
Microsoft Buys GitHub: The Linux Foundation's Reaction - deadcoder0904
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/microsoft-buys-github-the-linux-foundations-reaction/
======
netsharc
Open-source developers: "Microsoft should embrace open source, it's the one
true way!"

Microsoft: _embraces open source_

Open-source developers: "They're trying to control us! They're trying to
control us!".

~~~
mikece
This is a reaction that is both funny and frustrating. While there is
enlightened self-interest for Microsoft to buy GitHub (they rely on GitHub for
a lot of their open source work as well as their documentation websites)
buying GitHub and saying "We're going to let it operate independently as
before while we fund the project knowing it will never turn a profit -- that's
how important Open Source is to us, we're willing to lose money every quarter
to ensure GitHub will never implode for want of money" _STILL_ brings
distrust.

And yet, the hue and cry is "Unless you open source every byte of GitHub's
code and infrastructure you're just evil monopolists trying to smother us!"
Given all that Microsoft has done to embrace and support open source I think
the onus is now on the Open Source community to justify their distrust of
Microsoft because "Duh, it's Microsoft" simply doesn't fly as a legitimate
argument anymore.

~~~
zimablue
Microsoft is the heart of corporate America, it's a facepalm to imagine that
any dollar they spend isn't in their own long term interest to make money. It
would be illegal for them not to. You can apply that to any large corporation
but the problem is by definition how Microsoft makes money.

How does Microsoft make money? They make money by renting from a platform
which is monopolistic and enforced. What do they do to maintain this? They
deliberately force people onto their platform by abusing their market
position, and try to crush any opposition by any possible tactic, including
dubious legal cases designed just to bankrupt their opposition. What else do
they do? EEE, and also just blatant unnecessary reinvention /ripping off and
lock-in when they get the chance.

They didn't abandon some of the visible tactics and start paying open source
because they had a moral revelation, it's a company with the same business
model it's not possible. Those tactics were just inneffective and co-opting,
more subtle EEE has to be the game plan.

Why does that make me angrier than equally evil Facebook/Apple? Well if I was
a farmer driving around one of those trucks with source code preventing me
from fixing it I'd be pretty personally furious. But I'm not, I'm a developer
and those guys are the ones trying to make everyone drive the coding
equivalent. But it's worse, because coding isn't just my livelihood, it's a
lot of how I think and express my thoughts. They're not messing with my job
they're trying to restrict the way I think, so their shareholders can make a
buck.

"Microsoft is running Github for charity" have a word with yourself.

~~~
jhall1468
> Microsoft is the heart of corporate America, it's a facepalm to imagine that
> any dollar they spend isn't in their own long term interest to make money.
> It would be illegal for them not to. You can apply that to any large
> corporation but the problem is by definition how Microsoft makes money.

Feel free to show me which part of the criminal code "not making money" falls
under. You want to rant about EEE (irrelevant for decades now) or some other
silly plan to undermine open source development, feel free. But expect to be
called out for your pointless drivel at the same time.

I'm fine with being cautious about Microsoft. I think at this point it's no
longer necessary, but sure I can understand that. But the EEE plot-line is a
20 year old joke. It's not funny anymore.

~~~
mimimi31
>Feel free to show me which part of the criminal code "not making money" falls
under.

I don't really know anything about US laws, but I think they do have to act in
the interest of their shareholders, i.e. make them more money.

~~~
jhall1468
Right but profit can be both long-term and short-term and often one requires
sacrificing the other, which is why calling it "illegal" was completely
incorrect.

------
monoid
Well, Microsoft is a Platinum Member of the Linux Foundation.

It would be really weird to see anything but a positive reaction from a
consortium which receives a substantial amount of money from Microsoft.

~~~
erikb
That is a very interesting point actually. That Microsoft is a sponsor of the
Linux foundation is not just a plus point in this discussion, but also a
motivator for the Foundation to report positively.

~~~
craftyguy
The Linux Foundation is a joke. Hell, even Oracle is a 'platinum member', and
there's no company on earth as aggressively hostile towards FLOSS than Oracle.

~~~
kabacha
I'm really surprised this thread is so heavily upvoted here and on reddit.

The Linux Foundation is literally a lobbying agency for major coporations, why
does it matter what's their opinion?

I mean The Linux Foundation president doesn't even use linux on his machine
lol [1]. This should say everything you need to know about the foundation
really.

[1] - [https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/09/17/2017204/linux-
foun...](https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/09/17/2017204/linux-foundation-
president-used-macos-for-presentation-at-open-source-summit)

------
erikb
I like his good vibe about all of it, and I agree I love to see that MS is
doing more moves into the right direction. However I feel we should not trust
him too quickly. Every big company tries to claim they have changed, will
change and are currently in a process of change. But in reality most companies
stay stuck at exactly that point in time where they were most successful. that
means Microsoft is likely stuck ~10 years go, where Windows XP was at its
peak.

