018, right? Or did I miss something :)

~~~
Someone1234
You're right, Monday morning. :)

------
Touche
If you're wondering why they bought GitHub, it's here:

> Second, we will accelerate enterprise developers’ use of GitHub, with our
> direct sales and partner channels and access to Microsoft’s global cloud
> infrastructure and services.

This is it.

At one time Microsoft used to dominate enterprise software development in
certain areas (most of the east coast in the U.S.) to such a degree that it
was almost impossible to find a non-.NET developer job.

Their biggest failure was TFS. At one time all .NET shops used it. But then
git crept in and the rest is history.

Microsoft is going to sell _a lot_ of enterprise hosting accounts. Look for
the on-premises installations to go through the roof, especially.

~~~
foobarbazetc
Or they lock down the Enterprise version to Azure...

~~~
foepys
I don't think they will. They will most likely want to replace Team Foundation
Server with GitHub Enterprise. There might not be a special AWS image anymore
but a lot of developer teams rely on the on-premises variant of TFS.

~~~
GordonS
Honestly, I hope not - over the years, TFS has turned from a turd into
something good - Visual Studio Online, Microsoft's hosted version of TFS,
really is a _great_ product. It lets you use Git for source control and
provides excellent backlog and CI/CD features - I don't often get evangelical
about a product, but it really is a joy to use.

------
zachruss92
I am a GitLab user and have been for about 2 years now. With that being said,
I think this acquisition makes a ton of sense strategically. Microsoft has
really been trying to change their identity from being a stuffy close-source
corporation to an open company that developers can rely on. And they have done
pretty well at this. They open sourced .net, run MS SQL on Linux, and have
released the WSL (which would have been unfathomable a decade ago). They also
moved their VCS over to Git for Windows development.

GitHub, however, has a business issue of not making money. I think with the
resources that Microsoft can provide GitHub can continue to build a great
product and tap further into Microsoft's enterprise user base to make sales
and release more features that customers want/need.

Congrats to everyone at GitHub for this momentous acquisition!

~~~
avip
That was also the Linkedin acquisition pitch. I wonder how that played out.

~~~
WorldMaker
LinkedIn still exists and still seems to think they are a separate company.

Rumor has it that Satya is furious he still gets so many LinkedIn emails, but
is keeping hands off.

~~~
kbenson
> Rumor has it that Satya is furious he still gets so many LinkedIn emails,
> but is keeping hands off.

Well, he's exhibiting far more self control than I would be able to. Linked-in
has the worst email practices of any legitimate company I can think of.

~~~
fauigerzigerk
But their email spam can be contained. It took me a couple of years but now
they have gone almost completely silent.

Maybe it's ageism?!?! ;-)

------
toofy
Part of the reason we trusted GitHub with our projects and our code was they
were a neutral party simply providing a service.

Sadly, being bought out by microsoft completely removes their neutrality.
Whether they will abuse the trust of having complete and total access to every
private repo and _all_ of the code inside or not remains to be seen. But I
certainly don’t view GitHub as neutral site anymore. Sadly, from a business
perspective, GitHub just isn’t rational when they’re owned by Microsoft. Even
less so when we’ve seen how blatantly evil they have been in the past. For us,
at least at this point, it will be better to bite the bullet now and move
sooner rather than gamble. As someone else here said, even good community
oriented companies are only a rough quarter away from shady business
practices.

I truly hope they don’t kill off GitHub, it’s been a truly amazing space and I
really hope it works out for the devs who work there — the ones I know are
amazing people and true believers, I really do hope this works out well for
them, they deserve it. Now off to start the long arduous process of migrating
everything to GitLab :/

~~~
kumarharsh
Why will they kill of Github? They just shut down their own repository website
(Codeplex) and moved all their code to github. That's perhaps the most
misplaced fear I've read here.

Plus, from what I've read, MS was perhaps the best possible buyer of GH - and
no, a federated distributed model was definitely not a possibility given the
huge sums of investor money involved.

~~~
andy-x
They don't need to literally kill, they can just make many useful features
internal to Microsoft developers, or make some features that are free now
subscription-only.

------
ulkesh
The real question everyone should be asking is whether Microsoft is
trustworthy, cognizant, and honorable enough to be the steward of such a major
player that facilitates a large portion of open source software.

This has me very concerned for the open source community.

~~~
pavlov
Why were you not concerned previously about an unprofitable SV startup holding
that central position?

GitHub wasn’t a non-profit. This was always the endgame for them. They were
losing money to acquire a userbase that would be sold when the time is right —
just like WhatsApp and numerous other big social SV plays.

~~~
ulkesh
Who says I wasn't? And I know Github wasn't a non-profit. You make quite a
number of assumptions with your statement.

The difference for me is that I was supporting Github (by paying) to be an
independent company, warts and all. If their goal was to always sell
specifically to Microsoft, I would have voiced many concerns very early on. I
would much rather they had sold to Mozilla or another in the open source
community.

~~~
detaro
Who in the open source community could afford to buy them, once they took VC
at 2 billion valuation? _maybe_ Red Hat, but even that seems stretching it?

------
Arnt
I reported a bug in a Microsoft product earlier this year, one whose only
effect was to complicate interop with a minor opensource competitor.

They handled that fairly, promptly and well. Microsoft isn't the same company
as ten and twenty years ago.

~~~
ekianjo
> Microsoft isn't the same company as ten and twenty years ago.

It's not because you had one positive experience with one small part of MS
that it means the whole company's culture has suddenly reversed to be
philanthropic or something.

~~~
Arnt
I've had more good experiences, I mentioned that one because it's such a stark
contrast, not because it's unique.

Microsoft is hardly philanthtropic. I'd say it acts like a fairly enlightened
bigco these days, that's _very_ different from around y2k. My experiences are
such that I did report that bug, I'd never have bothered doing that 20 years
ago.

------
ethbro
From a financial perspective, any purchasing company with enterprise sales /
support experience is a great fit.

Having MS backing GitHub suddenly makes it a feasible option for a lot of
conservative enterprise customers.

~~~
dnomad
Exactly. A big concern for enterprise customers (that often drove them to
Atlassian over Github) was the fear that Github was "just a startup" and might
disappear at any moment and the lack of integration with existing enterprise
tools. If MS can put together a comprehensive platform here that doesn't cost
an arm and a leg they could dominate this market.

The real story here is that nobody wants to host their own services and nobody
wants to spend time/money even integrating various hosted solutions. The
success of Atlassian and this acquisition confirms that people want to pay a
flat monthly fee and get access to a bunch of highly integrated, quality
services. The web continues to drive the creation of highly centralized
platforms (Amazon, Facebook, Google) and it doesn't look like IT development
market is going to be any different.

~~~
jupp0r
The success of Atlassian shows that you can have a great business in
development tools without caring much about developer experience.

~~~
ethbro
Enterprise purse strings are controlled by support and checkboxes, with
developer experience a distant third.

After all, the people _buying_ the software/service aren't the ones who are
going to be using it every day.

~~~
jupp0r
It's a culture thing :(

------
wnsire
> We are committed to being stewards of the GitHub community, which will
> retain its developer-first ethos, operate independently and remain an open

> Finally, we will bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services to new
> audiences.

Which one is it ? Those statements are just contradictory .

It's obvious that they will bring all their stuff into Github as it has become
a central piece for MS Engineers and has become strategic for them , either to
optimize engineers productivity or just to better sell their products and
Azure/Visual Studio Services Package.

Meaning whether or not you like MS tools , you will get some "Open in Visual
Studio" button , send in "Microsoft Team" buttons etc... and probably more
stuff like this that most people didn't wanted in the first place.

This is really a terrible day for Open Source.

~~~
7dare
I don't think these are contradictory.

Even if you interpret the second one as "new buttons to advertise Microsoft
products", it doesn't damage a developer-first stance or independent
operation.

Moreover, GitHub has already partnered with dozens of other companies for its
Education program for instance [0]. This already compromises independent
operation, and displays ads to thousands of students, "whether or not they
like these tools" (your words).

