Github about to be Miscrosofted?

[mr moose]

3 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

They managed to do it once with windows, call me crazy but it seems to me they attempting to do it again....

So a possible merger with github insinuates sufficient conditions to assume they are trying to EEE again with OSS.

[Tech Enthusiast]

Strange feelings some people seem to have here.

 

I certainly don't get it. There is nothing we can lose from a consumer side of view.

As much as Microsoft gets hated on by the tech community, they would not be where they are if they would not have the best software around. So they either improve GitHub, or you switch over to GitLab.

GitLab is identical to GitHub, but allows for more freedom (you can actually make a project private without shelling out money for example). 

Basically a fork that improves the free aspects.

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, Rattenmann said:

As much as Microsoft gets hated on by the tech community, they would not be where they are if they would not have the best software around.

That's rubbish. Microsoft has multiple times done illegal things, like e.g. paying companies not to sell any competitors' products, they've included code in the past in their products so that their products wouldn't work under e.g. DR-DOS (which was competing with MS-DOS) and they've multiple times used basically blackmailing to get a dominant position. You really should read up into Microsoft's past and all the shenanigans they were up to with MS-DOS and early Windows-versions, where they established their dominance.

[Pretzel4000]

First TunnelBear, now Github... These companies need to realize that they would retain far more users if they didn't sell to megacorps. Hopefully this falls through if it is true, which would not surprise me.

[Not_Jony_Ive]

Linus Media Group is gonna get acquired by Apple. And everyone is gonna have a either iMac pro on their desktop or a 2014 baseline mac mini.

After all, those stocks don't clear themselves. 

 

 

--- tell others you heard from me 1st. 

 

 

 

 

 

[jagdtigger]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

So a possible merger with github insinuates sufficient conditions to assume they are trying to EEE again with OSS.

Not just github, the whole linux subsystem in win10 and the rest of linux stuff they done lately.... They arent supporting linux and open source ATM because they are nice, but because they are scheming something. Its just a hunch based on the artificial limitations in UWP(only MS libraries[DX, edge, etc] allowed) and their past track record...

[GoodBytes]

1 hour ago, WereCatf said:

That's rubbish. Microsoft has multiple times done illegal things, like e.g. paying companies not to sell any competitors' products, they've included code in the past in their products so that their products wouldn't work under e.g. DR-DOS (which was competing with MS-DOS) and they've multiple times used basically blackmailing to get a dominant position. You really should read up into Microsoft's past and all the shenanigans they were up to with MS-DOS and early Windows-versions, where they established their dominance.

Not to say you are wrong but most Microsoft actions where and are perfectly legal. Being ruthless doesn't make it illegal though, you might not like it, but there is not a single company that has or had rapid growth that is a clean, ethical and socially responsible all at the same time in its history. Business is business.

 

Microsoft operation still going strong today suggest that everything they have done was mostly legal. Google does a lot of "evil" things too, just to mentioned 1 company, complete with "you want your site to be up in the ranks, you MUST use our page analytics system". Why do you think so many web sites uses it? They are better solutions out there, and that is why many sites uses 2, one for Google so that their page is up in the ranks, and the other for them to actually use. Google LOVES data. It wants to know your every move and every taught.  Why do you think this past holidays, Google Home speaker, the company sold it at a LOSS of 50$ each unit sold, to be the cheapest, not only smart-speaker, but also decent Bluetooth speaker on the market? I am sure the Bluetooth speaker manufactures where trilled by Google move. They are countless of examples: Walmart, Target, Facebook, Adobe, you name it, there is something, there is always something. Apple is no exception. You see these schools with Apple exclusive products? You can bet for sure that Apple give them the computers for FREE, but they must be exclusive to Apple. The idea is that kids get to know Apple, get used to Apple, see Apple logo everywhere, act as an advertisement vehicle, and when they grow up, buy an Apple product, and stick with their ecosystem. A brilliant move and cost a fraction of TV advertisement. Is that right thing to do? Or should choice should be presented?

 

 

 

[GoodBytes]

In the end, assuming Microsoft buy GitHub, nothing will change for GitHub.

Doesn't mean that a company buys another that the company will be integrated in itself. I don't think Microsoft wants to integrate GitHub to itself, it has no benefit to them. Heck LinkedIn still operates independently. I mean Microsoft bought h them, and the Windows Phone app got removed, with no replacement in sight. Heck, not even a PWA apps, and you would think it would be one of the first to showcase this. Twitter is a PWA app, and the company is working hard to make a good one for Windows 10 PCs. I think it is now at parity or near that of Twitter app on Android/iOS, and has all the functionality of the web.

