Github about to be Miscrosofted?

[TechyBen]

14 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Aha, exactly what I thought. Google wanted to buy GitHub.

https://mspoweruser.com/google-too-wanted-to-buy-github-before-microsoft-snatched-it-up/

 

Considering that MS has a massive amount of personal projects inside, this explains everything. 

Yes. So it's MS covering their development costs by buying out the framework they were using.

 

[edit seems quotes got lost]

 

MS are putting telemetry and forced updates into their non-pro/corporate/datacenter products... so... they are currently adding telemetry to their products. Who do you think is moving off Github, paid or free customers?

13 hours ago, mr moose said:

I really wish there was someway to articulate what you are doing here.  Your argument has gone from "MS are evil" to "you are ignorant because you disagree".

 

I am am no longer going to respond to posts that aren't on topic.

 

 

 

Nope. Lawlz articulated their understanding and opinion well. Possibly better than you, as to the facts they observe. You were clear on your opinion though. You have the opinion MS will do nothing. Lawlz sees a repeating pattern and says they will migrate/expect others to.

 

As an example not MS, Apple constantly release products with fatal flaws which die within 2 years = some people don't buy their products because of this. However, you seem to claim "but the next one may not fail". That's fine... that's opinion though. Same as those buying something have an opinion not to. However, the past events are facts. Same here for MS.

 

Skype was free but losing money. Github has free services but losing money. MS purchased Linkdln for its customer portfolio. Presumably MS purchased Github just to protect their workflow system and production code from a Google takeover etc (competitor owning a service that has your major stock/IP is risky). So if they just do that, Github will stay exactly the same. Info we did not have before. However, it all depends on how much cash MS is willing to put in. If they just got the codebase then refloated the company, we would have little concerns (they'd move the Git repo in house and on their own servers, then sell the rest of the company off to Google... um... well... who else would not be a competitor they'd be happy to sell to?).

[mr moose]

8 hours ago, TechyBen said:

Yes. So it's MS covering their development costs by buying out the framework they were using.

 

[edit seems quotes got lost]

 

MS are putting telemetry and forced updates into their non-pro/corporate/datacenter products... so... they are currently adding telemetry to their products. Who do you think is moving off Github, paid or free customers?

 

Nope. Lawlz articulated their understanding and opinion well. Possibly better than you, as to the facts they observe. You were clear on your opinion though. You have the opinion MS will do nothing. Lawlz sees a repeating pattern and says they will migrate/expect others to.

 

As an example not MS, Apple constantly release products with fatal flaws which die within 2 years = some people don't buy their products because of this. However, you seem to claim "but the next one may not fail". That's fine... that's opinion though. Same as those buying something have an opinion not to. However, the past events are facts. Same here for MS.

 

Skype was free but losing money. Github has free services but losing money. MS purchased Linkdln for its customer portfolio. Presumably MS purchased Github just to protect their workflow system and production code from a Google takeover etc (competitor owning a service that has your major stock/IP is risky). So if they just do that, Github will stay exactly the same. Info we did not have before. However, it all depends on how much cash MS is willing to put in. If they just got the codebase then refloated the company, we would have little concerns (they'd move the Git repo in house and on their own servers, then sell the rest of the company off to Google... um... well... who else would not be a competitor they'd be happy to sell to?).

I agree with nearly everything you said, except two things:

 

1. My discussion with Lawlz turned  into something else and I will not go there. It's not healthy for the thread.

 

2. the apple example is kinda true as an example of being weary buying another iphone.  However it doesn't really apply to MS because MS haven't screwed over every purchase they make. In fact there has been only a handful of examples raised from more than 200 Acquisitions.  Which would indicate, if we go on historical record, that they are more likely to do something with gihub other than burn or try to control git/OSS.    I would argue the apple analogy to be correct if over the last 100 product releases only 3 were dodgy.

 

Which is really my only point in all this,  If we look at ALL of MS's history (not just the bad stuff) and we look at ALL the reasons they would want to buy github.  Then claiming they did it to destroy OSS or git quite fast becomes a knee jerk response.  Because as you have articulated (quite well I might add) that there are many more reasons for the purchase (which I believe are more logical than those proposed by Lawlz and the others) .

[TechyBen]

Windows 10 autoupdates, Office Ribbons. Actual things that stop me (small sample size I know ) from using their products. Oh, and Skype. They broke Skype.

 

I use offline Google software. My online Google software works years after end of life (Android OS etc), and I avoid their messaging services (thankfully they dropped it like a leaf).

 

So based on experience, I would jump Github as an individual sooner rather than later, to avoid surprises. As a business? It'd depend entirely on the business. So. Well... no one in this thread is speaking in behalf of businesses except you. And no one is saying you are wrong in that case.

 

But I can tell you, Google/Apple would probably like to take out their Gits right this second (if they had any)... using an opponent's service (App store etc as you mentioned inthe other thread) is not the same as your opponent having your stuff. An example of this is EA or Ubisoft keeping some games off Steam, even though it'd make some money. Or Apple keeping some apps off Android, even though it'd make them some money.

 

Lawlz and others have valid points. Their opinion on the weighting of those points is different to you, and slightly to me too. But not invalid points.

[LAwLz]

45 minutes ago, mr moose said:

However it doesn't really apply to MS because MS haven't screwed over every purchase they make.

They have screwed over a lot of them though, and they have a very long history of doing terrible things, especially to the open source community.