[0] - [https://education.github.com/](https://education.github.com/)

~~~
wnsire
You are not getting the point.

MS will integrate Github with MS Ecosystem ( Azure , .NET , VSTS etc.. ) as
described in their slides.

From this point there is two possibility

A - They open every single new API they use as well as UI/UX API so other
providers can integrate themself to Github

B - They don't open (or partially) those new API and Azure/MS Ecosystem will
be the de facto providers for every single stuff that is possible in github.
You will end up with a "Open in [Insert Microsoft Products]" buttons and you
won't be able to change that , third party providers won't be able to appear
here as well. Github would have never done in the first place because they
were independant , now every single stuff they do will have to be linked one
way or another to MS.

Watch the slides , everything is very well described.
[https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://c....](https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://c.s-microsoft.com/en-
us/CMSFiles/calldeck.pptx?version=f3eef72b-35d3-95b2-4fda-73a47f805c7f)

------
heckanoobs
I'm excited by this. I feel trapped between Google who will give everything
away in exchange for spying on me, and Apple who will respect my privacy but
shake me upside down with the most ridiculous vendor lock-in tactics. I'm glad
someone as powerful as Microsoft can play the underdog role and provide a
viable third alternative.

Windows laptops that run Linux well enough for development. VS Code. I now
develop on my PC at home using the same workflows that I use on my fancy pants
work MacBook.

I have a lot of faith in this acquisition. My software team is growing fast
and we have so many little problems that feel like they should be solved at
the GitHub layer but the solutions aren't there. Microsoft will fix that.

~~~
rootlocus
> Microsoft will fix that.

You have no way of knowing what Microsoft will or will not fix. This is just
blind hype.

~~~
heckanoobs
We can assume Microsoft's motivation is money, they have a long history of
selling professional solutions to development teams, I'm a developer with a
team on GitHub in need of solutions, and I have money. It's Microsoft's to
lose.

I think you're mistaking your blind hate for my blind hype

~~~
rootlocus
> I think you're mistaking your blind hate for my blind hype

I don't hate microsoft, and I've shown no hate in my comment. I'm pointing out
that you can't expect all your problems to be solved because of an ownership
change. Caution and skepticism will serve you better than wishful thinking and
hype.

~~~
heckanoobs
You say you've shown no hate yet you reply to my support of this acquisition
with a comment that quickly dismisses my enthusiasm as misplaced hype.

Now you provide advice when I didn't ask you for any. I don't know you. You
don't know me and you certainly don't know what will "serve me better" as
readily as I don't know that Microsoft will fix all my problems.

If you've found stability in your world view then good for you, it takes all
kinds. Skeptics and optimists and more. Spend less time putting others down
and more time melting in the pot.

------
oblio
> Once the acquisition closes later this year, GitHub will be led by CEO Nat
> Friedman, an open source veteran and founder of Xamarin, who will continue
> to report to Microsoft Cloud + AI Group Executive Vice President Scott
> Guthrie; GitHub CEO and Co-Founder Chris Wanstrath will be a technical
> fellow at Microsoft, also reporting to Scott.

~~~
EnderMB
This was one of the main outcomes I was hoping for in the last HN thread on
this acquisition. GitHub get the strong CEO they were hoping for, and one with
solid credentials with interacting with the development community.

------
softwaredoug
More tech consolidation under Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Apple flat out sucks.
It doesn't empower developers in the slightest to have a small number of giant
companies own everything.

~~~
mo3gut
Yet they have numerous defenders on this site, all the more peculiar
considering those companies' collusion to avoid paying market rates to
developers. The preference to be a sharecropper on their plantations is
evidently strong, for no very clear reason.

And let us not forget the EU's efforts to support incumbents and deter new
entrants, with their complex, vague and punitive regulations. These also
receive much approval here; perhaps a fruitful field for study by some
enterprising psychologists!

~~~
wilsonnb
I'd love to see some sources on your claim that they are colluding to avoid
paying market rates to developers.

~~~
java_script
[https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-
valle...](https://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most-
celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages/)

------
walterbell
If you want to develop software for Microsoft’s Linux distro/kernel (Azure
Sphere for IoT), you must use Windows 10 + Visual Studio,
[https://seeedstudio.com/productDetail/3052](https://seeedstudio.com/productDetail/3052)

 _> To use MT3620 Dev Board for Azure Sphere, you’ll need a Windows 10 PC with
the latest Windows Updates, along with the Visual Studio Tools for Azure
Sphere (which will be available for download from Microsoft). These tools will
include application templates, development tools and the Azure Sphere software
development kit (SDK). Terms: This development board can be only used for
prototyping, it cannot be built into a product for commercial distribution. It
cannot be re-sold or used as part of a production environment._

Dear Microsoft, since IoT is one of the “next big things”, it would be nice to
use Microsoft Linux ARM kernel with open hardware (no terms of service for
hardware resale) and open software (e.g. use open-source Linux dev tools with
the Azure SDK).

------
nevi-me
Satya Nadela's done differently to his predecessors, maybe this will go well.

I understand the concern of a few companies dominating everything that we use,
but time will tell.

~~~
jjuel
I wonder what people would have thought if Github had just disappeared instead
of selling to Microsoft? I mean I understand some concern, but this can really
only be a good thing for Github in the long run. It isn't like Microsoft was
producing a competitor and just bought them to kill them. Honestly, I like
this better than Amazon or Google buying them.

~~~
bovermyer
This is an important point. Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub means that
Amazon and Google lost out on a major component of the developer ecosystem.

I doubt we'll be able to predict how they'll respond. Their own code hosting
services are... anemic, in Amazon's case, and dead, in Google's case.

~~~
ethbro
Yeah, it'll be interesting.

In hindsight, it's amazing the other hyperscale cloud providers didn't buy it.

------
okket
Confirmed by GitHub, of course

[https://twitter.com/github/status/1003623284829638659](https://twitter.com/github/status/1003623284829638659)

------
matheuslc
It's clear and clever that Microsoft changed your vision about open source to
make more money. It's ok as the society that we live are moved this way and
its good for us.

The only thing that scares me its the power of those all big companies to buy
all other companies. We are tending to have a monopoly and strict visions
about computers and all the philosophies involved in it.

------
Ajedi32
They do seem to be trying to reassure people that they're not gonna mess this
up:

> And Microsoft is all-in on open source. We have been on a journey with open
> source, and today we are active in the open source ecosystem, we contribute
> to open source projects, and some of our most vibrant developer tools and
> frameworks are open source. When it comes to our commitment to open source,
> judge us by the actions we have taken in the recent past, our actions today,
> and in the future.

> [...]

> Going forward, GitHub will remain an open platform, which any developer can
> plug into and extend. Developers will continue to be able to use the
> programming languages, tools and operating systems of their choice for their
> projects – and will still be able to deploy their code on any cloud and any
> device.

> [...]

> Most importantly, we recognize the responsibility we take on with this
> agreement. We are committed to being stewards of the GitHub community, which
> will retain its developer-first ethos, operate independently and remain an
> open platform.

~~~
Iv
The phrase "Embrace, extend, extinguish" comes from Microsoft. [1]

There is one actor I don't trust with that, it is them. I'll move my repos
next weekend. Maybe that's the call I needed to self host...

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish)

~~~
airstrike
That phrase is from over 20 years ago...

~~~
pritambaral
Phrases don't lose their relevance due to age. If they do, they do it because
the situation has changed, and similar situations haven't come up.

For example, the phrase "doublespeak" is much older and also especially
relevant today.

~~~
chuckkir
The phrase is still valid, but it is unclear that it applies to the current
company. Companies do not have minds and are not people. They do have inertia,
but if you change enough of the people then it's fundamentally a different
company. MS is certainly different than it was 20 or 10 years ago.

~~~
Iv
MS was fined by EU for monopoly practices in 2008 and 2013. It is currently in
a case against Spain when it made it harder to dual boot with Windows 8's UEFI
systems.

The year is 2018 and Windows still ships with a single navigator, only
supports NTFS and does not know that dual-boot is even a possibility.

------
diffeomorphism
> judge us by the actions we have taken in the recent past, our actions today,
> and in the future.

But please, please not the slightly less recent past? And not the telemetry
stuff? And not the patent extortions? ...

------
vthallam
Numerous possibilities for Microsoft having a product with millions of
developers. Some top of my head,

-> Bundle Github Business Plans and Office 365 which includes Microsoft Teams I guess.

-> Better azure integrations and push developers for more Azure usage

-> Push VSCode out to more developers

-> Connect LinkedIn accounts of developers to their GitHub accounts and help companies hire better

~~~
tootie
More generally, cloud is the key. MS is using O365 as a lead-in to Azure and
Google is using G Suite the same way. GitLab currently has built-in support to
pump your CI pipeline to Google Cloud and comes with some hosting credits.
That would be the obvious next step for MS. Introduce one-click deployment to
Azure Container Service. I can also see VS Code in the browser for your GitHub
projects, but that would be brand halo, not a money maker.