 

From what I can see. They are probably buying them because:

• Microsoft has a lot of projects inside it, and maybe they have knowledge that Google/Alphabet might be considering buying them. And we know how great buddies Google and Microsoft are. Who can forget Google trying to do everything it can to block YouTube website and apps from running on Windows phones. So in other words, they are protecting themselves.
  
  or
   
• They are just expanding their profile to boost the company value. This is a technique that is often done for various reasons. Just an example, Disney started to do this in the recent years, because they don't want to be acquired by another company (this is not Microsoft situation, of course, but saying an example for why a company might want to buy another one). To combat this, every year they raise ticket prices for their team parks (and will continue to do so, until consumers doesn't see the value for their money), and also they buy other companies as they get to integrate the value of that company with theirs, and if they do boast on how both together could boost the value of the company further then the value of Disney increases even more, making themselves out of reach to be purchasable by most companies. For Disney, they started to do this since the day a company that is known to that buys big companies and dismantle them and selling them into parts and make money like this, as you make more money selling stuff into parts than whole. If they managed to acquire Disney (which was a close call by the way), they would be destroying all the work done by the Disney family, let alone Walt himself, and Disney would not exists today, and many movies you enjoy that are inspired by Disney more recent work, might also not exists or be inferior.

[Tech Enthusiast]

1 hour ago, WereCatf said:

That's rubbish. Microsoft has multiple times done illegal things, like e.g. paying companies not to sell any competitors' products, they've included code in the past in their products so that their products wouldn't work under e.g. DR-DOS (which was competing with MS-DOS) and they've multiple times used basically blackmailing to get a dominant position. You really should read up into Microsoft's past and all the shenanigans they were up to with MS-DOS and early Windows-versions, where they established their dominance.

Why would i care about that as a consumer?

I get the software best suited to my needs. If company X forbids company Y to sell product Z, but i want product Z,.. guess what? I buy product Z and company Y loses my business.

 

I don't care what companies do to each other. That is their business. I care about the product I AM USING. And obviously Microsoft has done some pretty damn good things, judging from their market share.

 

All that aside: If they screw up GitHub (and they might, not gonna claim it is impossible), just use GitLab. It is the more user friendly version anyways. 

[Linus_torvalds]

Let's give a big FUCK to MS. After buying Github all of us who use it must STOP using it. Let's waste that fucking companies money! FUCK you MS, Fuck you bill gates. GTFO github and FOSS and linux! Go Fuck With Shitndows!

[Mira Yurizaki]

People need to understand first and foremost that GitHub is a repository. Git itself is GPL licensed software. There are other online repositories that support Git including Bitbucket, GitLab, Launchpad, among others. So if Microsoft taints GitHub, everyone who doesn't like it just moves onto a different repository using their Git client of choice. The only downside is they'll lose versioning history unless there's some mechanism to import that to their new repo. I've been able to use TortoiseGit to manage stuff on GitHub and Bitbucket.

 

Also I don't believe for a moment that any major company only stores things on a publicly accessible versioning repository. They likely have their own local versioning system in place and online repositories are for the projects the company doesn't mind releasing to the public. I mean, they have to, otherwise how else would they manage private projects?

 

On that note, there's also nothing stopping you from rolling out your own Git repository.

 

EDIT: I should add that GitHub does not own nor maintain Git. Considering that Linus Torvalds was the original author, it's safe to assume it's under his ownership. Someone else though is in charge of maintaining it.

[Cheezdoodlez]

27 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

People need to understand first and foremost that GitHub is a repository. Git itself is GPL licensed software. There are other online repositories that support Git including Bitbucket, GitLab, Launchpad, among others. So if Microsoft taints GitHub, everyone who doesn't like it just moves onto a different repository using their Git client of choice. The only downside is they'll lose versioning history unless there's some mechanism to import that to their new repo. I've been able to use TortoiseGit to manage stuff on GitHub and Bitbucket.

 

Also I don't believe for a moment that any major company only stores things on a publicly accessible versioning repository. They likely have their own local versioning system in place and online repositories are for the projects the company doesn't mind releasing to the public. I mean, they have to, otherwise how else would they manage private projects?