It's not just a CEO who can change that. It needs all kinds of changes on all
kinds of levels. For instance if department leader's KPIs and bonus structure
hasn't changed, they will continue to actively fight open source. Even if
there is now a new, fancy department with even big names from open source
communities, that doesn't mean all the other departments changed.

Also what happens to the devs who are there for 20+ years now, probably quite
a few of them in senior dev and architect roles. Will they drop all that
they've grown up with? Can Microsoft afford to let them go for big money and
hire new, unknown people instead?

If they manage to get this github integration right, I may start to think
about them in a positive fashion but until now there's too much doubt and too
many things that might go wrong. Compared to the size of a huge corp we've
only seen fluff up till now.

~~~
Teckla
_Every big company tries to claim they have changed, will change and are
currently in a process of change._

This is insightful, and in addition to this, culture change can and does
happen at companies.

Just because they're evil today, doesn't mean they'll be evil tomorrow.

Similarly, just because they're good today, doesn't mean they'll be good
tomorrow.

We should always look with suspicion at megacorps _acting_ with what appears
to be outrageous altruism. Companies don't throw around $7.5 billion without
expecting to profit from it.

------
kragniz
Not disclosed in this post: Microsoft is a platinum sponsor of the Linux
Foundation, which has a price tag of at least $500k per year.

~~~
geggam
Is that not tax deductible ?

They get a write off and your support as well as the marketing bits.

~~~
stealthmodeclan
How much is the write off on such donations? Surely can't be 100%.

------
Insanity
Can't really write something on the Linux foundation that'd annoy a platinum
partner though, can you? :)

Though I'm in the middle on this, I'll see what microsoft does with github.
The company has shown a different approach to the 'old microsoft' but it's
still a company with the aim of making a profit. Github was losing money IIRC
and MSFT has a lot of data on people as it is. Github might be a good way to
target devs for advertisements :)

~~~
fred_is_fred
Github's aim was also making money.

~~~
jjuel
Yeah Github wasn't a non-profit. It was a company that wanted to make money.
They weren't giving everything they offered away for free. In fact the main
reason I used Gitlab was for free private repositories. But no use arguing I
guess since people will never change their mind no matter what Microsoft does.

~~~
fred_is_fred
Free private teams were the reason I first used gitlab also, but I found that
I liked their CI system too.

------
mikece
I wonder how many companies have considered selecting GitHub as the place for
their source code, wikis, process, issue tracking, etc but hesitated or went
with another vendor simply because the financial future of GitHub was an open
question. Now, with Microsoft making that question a moot point, I think a lot
of companies will now make the move to GitHub knowing it will not go away.

Ironically... having Microsoft behind GitHub and being willing to lose money
on the company forever could actually be the reasons it has a hope to turn a
profit some day.

------
mistrial9
this has a huge spin/politics feel to it, when you get to "it used to be easy
to make fun of Microsoft, but.. I have grown up"

I call BS -- it was very grown-up of Microsoft to abuse repeatedly their
clients and partners, and it is just and right to call them out on it.. that
one statement is obsequious whiteash, plain and simple.

~~~
Teckla
This is insightful.

The author implies that if you have a healthy skepticism when megacorps throw
around billions of dollars, you're not "grown up."

------
sytse
From the OP: "Whether it’s an established company or startup that’s gained
mass appeal like GitHub, GitLab or Stack Overflow"

Thanks for the recognition for GitLab! We hope that for many people that
switched
[https://twitter.com/develosysadmine/status/10050613234058731...](https://twitter.com/develosysadmine/status/1005061323405873152)
was the case: "For me, I already knew GitLab was better than GitHub in a
variety of ways. Microsoft just gave me the slightest nudge to actually make
the switch."

------
DannyB2
I seem to recall earlier, in 2016 I think, that Microsoft already acquired The
Linux Foundation.

Acquired might be replaced with other euphemisms like "joined" or "became a
member of".

------
ablutop
Something is missing from this reaction: AI. MS is buying a privileged access
to billions lines of code with their history and corrections. In 5-10Y times
most code will be produced by AI and the simplest way to train a AI system is
to to have access to data. That's what they bought, data. Unfortunately this
is another step towards more concentration in IT...

------
jeandejean
It's not for sure but highly likely that Microsoft will do some things that
are not desirable. From now on, should you believe trending repos are not
filtered by Microsoft? Don't you think they might put some advertisement for
their own projects / products? What will they do with the massive amount of
data they have now access to, including private repositories?

Those saying there is no reason to worry are just hoping for big amount of
luck. Yeah I hope so too, but let's face it, it's very unlikely they're not
gonna do anything undesirable and only improve the platform.

------
shmerl
_> Most of the important projects on GitHub are licensed under an open source
license, which addresses intellectual property ownership._

This can be tricky in a legally messed up environment. In US, courts sided
with Oracle about copyrightability of APIs. And guess who supported Oracle in
that dispute? Microsoft. So how should open source projects feel about it,
especially when they let's say implement MS own APIs?

------
damm
I think what I don't appreciate is how many people are trying to calm peoples
fears about the acquisition.

Feels like a parent chiding a kid

I guess Github was in worse shape than they looked like on the outside.
Happens; the fact that the 3 founders made a fortune off of this is
unfortunate.

One of those founders stepped down and yet he still won.

It's just a game; wether you play blackjack or poker or big stakes with
companies.

------
kyleperik
I wonder what would have happened to Microsoft's Diamond level sponsorship for
the Linux Foundation if they said something different.

------
tvirelli
Just don't make me use a damn Microsoft live account to login!