------
zelon88
The world's largest software retailer just acquired the worlds largest source
code repository and everyone thinks this is a win for open-source.

~~~
jpleclerc
> everyone

No ?

------
compute_me
Not affiliated with the team, but I feel compelled to plug
[https://gitea.io/en-US/](https://gitea.io/en-US/) here ... such a lean
alternative to GitLab, I was really happy to find it. Runs just fine for a
couple of dozen users on a rather whimpy virtual server.

~~~
richardwhiuk
Wow that looks like a copyright infringement spectacular.

------
bad_user
People keep mentioning how "Microsoft changed" due to VS Code, the Linux
subsystem, .NET Core.

I say that they are the same company, only with different cash cows.

Haven't they spied on Windows 10 users? Do they not engage in patents
racketeering? Haven't they killed Nokia and ruined Skype?

" _But Mom, some of the other companies are doing it too_ ", well yeah, but
some of us don't have double standards, in spite of what you'd think and that
doesn't absolve them of anything ;-)

Brilliant marketing campaign though. They needed it I guess, but it's getting
obnoxious.

\---

That said I'm glad that after the acquisition GitHub will be led by Nat
Friedman, the former CEO of Xamarin, which has some credibility.

At least the news isn't all bad.

~~~
mkirklions
Yep, I really dont understand why there are Microsoft fans.

Like I understand if you bought an Xbox, but I dont understand if you are a
programmer.

Microsoft has always been a headache. Recently its been a tiny bit better, but
they still are a for-profit company that needs to continue to make a profit.

This was to make Microsoft money, nothing to 'help programmers'.

~~~
privacypoller
As a developer Microsoft has treated my far better than any other corporation
pushing an agenda. Amazon seems kind of apathetic towards any one developer or
group, Google and Apple can be down-right hostile in their policies or
support. Microsoft has by far hosted the most events that I have access to,
ranging from global developer conferences to user-group meetings.Their tooling
and developer support has always been forefront in their strategy as well.

So it's a little disingenuous to say only technology consumers should have
positive feelings for Microsoft. Plus, making money & helping programmers are
not mutually exclusive; Coupled with their business strategies (good and bad)
this has _always_ been MS's strategy to grow and profit from their markets.

~~~
foobarbazetc
How did they treat Windows Phone developers?

How did they treat Nokia employees?

Mhmmm.

~~~
Const-me
> How did they treat Windows Phone developers?

I was one of them, and Microsoft treated me very well.

Windows Phone was an amazing platform. I’ve also developed for iOS a lot.
Visual studio + expression blend was way ahead of apple’s xCode. Every single
piece was much better: language, libraries, compiler, debugger, emulator, UI
designer.

The platform is now discontinued so I no longer develop for WP. Meanwhile,
most of the skills I’ve obtained working on WP7-8 apps apply to other XAML-
based platforms, i.e. WPF, WinRT, and UWP. Fortunately for me, Windows is not
going from desktops any time soon.

------
marricks
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that come Monday morning all the reasonable
critiques are buried at the bottom of the page and all the GitHub + MS love is
upvoted to the top, hyping up all the "amazing business synergies".

Multibillion dollar mergers like this are huge things, especially for with a
big player acquiring a smaller beloved brand like GitHub. Makes one wonder how
many of those leaks over the past week were planned to get the hate out and
pave the way for a "cleaner" coming out like what we're seeing here.

An independent player just got gobbled up by a major one, once again the tech
world consolidates...

\---

EDIT:

Perhaps HN is just having issues, but right after I made this comment and
checked the thread ALL I saw were critiques. HN must be quite happening this
morning... anyways, in response to /u/mcknz, some critiques:

Centralization vs Decentralization
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17221933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17221933)

Has MS really changed?
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17227370](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17227370)

GH was aa neutral 3rd party
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17221640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17221640)

Wake up call, MS ties to NSA
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17228593](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17228593)

Open source community Doesn’t have a say
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17229241](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17229241)

\----

EDIT 2 - I'm probably wrong here, I see the comment now I claimed was deleted,
I most likely just misplaced my reply.

~~I actually made this as a reply to the most upvoted MS + GitHub love posts
and it looks like that comment was removed and I was placed onto the main
thread. The title of this story also changed a couple times too. The current
neutral one "Microsoft acquires Github" is the original I think, but for a bit
it was changed to something a bit more pro MS.~~

~~I wonder if we'll get a story in a couple days about what was happening in
this thread...~~

~~~
matheusmoreira
> Wake up call, MS ties to NSA

Sure is nice knowing the NSA will have easy access to all the private source
code hosted on GitHub. I bet they will find so many new vulnerabilities.

~~~
majewsky
Github has always been an American company. What makes you think they didn't
have access before today?

------
Iv
Well, I kinda trusted Github to be good actors with the things they
centralized while Microsoft is almost the epitome of reasons why
centralization is bad and why you want to carefully keep control over your
process.

Nope. Nope nope nope nope nope.

~~~
tootie
I trust Microsoft more than GitHub, honestly. GH handled their last round of
ethics issues very poorly.

~~~
Iv
When was the last time Github was fined for having abused a monopoly position?
It was 2008 for Microsoft. EU charged them with more than 1 billion dollar for
their abusive practices.

An investigation is ongoing in Spain since Windows 8 UEFI's practices made
competition harder.

Microsoft is still Microsoft. Breaking standards, making interoperability
harder. It won't be 6 months before github starts having VS-only or windows-
only features.

------
johanj
The press release: Microsoft to acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion:
[https://news.microsoft.com/2018/06/04/microsoft-to-
acquire-g...](https://news.microsoft.com/2018/06/04/microsoft-to-acquire-
github-for-7-5-billion/)

------
ksec
GitHub - $160M Recurring Revenue in 2016... sometimes I am amazed how they got
to the $7.5B figures.

I wonder what happen to Atom Editor. Although I think most are using Visual
Studio Code anyway, so may be it make sense to marge the man power.

I wonder if they would make Coding ( Visual Studio Code ), Code Hosting (
GitHub ), Deploy ( Azure ) all seamless.

Surely now Microsoft has the incentive to make Ruby Rails a first class
Citizen on Windows?

At this rate, I wouldn't be surprise in 10 years time Microsoft open sources
its Windows Kernel.

~~~
mtgx
When Microsoft sets it mind on buying a company, they're willing to pay almost
anything. Remember when they wanted to pay $45 billion for Yahoo only a decade
ago?

Companies that are exploring the option of selling to Microsoft know this
quite well, and they exploit it to the fullest.

~~~
skinnymuch
That included the Alibaba (including the percentage sold off since) and Yahoo
Japan stakes. It would’ve made them good money buying Yahoo at that price.

------
Paul_S
"When it comes to our commitment to open source, judge us by the actions we
have taken in the recent past, our actions today, and in the future."

How is that patent extortion going then? Still earning you money? Any plans to
stop in "the near future"? Didn't think so.

I'm sure Microsoft will improve github. Just like it improved skype.

~~~
scarface74
So which company would you rather buy Github?

GitHub wasn't profitable. Would you rather it just disappear?

~~~
mcny
I must ask, if it wasn't profitable on Sunday what changes today?

~~~
scarface74
You have a company with deep pockets that can fund it as ongoing concern.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Going concerns are profitable. MS don't look to me like a company that wants
to charitably support Github's userbase?

~~~
scarface74
The Xbox division wasn't profitable for years and neither was (is?) Bing.

------
mromanuk
Microsoft is doing a great job with VS Code, let's hope they continue that way
with GitHub.

------
samlambert
Here at GitHub, we’re excited for what this acquisition means for the future
of software development and open source. We’ll remain focused on putting the
developer community first and will stay an open platform to continue to serve
developers in all industries.