 

On that note, there's also nothing stopping you from rolling out your own Git repository.

Yeah github is just the most popular repository for git. I've used a few repositorys over the years and currently use gitlab but my experience is that gitlab can be very slow. Bitbucket feels lacking. 

 

But if Microsoft buys github and do a what they did to Skype people will just migrate to another repository site. But there's a chance things will become very fragmented , atleast for a while. 

[Ryujin2003]

Actually, I'm excited about this. I'd Microsoft is able to integrate this seamlessly with Visual Studio, then this could be great for businesses. I hate the current code repository system we use at work, and switching to GIT would be nice, but it would have to better integrate with some other source control software we use. I'd Microsoft was able to make this happen, and have it already be interested with Visual Studio and Windows, this could be good.

 

I get there negative stance, but let's see what happens if and when this happens. I highly doubt Microsoft would sure like aquire this only to waste money on ruining it and updating the already existing consumer base. Way easier to capitalize on its current success.

 

The main negative thing I could see is this being incorporated into their subscription services.

[Cheezdoodlez]

25 minutes ago, Ryujin2003 said:

Actually, I'm excited about this. I'd Microsoft is able to integrate this seamlessly with Visual Studio, then this could be great for businesses. I hate the current code repository system we use at work, and switching to GIT would be nice, but it would have to better integrate with some other source control software we use. I'd Microsoft was able to make this happen, and have it already be interested with Visual Studio and Windows, this could be good.

 

I get there negative stance, but let's see what happens if and when this happens. I highly doubt Microsoft would sure like aquire this only to waste money on ruining it and updating the already existing consumer base. Way easier to capitalize on its current success.

 

The main negative thing I could see is this being incorporated into their subscription services.

Well.. There's nothing stopping Microsoft from seamlessly integrate git into VS even if they don't own it. Git is not github. Github is just a repository platform for git. So nothing would actually change except they owning a very popular repository. Git is already a pretty robust vcs and there's a ton of tools on all platforms to manage your projects regardless of the actual URL the project is hosted on. 

 

I'm not that big into VS but I see no reason for your company to not be able to use git tbh. 

 

Also I don't think Microsoft bought Skype to waste money but the current state of Skype is not great. 

[dalekphalm]

Call me insane, but I'd like to see a Linux distro by Microsoft, with a Windows 7-esque Skin, and integration with Microsoft protocols and tools.

 

The Linux crowd needs a push to have a large distro that gets the same kind of "polish" that Windows and macOS gets. Maybe if Microsoft steps in and does their own, the FOSS guys will respond with something more appealing to mainstream audiences, and will help to draw better mainstream software support.

[jagdtigger]

40 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Call me insane, but I'd like to see a Linux distro by Microsoft, with a Windows 7-esque Skin, and integration with Microsoft protocols and tools.

 

The Linux crowd needs a push to have a large distro that gets the same kind of "polish" that Windows and macOS gets. Maybe if Microsoft steps in and does their own, the FOSS guys will respond with something more appealing to mainstream audiences, and will help to draw better mainstream software support.

To get the same data theft in the background as in win10? No thanks.... Not to mention that win10 is still an unstable mess.

[Mira Yurizaki]

5 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

To get the same data theft in the background as in win10? No thanks.... Not to mention that win10 is still an unstable mess.

You're free to look at the source code of all the apps and packages they would ship with it. Assuming they ship with a default configuration that contains nothing but open source software.

 

And if it didn't, you can bet your ass the FOSS community will be on it like a swarm of angry wasps. That's how they got Lindows shut down.

46 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Call me insane, but I'd like to see a Linux distro by Microsoft, with a Windows 7-esque Skin, and integration with Microsoft protocols and tools.

 

The Linux crowd needs a push to have a large distro that gets the same kind of "polish" that Windows and macOS gets. Maybe if Microsoft steps in and does their own, the FOSS guys will respond with something more appealing to mainstream audiences, and will help to draw better mainstream software support.

Even then I'm not so hopeful. I'm more confident in a professional company supporting something than community based support. But I guess that's up to opinion.

Edited June 2, 2018 by M.Yurizaki

[schwellmo92]

Why is everyone hating on Microsoft? They’ve very much pro OSS these days, check out their Microsoft and Xamarin pages on Github, there’s 2000 repositories there.

[jagdtigger]

1 minute ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Assuming they ship with a default configuration that contains nothing but open source software.