~~~
Voloskaya
Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub clearly stated that this wouldn't happen
because GitHub's identity management is far superior to MS one.

However the opposite might very well happen: Use your GitHub account to sign
into MS other services.

~~~
petilon
Far superior in what way?

~~~
Voloskaya
Users actually like it for a start :)

You don't have to go through 3 redirections to login, handling of 3rd party
apps authorization is well thought out, and GitHub is already used an auth
provider for many dev servcies, Microsoft accounts are not.

------
davelnewton
Ah, a voice of reason.

I'm no MS lover; I've been off their products both at home and work for over
15+ years, at home since basically forever except for some apps that only ran
on Windows.

The MS of now is a far difference MS a decade ago, even five years ago. Things
change--sometimes people don't.

~~~
some_account
They are wrong and this is absolutely not good for open source. Voice of
reason? More like voice of ignorance.

~~~
davelnewton
IMO calling a wide swath of people "ignorant" with zero content is just noise
that does nothing to elevate the conversation. Most of us moved past name-
calling in grade school.

------
nickpsecurity
" I will own responsibility for some of that as I spent a good part of my
career at the Linux Foundation poking fun at Microsoft (which, at times, prior
management made way too easy). But times have changed and it’s time to
recognize that we have all grown up – the industry, the open source community,
even me."

What is this guy talking about? Maybe he's changed but Microsoft hasn't:
they're still a company doing evil things on a large scale that simply sees
more value (for them) increased FOSS support. I'll especially highlight the
patent suits with them pulling billions of dollars from Android vendors
despite them not contributing anything to Android. They were working on
displacing it with Windows Phone. Yet, they use legal threats to pull hundreds
of millions a year for their "inventions" on paper from those actually
building things we want to buy.

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft-
android-patent-income/#74d9f7195c6c)

Both stevelord and I had a few more examples at the link below where we last
discussed it:

[https://lobste.rs/s/zknzmj/microsoft_acquire_github_for_7_5_...](https://lobste.rs/s/zknzmj/microsoft_acquire_github_for_7_5_billion#c_yskzgz)

EDIT: In case anyone wonders, I was hoping a company like Red Hat acquired
them. One that is a bit less evil with more incentive to keep high investments
in FOSS. Given the numbers involved, one can't hope for much more.

------
OptionX
People relax. If M$ really does go Weyland-Yutani on us with GitHub we'll just
move to another git hosting service and they'll be out 7.5B. Unfortunately for
them as a company they need costumers to exist, and we are those costumers,
so, we just have to keep an eye out for shady stuff and act on them. Like
always.

------
linuxftw
Microsoft is on the board of the Linux Foundation and a Platinum sponsor.
Nothing the Linux Foundation says about Microsoft can be truly objective.

I find this article distasteful and lacking integrity.

------
syshum
Ahh yes, Jim Zemlin the man that famously Attends Linux conference using a
apple mac Computer and not Linux.... (am sure that will soon be replaced with
the Surface running Windows 10 with the "Linux Subsystem" ...)

The Linux Foundation... the Business Organization that rejected the
individuals of the community and focus solely on its corporate sponsors one of
the largest being Microsoft

It is not shocking that the Linux Foundation supports their Corporate Master
Microsoft in their acquisition of Github.. To do otherwise would cost them
many many thousands of dollars

------
_RPM
Question: Who works on Windows NT / low level hardware / kernel at Microsoft?
Is this something they still hire for?

~~~
xamarinthrw
Talk to the wsl team on guthub, they are part of the larger kernel team

------
walterbell
(previously asked and unanswered)

If you want to develop software for Microsoft’s Linux distro/kernel (Azure
Sphere for IoT), it appears you must use Windows 10 + Visual Studio,
[https://seeedstudio.com/productDetail/3052](https://seeedstudio.com/productDetail/3052)
& [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/developing-an-
azure-s...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/developing-an-azure-sphere-
experience-with-visual-studio/)

 _> 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)._

Can someone clarify if Windows 10 will be a hard requirement to use the
Microsoft Azure Sphere Linux SDK for IoT/embedded boards?

~~~
Insanity
Does feel a bit off-topic for the discussion at hand. Unfortunately, I can't
help clarify, sorry

~~~
walterbell
A question about mandating Microsoft Windows to develop Microsoft Linux apps
is off-topic on a Linux Foundation article about Microsoft?

~~~
askmike
> Linux Foundation article about Microsoft

*About Microsoft buying Github.

Yes, most definitely.

~~~
walterbell
Github hosts many open-source Linux embedded projects that are optimized for
Linux toolchains, not Visual Studio.