There has been so much excitement from both sides during this process. Our
shared values around empowering developers across the globe made this a
natural fit

~~~
jacquesm
> Our shared values around empowering developers across the globe made this a
> natural fit.

Please. Do you have to start spouting corporate bs right away? I'm happy you
guys got your payday but Microsoft and GitHub 'shared values' are so far from
each other that I sincerely hope you won't end up regretting this deal in the
longer term.

------
flashmob
It read like a standard run-of-the-mill press release you would expect from a
big corporation. Btw, the word-stem 'develop*' appeared 31 times. Reminded me
of the old famous chant...

"Developers, developers, developers!"

------
wewake
This doesn't seem okay. I don't feel good about this acquisition. I used to
associate Github with open-source, now I'm going to have to associate it with
another proprietary software from Microsoft and that breaks my heart a little.

"Developers are the builders of this new era, writing the world’s code. And
GitHub is their home.", doesn't feel like home anymore. :(

------
TuringNYC
When Microsoft acquired Skype, there were a subset of accounts that
essentially became un-useable for close to 2yrs. There was a sub-sub case
where if you had a Skype ID that was an email (not a username) which was also
a pre-existing Microsoft email, your profile became unreachable and passwords
could not be reset either. This is from personal experience and validated with
a half dozen other people in the same sub-sub-case complaining online. Support
just gave the same boilerplate response - reset your password. It is honestly
shocking there was no review that a certain cohort of very similar accounts
had suddenly and permanently stopped logging in. Honestly inexplicably given
the size of the acquisition.

That was when I finally dumped Skype and moved fully to
FaceTime/Duo/WhatsApp/Messenger. Thank goodness for competition.

I adore GitHub. My children and I wear their tshirts, we brandish their logo
on our laptops and phones. I hope Microsoft doesnt half-abandon this post-
merger integration.

~~~
bigmanwalter
Thank you for saying the Skype ID thing here. I thought I had gone crazy....

~~~
TuringNYC
Same thing here! I thought I had gone crazy until I started interacting with
more more people online that had the same exact problem. Honestly, it became
an obsession to figure out for me because I started feeling stupid not being
able to figure it out...turns out there was no way out of this corner case!

 _Microsoft bought Skype in May 2011 for $8.5 billion._ Think about the
magnitude of dysfunction for a post-merger integration to only partially
succeed despite this price tag!

~~~
bigmanwalter
I can hardly imagine what level of dysfunction is possible in an organisation
as large as Microsoft. I have only worked in small companies, less than 30
employees, and my mind has already been blown.

~~~
TuringNYC
Fair enough w/r/t the company size...but...how is it I dont have these types
of authentication issues in the Google universe, or Facebook Universe? It
isn't like I need a separate login for Youtube vs Google Sheets vs Google
Drive vs Duo vs GChat. It suggests that it _can work_ if the organization
tries to do it correctly.

------
peff
I'm a GitHub employee and spend most of my time contributing to the Git
project.

I've always been very happy about how GitHub supported my participation in the
community. Sometimes what I do is directly useful to GitHub, and sometimes
it's a matter of keeping the project healthy for everyone. It's always been
about contributing, and not trying to control.

Microsoft started contributing to Git about 2 years ago, and in the last six
months, we've seen them increase their contributions. From what I've seen
they've taken the same approach: give developers the resources and freedom to
figure out what the project needs and improve it. I'm excited about some of
the performance work they've been doing (e.g., fsmonitor integration, graph
optimizations).

So I'm optimistic about this with respect to Git. I think it will mean
continued support for the project. And I do feel like Microsoft "gets" open
source in a way that most people never would have believed 5 or 10 years ago.

------
marricks
I think what I said yesterday stil has relevance:

—-

Can anything exist anymore without

A) Getting acquired by a multinational

B) Becoming one

Sure, MS visual code is open but as a few players get more and more power we
all become subject to their whims and not them to ours.

MS is pushing their ads within their own OS more and more, will GitHub get the
same treatment, or will it’s data be useful to MS for those ads? What sort of
integrations can we expect to see with other MS products that encourage a more
closed ecosystem?

This may all seem alarmist but with so many companies having so much power
this sort of behavior get through unchecked. *For example, MS hasn’t changed
all that much: they still force device makers to sell Linux at a higher or
equal price to Windows so people won’t jump ship.

The only recourse people suggest is “well then don’t use it” but what options
do employees have when higher ups mandate technologies? What about most users
who just go with the wind and just let these snowballing large companies skate
by? It all makes me very sad...

~~~
sixothree
MS has far many more project opened source than just VSCode. Maybe they will
do the same for github, which ahem.... is not.

------
bitL
So, is GitHub going to become a Synapse[1]?

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0218817)

I am wondering how good their Deep Learning-based code analysis tool
prototypes are, if they can identify bleeding edge code in private repos
already...

------
tomtimtall
It’s understandable that a lot of people are mad at microsoft. It used to be
the big bad wolf vs open source. Where the open source side would go on and on
about how much more value it provided and how in then end Microsoft would fail
horribly and GNU/Linux would rule. And at some point along the way Microsoft
just jumped on the wagon, suddenly chanting the same pro open source slogans,
fighting the sameness cause. But no blood was spilled, Linux didn’t destroy
Windows and Microsoft never seemed to tank. It left a void in many people who
are just not ready to accept that Microsoft judges only on their actions today
is a huge supporter of open source software. The zeolots wanted to beat them,
not convince them.

------
unictek
It's a global step backward for Open Source Software.

Microsoft was always hated because of their closed source software and now
they hold the principal Open Source bastion.

Github helped so many Open Source Developers get their projects out of shadow,
thanks to the "star" system, news feed... and sometimes this could change a
life (like me that created a startup on top of an open source project that
became successful on Github).

I feel ashamed now to work on Github, a platform that is, today, owned by
Microsoft, a company which I do not support their philosophy and culture.

For me it's a day of mourning and I pry Microsoft to not touch at what makes
Github what it is today.

~~~
mtgx
Open source projects _should_ move away from GitHub immediately. I'll consider
it a con for any company that keeps its code on GitHub going forward.

------
sharemywin
Somebody's got to pay for all the free accounts, might as well be the fortune
500.

------
joelhandwell
Submitted an issue to dear-github. "Host Github by itself as open source
project" [https://github.com/dear-github/dear-
github/issues/304](https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/304)

Issue body: Microsoft open sourced Xamarin after acquisition and it was good
for community. Open sourcing Github source will benefit open source community.
Github was not open source for its own reason and it could be same reason why
Xamarin was not. Now that Github acquired by Microsoft, would this event be an
opportunity to re-consider the reason?

~~~
jenscow
I'm sure that will happen right away, considering they're "all-in on open
source".

------
jasonrhaas
I get it, its the way this industry works. Build up a solid product, grow the
user base, continue to lose money until you sell the business and cash out.

I'm not against the company or the founders making money. This is America
after all. What is disappointing to me and others in the open source community
is that we have zero say over something that we helped build.

This sale to Microsoft is just another reason why we need something new, a new
system that can be owned by individuals and not corporations. I would love to
see something where the developers and users actually have a stake in what
happens, and can in turn profit from it as well.

~~~
samtho
> What is disappointing to me and others in the open source community is that
> we have zero say over something that we helped build.

Github was never a community project; it was never "ours" in that sense. Why
should anyone except for the owners have a say?

~~~
jasonrhaas
Never "ours" in any legal sense of the word. I said in my post I can't blame
them for selling, its how our system works. I'm just trying to think towards
the future and how "we" can do it better next time.

------
c0smic
I think some skepticism is a healthy thing to have, especially with multi
billion dollar acquisitions. It's a little surprising to me that there's been
so much kool aid drinking in the open source community over this and a lot of
"disappointment" with those who are not also drinking the kool aid.

At the end of the day, Microsoft, a huge billion dollar corporation, bought
GitHub because it thinks it'll help its bottom dollar. And sure, of course I
can see the business sense in the deal for both parties, but it's yet to be
seen if it'll actually improve things for end users.

------
mshenfield
My two cents are they'll leverage the acquisition and get free marketing by
moving Github to Azure. I'm less worried about them doing some 90's Microsoft
chicanery (they've shown a real willingness to invest in dev goodwill in the
past 5 years) than inadvertently letting Github fall into disrepair, by
understaffing and shifting focus even more to the Enterprise offering.

I'm going to let things play out before judging. They might ramp up investment
in the main Github platform, or open source Github because they're not relying
on it as a cash cow.

------
krzat
I wonder what Google and Apple will do with their projects on github.

------
lewisj489
I'm actually happy about this acquisition. For everything that all the 13 y/o
"hackers" say on Reddit, this will hopefully be a great thing for the wider
community.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
What do you envision happening that will be great [for the current GitHub
userbase]?

------
meddlepal
It's hilarious to see people kvetching about lock-in here when probably 90% of
HNers are working on projects locked into AWS or something else in their
stack.