That aint gonna happen IMO.... MS is just too fond of closed source proprietary solutions.

[dalekphalm]

4 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

You're free to look at the source code of all the apps and packages they would ship with it. Assuming they ship with a default configuration that contains nothing but open source software.

 

And if it didn't, you can bet your ass the FOSS community will be on it like a swarm of angry wasps. That's how they got Lindows shut down.

Even then I'm not so hopeful. I'm more confident in a professional company supporting something than community based support. But I guess that's up to opinion.

If someone like Canonical could get their asses in gear and put out something that could truly rival Windows and macOS, that would be awesome.

 

Linux's best feature is also it's worst: Unlimited customization, forks, distros, versions.

 

Android has the same problem with the massive fragmentation between different versions. Google is only just starting to focus on their own first party devices that keep a "vanilla" version that has long term support.

[dmegatool]

People talk like Github is git itself. It ain't. I personally use Gitlab... If microsoft stop improvements or make bad decisions, people will just move away from it. I don't see them fuck it up anytime soon, they got no interest in that. 

[Delicieuxz]

6 hours ago, jagdtigger said:

Its more likely that they realized that open source is a threat to them so they are gonna neutralize that threat. Just like project sunset in GITS....

It also might be that Microsoft sees a lot of user data as being harvestable from a site like Github, and wants to get it and sell it for profit like MS does in Windows 10 and all MS services.

 

Adopting the 'collect personal user data and sell it' business model has seen Microsoft's company value skyrocket passed Alphabet's:

 

https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/30/17408254/microsoft-google-alphabet-market-cap-value

 

That might be an indicator that Microsoft is able to gather far more and more valuable personal user data by stealing it at the lowest level - from all actions taken in the Windows 10 OS. Companies like Google and Facebook are limited to data-harvesting people's online activities.

 

And with having had such financial success after laying off many, many thousands of its physical workers to instead base its modern business around harvesting and selling personal user data at all levels, Microsoft might now be looking all over for what services and projects they can buy to start harvesting data from those other user bases.

 

It sort of seems as though Microsoft's new business philosophy is 'why work and produce something when you can just steal and sell user data for profit?'. And I think this behaviour is a strong argument for why further regulation on data collection and selling is needed.

[ScratchCat]

3 hours ago, M.Yurizaki said:

Also I don't believe for a moment that any major company only stores things on a publicly accessible versioning repository. They likely have their own local versioning system in place and online repositories are for the projects the company doesn't mind releasing to the public. I mean, they have to, otherwise how else would they manage private projects?

Microsoft were making attempts to use Git as the repository system, developing a dedicated filesystem to deal with the large size of the Windows repository.

Quote

Accordingly, Microsoft has been working to enhance Git to improve the way it handles vast repositories. Central to this effort is a new project released (in part) as open source Git Virtual File system (GVFS). The premise of GVFS is straightforward enough: rather than fetching all the data at once, only a bare skeleton of the repository needs to be populated up front. The virtualized file system subsequently retrieves additional data on a demand-driven, as-needed basis. Building one particular Windows component, for example, will cause GVFS to fetch the files that make up that component, along with anything that the component depends on, but it will stop short of fetching all the many hundreds of gigabytes the repository contains.

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/microsoft-hosts-the-windows-source-in-a-monstrous-300gb-git-repository/

[jagdtigger]

3 minutes ago, Delicieuxz said:

It also might be that Microsoft sees a lot of user data as being harvestable from a site like Github, and wants to get it and sell it for profit like MS does in Windows 10 and all MS services.

 

Adopting the 'collect personal user data and sell it' business model has seen Microsoft's company value skyrocket passed Alphabet's:

 

https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/30/17408254/microsoft-google-alphabet-market-cap-value

Disgusting is a very mild expression what im feeling about that, most of my thoughts cant be translated to English... (most Hungarian profanity cannot be translated to English without loosing their meaning, or straight up impossible to do, not to mention that rules banned them...)

[Delicieuxz]

1 minute ago, jagdtigger said:

Disgusting is a very mild expression what im feeling about that, most of my thoughts cant be translated to English... (most Hungarian profanity cannot be translated to English without loosing their meaning, or straight up impossible to do, not to mention that rules banned them...)

I also feel it is disgraceful, though my thoughts aren't in Hungarian.

 

I also edited my above post with more of my thoughts.