------
merinowool
This is only a matter of time use of GitHub will require special client with
built-in telemetry (read spying).

Especially their defensive tone says all.

What a sad day for GitHub and the community.

------
nearmuse
I don't understand this. To me it looked like Github never much strayed (or
progressed) in terms of functionality. It stayed a git repo management tool
and that was it. It is obviously what people liked about it: it stuck to a
single function.

They had so a huge role in popularizing git IMO, they secured some room and
ample time for (non-overbearing) experimentation. Their issue tracking was
very basic, and there could be so much work done there they could subsequently
sell as something additional to core git repo functionality. Or they could
improve code review tools etc.

I am afraid this is what will also happen to StackOverflow eventually with
their attempts at Documentation, Jobs and now SO for teams. It looks like they
are trying to compete but in the end it might turn out being them signaling
their willingness to potential buyers by "moving in the right direction".

It is not the fact that it's Microsoft, it's the fact that the finality is
almost always acquisition. I always looked at SO and github as an alternative
to Linkedin's walls of enumerations, as a way to speak to other developers
instead of HRs, and now it is not so for Github.

------
otterley
A bit of interesting trivia: back in 2008, GitHub's founder (Tom Preston-
Werner) declined to work for Microsoft when they bought his previous employer,
Powerset:

[http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/10/18/how-i-turned-
down-3...](http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/10/18/how-i-turned-
down-300k.html)

------
guidovranken
Precisely because the FOSS community is so worried about this acquisition,
there is a lot to win for them, and if they manage to keep improving Github in
the perception of its users, that is a trust and PR victory that would be
difficult to attain otherwise, and it would help institutionalize their
renewed, positive vision on open source. It can honestly go both ways.

------
stredicke
It is no surprise GitHub got sold; look at the investors and you know that
they invested to sell later. We were worried about cloud repositories already
some time ago, even started our own project (gitstorage.com) to be prepared
whatever happens (we are totally relaxed about the GitHub takeover). It could
have been worse. There are other companies with lots of cash that would have
worried me a lot more. One interesting thought was that whoever owns GitHub
can feed the open and also the closed source into their AI machine to learn
how to code properly. IMHO the terms of service of GitHub allow that because
AI is not considered a third party. This could have some significant benefit
keeping in mind that good code tends to rule the world; and Microsoft
understands how to use AI and has the actual means to do something like that.
This is speculative, maybe one day the history books will tell us what was the
main driver for this transaction.

------
Method-X
I wonder if GitHub will stop development on Atom and move to VS Code.

~~~
danso
That’s a good question. Hard to imagine MS justifying resources for Atom, when
VS Code is a direct competitor.

~~~
cobalt
given that they are both open source products making (afaik) no money...

------
thelastidiot
Today, I decided to move to GitLab. Thank god there is an alternative. I won't
give one penny to Microsoft since I remember all the deceptive methods they
used to retain their market shares. Their CEO was in the company when all of
that happened so don't come and tell me that things have changed.

------
ChicagoDave
This feels like Slashdot from 10 years ago. I thought the anti-Microsoft
sentiment had dissipated, but clearly that’s not the case.

I was a Microsoft focused developer through the bad years and even I thought
they acted horribly against Netscape. They ended up paying a billion dollars
for it and we’re forced to change.

I wasn’t a fan of Ballmer either and thought MS had lost its way. Windows
Phone started off nice but they just couldn’t get enough developer interested.

Maybe that was the wake up call. If you don’t have the devs and you’re a dev-
centric company, you’re doomed.

In comes Satya Nadella, along with Scott Guthrie and other internal proponents
of open development and the company has very demonstrably changed its stripes
in the last five years.

I judge companies on current behavior and Microsoft seems to be doing far more
right than wrong.

~~~
romaniv
_> I judge companies on current behavior and Microsoft seems to be doing far
more right than wrong._

This isn't about behavior. This is about product management. As a reminder,
Microsoft's current products include TFS (and I don't mean just TFSVC) and
Teams.

~~~
ChicagoDave
And nearly everyone using TFS uses the TFS-Git repositories now, including MS
itself.

The PM aspects of TFS are notoriously cumbersome, so I see the Github
acquisition as a potential benefit to that side of TFS.

Then again, I think Mingle (Thoughtworks) is the best agile project management
tool.

------
arrowgunz
I really hope this acquisition is good for the developer community. Also, I
can’t help but notice the fact that Tom Preston-Werner, one of the co-founders
of GitHub, had turned down an offer[0] from Microsoft 10 years ago and today
they’ve announced the acquisition[1] by Microsoft. They really have come a
full circle. Good luck to the team at GitHub!

[0] [http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/10/18/how-i-turned-
down-3...](http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/10/18/how-i-turned-
down-300k.html)

[1] [https://blog.github.com/2018-06-04-github-
microsoft/](https://blog.github.com/2018-06-04-github-microsoft/)

------
alexeiz
Time to migrate off Github, folks. Microsoft has a long, long history of
destroying every company they acquire. For the latest example, see how Skype
is being run into the ground. There is a prevailing state of mind at Microsoft
that if they own something they should be able to do anything with it. And so
they will. It's only a matter of time until Microsoft starts putting their
proprietary crap into Github to make it better integrate with their enterprise
offerings. Free users will be neglected and things will get broken for them.
For any respected open source project, it's irresponsible to depend on Github
at this point. The sooner you get off it the fewer problems you'll have later.

------
bovermyer
This line in particular caught my attention:

> Finally, we will bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services to new
> audiences.

Does this mean we'll see some sort of VSCode-esque IDE built into GitHub's UI?
Or perhaps exposure of VSTS to people who previously weren't aware of it?

~~~
marpstar
I can envision something like "Deploy to Azure" support as well.

------
strin
Github has been losing the battle in the enterprise world to Gitlab. The
latter has more appealing features to enterprise users. So this acquisition in
some sense a great opportunity for Github as well to enter enterprise under
the wings of Microsoft.

~~~
ggregoire
My company uses GitLab because it's less expensive than GitHub.

------
danmg
Microsoft doesn't really want github. What they want is Electron.

Say what you want about their Windows and Office divisions, they put a lot of
effort and resources into their development tool side. Being able to direct
the development Electron, the way a lot of desktop applications are being
written in 201X, is a clear advantage to them commercially. They also have the
ability and resources to solve some of the problems that have plagued
Electron/NW like resource use and distribution.

What will happen to the github site itself? Not a whole lot. That's all pretty
stable. More likely it will stagnate since they won't really know what to do
with it.

------
madebysquares
Curious why they are changing CEOs if they want to continue the culture and
community.

~~~
spooneybarger
GitHub CEO stepped down in August 2017. They haven't had anyone in the role
since then.

~~~
madebysquares
I was not aware of all the CEO troubles, makes sense then, on that front.

------
AnnoyingSwede
My main consern is what will happen to projects hosted that MS would consider
questionable repos, such as rootkits for consoles, open source drivers for
their own proprietary hardware.. I expect a lot of data to be purged.

------
ams6110
Strike One: using the cliche buzzword "empowering" in the announcement.

------
jarym
Just please don’t let the UX ‘experts’ inside Redmond butcher it like they did
Skype. Keep them away! If they were any good at their jobs they wouldn’t be
turning out so much crap and parading it as a great thing.

------
aneutron
I pray to all the deities ever recorded that Microsoft not screw this up.

------
nimbius
the evolution of this acquisition over the past two days has been interesting.
Its even more interesting in the context of say, gitlab importer state metrics
in grafana..beware, the importer metric is under heavy load and sometimes
doesnt

respond. [https://monitor.gitlab.net/dashboard/db/github-
importer](https://monitor.gitlab.net/dashboard/db/github-importer)

Reports of migrations to other sites are real, and Microsoft sees a risk thats
legitimate enough to issue a presser. Its going to be hard to head off a
github exodus at the pass because git itself is open source and there are
numerous alternatives that can quickly and easily (some with no more than the
click of a button) spirit the github userbase --which is what Microsoft
arguably wants in order to legitimize its cloud/open source push-- away from
them.

[https://sourceforge.net/](https://sourceforge.net/) even released a special
tool to migrate you away from github. Certainly some of the more business
minded users will argue this acquisition from Microsoft is a "good move" but
the fact that this is the second presser microsoft has thrown out regarding
the nature of its merger in less than 5 hours reflects a pretty sincere push
from redmond. Microsofts historic legacy of fear, uncertainty, doubt, and
outright hostile action to crush open source and startups in general is a
pretty insurmountable.

------
marenkay
I'm wondering what this will mean for Atom and VS Code. Wondering if MS will
continue supporting that, considering that VS Code seems to be a more pleasant
experience at this point.

------
stefs
i'm torn about this. on the one hand, microsoft is profit oriented, but so was
github. and github was under certain pressure to make a profit, which is
optional under microsoft, as they have other revenue streams which can be used
to cross-finance a small, money hemorrhaging github.

but why would microsoft buy a money-losing company? either they think they can
turn it around \- maybe because they can use their own, cheaper hosting
infrastructure -, or because it's a ploy to reconcile a mostly microsoft-wary
developer community with their new "not so evil as before" image (we all
remember the microsoft under gates and ballmer and the damage it did).

the question that remains is: can we trust them to continue to run github as
we know (and love?) it? it's not like the company hasn't improved tremendously
in the last years, but the windows 10 update and privacy debacle has shown
they're not above suspicion.

for me personally, i'll probably continue to use github, as i use it only for
non-critical hobby projects anyway.

for important work i'd rely on a self hosting gitlab/gogs/gitea instance. i
know it's not the same, as the barrier-to-entry for potential contributors is
higher and the added sysop work is a pita for most people. but that's the
price to pay for a healthy, robust open source community.

------
beezle
Perhaps I missed in the other comments, but is anyone else here shocked by the
price tag? That is an outstanding amount of money to pay for Github, certainly
a very large premium.

------
garyclarke27
Wow $7.5 Billion, a nice juicy sum for a company that has influence yes, but
very limited profit potential, considering that developers (despite earning
well) seem to be v reluctant to part with their cash - juding by anecdotal
evidence of numerous comments here, expecting everything to be free and
moaning about piddling costs such as Sublime Text licence. Wonder how Linus
Torvalds feel? The sellors should send him a small percentage in gratitude for
making them billionaires.

~~~
oaiey
This is not only for extend their profits but also to protect. Imagine what it
meant to Microsoft if another of the big five would have acquired it. Just
think of Amazon and a deploy to AWS button.

------
guylepage3
Ugh.. I feel like I've been punched in the gut.. First Sunrise. Now GitHub. I
give MS 6 months to mess GitHub up or discontinue service.

Time to really look into GitLab.

~~~
srean
Bitbucket is fine too.

------
amq
A really powerful move now would be to open-source GitHub.

~~~
cjbillington
Now _that_ would be how to to show people you mean it. By making themselves
liable to being forked, they would be convincingly committing to doing a
better job than anyone else as judged by the community.

------
partiallypro
I don't understand why everyone is so against this, this means Github is going
to become more useful and tools will be extended. Microsoft knows developers
better than many of the other companies. Perhaps it would have made more sense
to be a joint venture company between Google/Microsoft/Apple/Linux Foundation?
I don't know? I think this is the second best alternative to that.

------
endymi0n
Guess that's the very definition of finally reaching their stated goal:

Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers,
Developers, Developers.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33grif58qO8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=33grif58qO8)

~~~
bovermyer
Keeping in mind, of course, that Ballmer's Microsoft is very, very different
from Nadella's Microsoft...

~~~
sametmax
Keeping in mind, of course, that it's an opinion, and not a fact. I happen to
have the opposite opinion, although I documented it a lot more:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17225290](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17225290)

History does not help with trusting them.

So let's wait and see.

But I talked about MS PR team before, and I can already see it at work
everywhere. Here, the first HN links were not warmly welcomed, so we had
another one published, then another one published, until one with a positive
top comment for them is here.

Also plenty of comments to defend them by using vague positive things like
"they did good things recently" or "they like open source".

If you go on reddit you'll see the same is happening.

The good thing is that it means now they care a lot about what we think of
them. They didn't before. So at least, if they haven't changed, they are
forced to act like they have.

~~~
ethbro
MS PR astroturfing HN is one potential cause.

Another possibility is that HN members are responding favorably to MS's recent
moves.

Be careful not to dismiss anything that runs counter to your own narrative as
fake. Like you said, we'll see!

~~~
sametmax
I had this debate for the last 10 years, and everytime there are persons to
say "maybe this time they changed", and everytime use something like "Be
careful not to dismiss anything that runs counter to your own narrative as
fake".

The problem with a PR machine is that it never get tired of repeating the same
story, while we do. And people eventually listen to the PR machine anyway.
That's why it works. Not because it's clever, but because of human nature.

It works with politician, CEO, singers...

But yeah, we'll see.

~~~
ethbro
I've been watching MS for the last 23 years. So I'm not oblivious to history.
;)

And granted that's how PR works, but the problem with carrying distrust to
defend against it is that is eventually makes one paranoid.

Personally, I aspire to objective reevaluation at the current point in time.

In 2018?

Microsoft historically did _terrible_ things to open source, Balmer was an
asshole about casting it as us vs them, and they still have substantial legacy
OS and Office revenue streams to protect.

At the same time, their cloud business is rapidly growing, they've realized
the only way to compete there is to embrace open source, and that's beginning
to permeate the rest of the company. Largely via promoting someone from the
dev / server / cloud business as CEO.

------
andjd
I realize that Atom is fully open source, but I'm a little concerned that this
puts VSCode and Atom under the same roof. I feel that those platforms are
where the innovation in text editors has been recently, and can't imagine that
MS will fund two products that compete directly with each other and that
without that direct competition, they won't work on improving either.

------
CodeSheikh
Besides GitLab, is it also worth looking into Bitbucket free tier? I am just
curious where the trend will go as far as porting of projects goes? I am
guessing a lot of BIG NAME devs are going to jump the ship.

One thing Microsoft failed to comprehend is that if you want to be all buddy-
buddy with open-source community then don't go out and buy the condo they are
renting in and lay out new rules.

------
aries1980
fyi Microsoft Corporation (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella On GitHub Acquisition Call
(Transcript): [https://seekingalpha.com/article/4179368-microsoft-
corporati...](https://seekingalpha.com/article/4179368-microsoft-corporation-
msft-ceo-satya-nadella-github-acquisition-call-transcript?part=single)

------
angrygoat
The acquisition is for $7.5 billion[0]; dividing by the 28 million active
developers on GitHub, that's ~ $270 per developer.

[0] [https://news.microsoft.com/2018/06/04/microsoft-to-
acquire-g...](https://news.microsoft.com/2018/06/04/microsoft-to-acquire-
github-for-7-5-billion/)

------
steveeq1
People seem to be making a big deal about this. What is the controversy
surrounding microsoft acquiring github? I mean, it's one big, evil corporation
taking over another, so what's the difference?

Not trying to troll, I just don't know the negatives from this. I have a
github account and want to know if there's a valid reason to move it.

------
gbil
As an engineer I'm a bit puzzled that github was valuated 3 times less than
linkedin.

Yet I haven't done any real analysis, neither I know if business data of X
individuals is valued more than hosting Y projects, probably from an ad + data
gathering perspective it makes some sense but still I'd love to hear a more in
depth analysis on this

------
slics
The beauty in all of this is that you still have the power to continue make
use of github, or you can chose another provider if Microsoft doesn’t meet all
of your needs. In contrary, as a business decision this was a good move for
Microsoft. Now they can invest in integrating Azure and people can deploy
directly to Azure.

------
gringoDan
Is there room in this space for a de-centralized, blockchain-based solution?
Seems like that is an ideal implementation of the technology.

I ran across OS Coin [1] on Twitter but couldn't find any additional info
beyond what's on the website.

[1] [http://oscoin.io/](http://oscoin.io/)

------
thelastidiot
Today, I decided to move to GitLab. Thank god there is an alternative. I won't
give one penny to Microsoft since I remember all the deceptive methods they
used to retain their market shares. Their CEO was in the company when all of
that happens so don't come and tell me that things have changed.

------
leecarraher
I will be curious to see what competitors of Microsoft, who host projects on
github (google,facebook, etc) do. Where previously Github was an unbiased host
for open source projects, now being under the umbrella of MS, other entities
might see it as clashing with their corporate policies.

------
ilarum
US$ 7.5 bn, all stock.

~~~
pavlov
Microsoft’s market cap is around $774 billion, so this is less than 1%
dilution. Seems like a great outcome for MSFT investors.

------
credo
In all these years, GitHub didn't make a single penny as profit

Like most "successful" startup companies over the past decade, only way (for
investors) to make money was to make the company a "product" that would be
sold to the highest bidder

Why is anyone surprised that GitHub would be sold ?

------
mehrdadn
I guess this is why they just shut down CodePlex?

[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/03/31/shutting-...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/bharry/2017/03/31/shutting-
down-codeplex/)

------
the_duke
Unrelated to all the other aspects, 4 times markup over the last valuation is
quite an impressive markup for a loss making company.

Of course the brad name, mind share and userbase are worth a lot, but that
much? I reckon they must have also talked to some competing bidders, like
Google.

------
janemanos
Well, not that easy for a larger project to switch to another platform. I work
for ArangoDB and as silly as it sounds but leaving the street and investor
cred of our Github Stars behind is not really an option, kind of a lock-in is
also there on Github

------
walrus01
Microsoft wants monthly recurring revenue from services. They could care less
in the year 2018 if you run Windows Server or Debian or CentOS or RHEL on an
Azure VM, if you're paying $250 a month for it, they're happy either way.

------
yetanothervoice
With Microsoft's proven record of "obeying the law" by suppressing free speech
in China, what does the future hold for dissident sites hosted on Github that
resulted in the world’s largest DDoS attacks?

------
ausjke
Microsoft the cash cow, please milk in your own yard and stop messing up with
FOSS land, you have been evil, and that's hard to change, just leave FOSS
alone.

You lost the OS war, from cloud to the phone, just get over with it.

------
avs733
I wonder how intentional releasing this the hours before the WWDC Keynote was.

------
BigChiefSmokem
I think more strategically, this is Microsoft's way of combating Atlassian,
Slack, JetBrains, and the rest of the developer-first companies.

In MS shops no one really wants to use TFS, so most turn to Gitlab and
Bitbucket.

------
matthberg
Here's github's blog post on the subject:

[https://blog.github.com/2018-06-04-github-
microsoft/](https://blog.github.com/2018-06-04-github-microsoft/)

------
pier25
If Nat is at the helm this may end up turning all right.

Anyway, I'm moving my personal repos to Gitlab and strongly considering moving
my team's repos too. Specially considering that our bill will drop to $0.

------
um_ya
If Microsoft wants to make Github better, it needs to improve the search
functionality and maybe add a "related libraries" section when you're looking
at a particular library.

------
fiatjaf
That's odd. If you think GitHub was trustworthy before and it isn't anymore
now, you've been proven wrong, because your dear GitHub has just sold you to
Microsoft.

------
merinowool
So Microsoft will gain access to thousands of private projects and will be
able to use this knowledge in its own products. For so much knowledge acquired
they got it for cheap...

------
bagol
No ... I can't believe something like this is happening ...

------
dz0ny
GitHub signature box III
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbBhH_spfBo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbBhH_spfBo)

------
forgottenpass
I look at SoureForge's fall, and of all the possible futures for GitHub, is
this really that bad? GitHub has been on a track to sell and/or monetize more
aggressively for years. Of everyone that could afford GitHub, Microsoft has
the money on hand to spend a bit of time figuring out a sustainable business
model that doesn't run everyone off, and has doubled down on buying developer
good will in the recent years.

My more personal take is: if you hate Microsoft's track record, you should
have every other big software company at least as much. Were there really
better realistic possibilities for GitHub?

------
fiblye
I'm actually kind of surprised that HN permits clear marketing babble
headlines like this, vs a more objective "Microsoft acquires Github" headline.

~~~
ocdtrekkie
HN prefers the original headline according to the guidelines, unless it's
extremely poor/clickbaity. There's also been about sixty or seventy threads
submitted with "Microsoft is acquiring GitHub" in the past day, so leaving it
as the original makes it clear this is the official announcement post.

------
timvisee
Will be moving everything over to some different server this evening. So damn
happy that that's easily possible with the decentralized approach within Git.

------
amarraja
I for one am quite happy about this. Github innovation seems to have stalled,
now with Nat/Scott Gu at the helm there could be exciting times to come.

------
balozi
$7.5 Billion is a lot of money for GitHub. Just saying...

~~~
amysox
That's an awful lot of inflation for thirty pieces of silver.

------
stevetodd
Interesting, timed for the first day of Apple’s WWDC.

------
djhworld
Wonder what this will mean for other organisations and their open source
projects?

For example, Google has quite a few (e.g. golang, kubernetes etc)

~~~
sabujp
those are open source

------
iliaznk
Maybe I don't know something, but what I see is liking VSCode while hating
Microsoft and it looks somehow funny to me.

------
teachrdan
Can anyone who works at Github give us their perspective on the acquisition?
What do Github employees think about this?

------
hhsshhss
Why did Microsoft cross the road?

To Git to the other side.

------
gk1
Microsoft is being very careful to not scare developers off, even with their
choice of outfits for the photos.

------
rurban
Now we have an idea what will change: We'll get a dark blue instead of the old
github black. I dig that.

------
rishabhd
I hope it will be embrace, extend and empower instead of the usual embrace,
extend and extinguish.

------
KwanEsq
If they could expand Github to support Mercurial as well perhaps they could
bring some real value.

------
neelkadia
Octocat is sad. Look at the picture!

------
ksec
Related Notes:

Speakerdeak, originally part of Github is now under fewerandfaster.com

Gaug.es - Turns out Github sold it long ago.

------
AngeloAnolin
Can't wait for the update on TFS where it will now say:

Microsoft Team Foundation Server powered by Github

=)

------
angel_j
I wonder how equity holding employees made out. It appears MS paid 7.5B USD.

------
brian_herman
I made this script that deletes the private github repos from your github.
[https://gist.github.com/brianherman/11036e2466d4c5843b87acdb...](https://gist.github.com/brianherman/11036e2466d4c5843b87acdbcc1ca735)

------
solatic
TL-DR: Push GutHub Enterprise sales through existing Microsoft sales channels,
and push Azure and related products to GitHub users.

The first doesn't matter to me. The second makes me think everything from "Add
a .azure.ci.cfg file to your GitHub project to trigger builds, only
$X/metric!" (not so bad) to "Advanced issue management available through MS
Project 365 integration, please ask your project admin to subscribe to Office
365 to unlock!" (please, no...)

A large part of GitHub's appeal to the open source community was that all
features were available for free to open source projects. If Microsoft wanted
to make more features available for free to open-source projects, then Visual
Studio Team Services would be a much, much different product, and Microsoft
wouldn't need to acquire a platform that directly competes with their current
product line.

------
hsnewman
It seems that lately Microsoft has been making decisions that are in line with
computer science. Hope that continues, since their monopoly sets the direction
of the desktop and servers, perhaps we will move toward a more secure
environment.

------
hoborama
"You don't always geeeet what you wa-ant..."

------
vinayms
Its ironic that the three men in the first picture are as uncomfortable and
edgy as the developers are.

Can someone explain why this merger is bad, beyond the usual refrain
"Microsoft is evil"? I mean, I rally want to understand what the fuss is all
about. It isn't like all our repositories are locked in some proprietary
GitHub format and now we are at the mercy of MS. As is happening, people can
always migrate elsewhere, and there is always going to be an elsewhere.

Are people upset that they have to take the pains to migrate due to
Microsoft's involvement? In that case, it begs the question why is it bad at
all. Currently, with my trouble understanding this, it seems like a knee jerk
reaction, like disgruntled Americans talking about migrating to Canada post
Trump.

------
waydowntogo
Open source was / is Microsoft's opposite side - same like Linux is
Microsoft's opposite side.

No matter how hard Microsoft will try to be part of open source it never will
be.

Btw You can't have your cake and eat it.

------
commandlinefan
Empowering developers to move to gitlab, apparently.

------
olfactory
I've always maintained that Open Source is less an ideological movement
opposed to capitalism than it is a different sort of contract for capitalist
interactions.

Of course, it was inevitable that in order to survive Microsoft would adapt
its business to utilize the kinds of interactions fostered by open source.

Acquiring Github represents the first attempt by Microsoft to own some of the
_culture_ of open source.

Microsoft is still very far behind in several key ways that the Github
acquisition won't fix. But the acquisition signals a willingness to move in
that direction. Some of these are:

\- The "Microsoft account" is a hugely complicated mess, far more complex and
unwieldy than a google account. This is a serious miss and it's not rocket
science. Look at the places where users are having to reset passwords all the
time, getting failed logins, incomplete profiles, etc. Those are _major_ warts
that should not exist.

\- Microsoft should push hard for adoption of PowerShell on unix/linux, and if
it fails at that task it should adopt bash as the main shell for Windows,
sunsetting cmd.exe and PowerShell.

\- Microsoft should figure out a way to provide integrated X Server (and next
generation variants of X) support in Windows. There is a big opportunity to
one-up OSX by doing this in an open way.

\- Microsoft should offer all of the "pro" and "enterprise" features of Visual
Studio free to all developers and should provide high quality command line
based tooling to allow for seamless integration with other open source
development tools.

\- Microsoft should simplify and fix code signing and make available (for
free) all tools and utilities and infrastructure for trusted software
distribution across multiple platforms.

\- Microsoft should make firm committments with respect to any APIs or Azure
services in terms of life cycle, EOL committments, etc. This would be a big
differentiator with Google.

\- Microsoft should fully open source some of its products that are duds, such
as outlook for ios, and let the community make them awesome.

------
loafoe
What would your reaction be if:

1) Google bought them 2) Facebook bought them

Go!

------
consultSKI
ask netscape devs, or Java devs, or Nokia devs.

guess the headline,

"MSFT: Destroying Standards Every Way Possible"

is just not quite as sexy.

------
Yuioup
$7.5 billion? Is that right?

------
digitalsin
Embrace. Extend. Extinguish.

------
braxxox
> Microsoft is all-in on open source

Right. That's why Windoze is and always has been an open source project...

------
lameiam
Sorry, Nokia killed Nokia.

------
alpos
/me moves to gitlab

------
Argentum01
Boooo

------
dqoo
rip open source

------
cup-of-tea
> And Microsoft is all-in on open source.

No you're not, you liars. Until the day that Windows and Office and all that
is open source you can't say anything of the sort.

------
greatamerican
GitHub itself has not been a well-run company. Maybe this will help them
release features they've lacked for a long time.

------
whataretensors
Microsoft waits on the sidelines til winners emerge then just buy the winners.
Similar to what government is doing except earlier.

I guess it works. I don't want to support that though. Time to find a new git
host.

------
titanix2
"Cloud _blablabla_ committed _blablabla_ responsability _blablabla_ developers
_blablabla_ empower _blablabla_ open-source"

Clearly written by HMM: Human Markov Model.

~~~
naiyt
> The era of the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge is upon us.

I still have no idea what "intelligent edge" is supposed to mean.

~~~
bloopernova
Are we the intelligent edge?

~~~
mar77i
No. We're the bleeding edge. Suffering from illnesses such as propaganda-
resistance and DIY attitude.

Let's move our open soresx elsewhere to bleed.

------
Zelmor
I, for one, have cancelled my subscription and moved all private repositories
off GitHub.

------
mtgx
They paid $7.5 billion? Wow. Microsoft has a knack for overpaying for
companies (and then putting them into the ground), doesn't it?

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Given the earlier statements that they "balked" at $5 billion, I'm guessing
they wish they'd bought in earlier. I had figured with their CEO troubles,
Microsoft might've negotiated a lower price.

------
mkirklions
Yes, I think people should expect to move.

Microsoft cannot be trusted.

They make fine products, but they are definitely looking to make money from
this acquisition.

EDIT: This is to say that Github was not looking to squeeze their users. I
have been squeezed by microsoft.

~~~
hannasanarion
Economics is not a zero-sum game. Just because the company is making money
doesn't mean that you are losing something.

Github has been underwater for years, would you rather it be propped up by a
big corporate sponsor that can subsidize its losses, or run out of money and
die?

I expect to move, because I also do not trust microsoft, but I am not moving
yet until I see what they do with it.

~~~
mkirklions
>Economics is not a zero-sum game.

This is not what I'm implying.

>I am not moving yet until I see what they do with it.

If you are too late, you might not get your projects off without paying fees.

~~~
alpos
>If you are too late, you might not get your projects off without paying fees.
This thinking belies a misunderstanding of how Git works. There is no way they
can prevent a person from pushing to another repo and recreating whatever
workflow they had on Github.

~~~
undseg
Remember that github is not just git hosting. While I cannot envision a future
in which they'd actively prevent you from export/crawl out your own data,
migrating your workflow is not as easy as changing your remote.

------
chrisper
Empower, extend, extinguish? Or was it different?

~~~
atonse
I’m so tired of this trope. It’s like nothing Microsoft does is ever enough
for people to realize that there is enough new leadership that isn’t doing
this nonsense.

Is there any evidence in the Nadella years of MS doing this in the way they
used to do this in the 90s?

~~~
jacquesm
Nadella has worked at MS long enough to have been there when the company was
all-in on SCO vs Linux.

He's been there since _1992_. That means that if he was so ethically
challenged that he could sit through that without piping up that I have very
little hope that there is a real and sincere change happening. Most of what I
see is just very clever PR whilst under the hood not much has changed.

They just got a lot smarter about keeping their nastiness out of the public
light. The reason why the 'trope' gets trotted out is because this could very
well be the part where Microsoft finally gets to 'embrace' the open source
world where they can hurt it for real. Keep in mind that _nothing_ comes close
to threatening Microsoft at its core business as open source software does.

~~~
atonse
This comes down to your definition of “core business”

Open source (LibreOffice) has never seriously threatened office for
professionals so much as maybe google docs, and even then not so much. And
they’ve made great moves towards subscriptions so that’s going strong.

Windows isn’t threatened so much by open source unless you talk about either
Apple or chromebooks. Again, less about open source and more about the web.

They’ve already lost developer mindshare to open source culture. So they
responded apppropriately by open sourcing their entire .NET platform, and
actually using a useful license like Apache, not some murky custom commercial
nonsense.

How do you suppose they’re going to start hurting the open source world? I’m
all ears, especially given they’d have to sue companies like FB and Google.

Just because Nadella was there, it doesn’t mean he ran that operation that
sued SCO. Otherwise that would’ve come out.

Plus with personalities like Bill Gates, they would clearly override any
dissent.

------
goncalomb
Today is a good day.

------
oblong
Steve Ballmer is jumping up and down screaming "developers!" somewhere right
now.

------
chinathrow
Phew. As a non-Microsoft user for like 15 years, I'm really happy we setup my
company to host our git repos on Bitbucket from the start.

------
unictek
Gitlab is not comparable to Github at all. Gitlab is just about hosting git
projects that's all. It's not community driven at all.

~~~
azurelogic
You're right on the first point. They aren't comparable. GitLab is a community
driven, open core product that is far more powerful than GitHub. GitLab has an
extremely robust CI system built in. In addition, you can even use them to
create private Docker registries, which I find useful for creating my own
private CI images. Plus, they have a better security model (5 tiers),
wildcards for branch protection, and tag protection. I'm sure there's other
places that they differ, but before you disparage a company, please be
informed about who they are and how great their product actually is.

~~~
dj-wonk
Why do people say "X and Y aren't comparable" and then proceed to compare
them? :)

I'm not (only) trying to be pedantic here -- I'm just pointing out the loaded
language. In both business models and product recommendations, people use the
word "comparable" to justify their conclusions, rather than to explain their
comparisons themselves.

It is all about framing a decision for a particular use case at a particular
price point.

I guess you could say I'm the kind of person that can't help but notice that
modern communication seems to be fraught with this pattern: let's state our
conclusions without much justification and then choose our language minimize
the "rationality" of alternatives. I think we can do better, as a community.

~~~
kbenson
Part of it is due to an alternate definition of comparable, which is "of
equivalent quality; worthy of comparison", as opposed to "able to be likened
to another; similar". It's being used as shorthand for "they aren't
equivalent", and then they go to justify that assessment.

I get your point though. The form and structure of the language used,
consciously of subconsciously, often conveys quite a bit more information than
the words themselves impart. Sometimes this is meant to communicate or
subconsciously sway the reader, sometimes it's leakage of the writer's mental
state.

~~~
azurelogic
Exactly. With this definition, the phrase "compare and contrast" makes much
more sense. The point here was to leap frog the fact that GitHub and GitLab
have very comparable feature sets, and instead highlight the things that
GitLab has that GitHub is totally missing.

------
peter_retief
#2 in Hackernews "GitLab sees huge spike in project imports" I see no reason
to trust Microsoft, all they are really doing is trying to buy out any
opposition as is what they have always done. Microsoft rips off developers and
pays bloggers to say nice stuff about them. No thanks, not now not ever

~~~
peter_retief
Having looked at it, it seems good, I have an old reaction to Microsoft which
is a bit silly