It might not happen 100% of the time, but if something happens fairly often it would be foolish to not take it into consideration when making your decisions.

 

 

49 minutes ago, mr moose said:

Then claiming they did it to destroy OSS or git quite fast becomes a knee jerk response.

Who has claimed that? I certainly haven't.

[infamoustrey]

 

 

Everyone needs to calm down. If Microsoft goes evil on this then another better service will arise, but more than likely this will result in more good than bad.

 

Remember, its a free market.

[Sniperfox47]

On 2018-06-05 at 5:11 PM, Sierra Fox said:

• All AMD processors are useless and AMD are lying about how many cores are in them because that is what they did with bulldozer. Therefore I'm never buying any product from that company because they lie and must be lying now

I mean, to be fair they didn't lie at all about how many cores the CPUs have. The CPUs *do* have that many cores. Not all of the cores have independent floating point compute units, but that's not what defines what a core is.

 

An AMD core has different parts than an Intel core. That doesn't make it not a core. An ARM core or an IBM PowerPC core also have different parts than an Intel core.

 

On 2018-06-05 at 6:08 PM, M.Yurizaki said:

I mean, Tesla shouldn't be calling "autopilot" mode "autopilot" if it still requires a great deal of human attention. But Tesla insists on calling it an "autopilot" mode.

Autopilot in planes, which it's named after, also requires a great deal of human attention too though. There's really no precedent out there for "autopilot" to mean "the pilot need not pay attention".

 

17 hours ago, mr moose said:

2. the apple example is kinda true as an example of being weary buying another iphone.  However it doesn't really apply to MS because MS haven't screwed over every purchase they make. In fact there has been only a handful of examples raised from more than 200 Acquisitions.  Which would indicate, if we go on historical record, that they are more likely to do something with gihub other than burn or try to control git/OSS.    I would argue the apple analogy to be correct if over the last 100 product releases only 3 were dodgy.

 

Which is really my only point in all this,  If we look at ALL of MS's history (not just the bad stuff) and we look at ALL the reasons they would want to buy github.  Then claiming they did it to destroy OSS or git quite fast becomes a knee jerk response.  Because as you have articulated (quite well I might add) that there are many more reasons for the purchase (which I believe are more logical than those proposed by Lawlz and the others) .

I just want to point out that point of view only applies to their history with acquisitions.

 

If you look at a standpoint of their relationship with OSS the ratio is totally flipped. GitHub is a huge player in the Open Source community. A massive player. The people leaving GitHub are not leaving it because of the risk proposition of its history with acquisitions. They're leaving it because of the risk proposition of it's history with OSS.

 

The fact that your argument boils down to "But they haven't destroyed other acquisitions! Look!" underlines your massive misunderstanding of the entire issue at hand.

 

 

[GoodBytes]

22 minutes ago, infamoustrey said:

Everyone needs to calm down. If Microsoft goes evil on this then another better service will arise, but more than likely this will result in more good than bad.

 

Remember, its a free market.

Honestly, I don't get it.

 - GitHub was deciding between Microsoft and Google offers

 - GitHub picked Microsoft due to them agreeing with the direction of the company that they are going with instead of Google.

 - Part of the GitHub deal is that GitHub remains independent, and not integrated with MS.

 

If they went with Google, probably by now, it would have been called GHub, with Google+ integration, and Google Hangout, and the website will start showing a million pop-up to use Chrome if you browse with something else, and fill every page with their data analytics and more. And probably be near the chopping block, like many Google projects.

 

If they said no to either, they would close their doors soon, as the company was loosing money, and desperately needed a CEO as the last one had serious sexual harassment issues.

[Mira Yurizaki]

9 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

Autopilot in planes, which it's named after, also requires a great deal of human attention too though. There's really no precedent out there for "autopilot" to mean "the pilot need not pay attention".

I'd argue in piloting an airplane, you're more concerned about the state of the airplane than what's going on around you, because for the most part, there's very little outside of an airplane that could cause issues. And the things that could cause issues you can usually predict way ahead of time. Whereas in a car, some idiot could suddenly drive right in front of you. And the reason you'd be more worried about the vehicle state in an airplane is because failure scenarios for airplanes are much more dire than in a car.

[Sniperfox47]

6 minutes ago, GoodBytes said:

If they went with Google, probably by now, it would have been called GHub, with Google+ integration, and Google Hangout, and the website will start showing a million pop-up to use Chrome if you browse with something else, and fill every page with their data analytics and more. And probably be near the chopping block, like many Google projects.

And a bunch of people would still jump ship because of those reasons. And everyone would still be up in arms.

 

But it wouldn't have immediately driven as many big codebases like GiMP away though, since at least Google has a track record of being semi- contributing to the open source community with things like Google Summer of Code and open source bug bounties.

 

And I would have stayed because all those things you mentioned would be crazy useful for me.

 

2 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I'd argue in piloting an airplane, you're more concerned about the state of the airplane than what's going on around you, because for the most part, there's very little outside of an airplane that could cause issues. And the things that could cause issues you can usually predict way ahead of time. Whereas in a car, some idiot could suddenly drive right in front of you. And the reason you'd be more worried about the vehicle state in an airplane is because failure scenarios for airplanes are much more dire than in a car.

That's totally fair, but it's also not really an argument against my point

[Mira Yurizaki]

4 minutes ago, Sniperfox47 said:

That's totally fair, but it's also not really an argument against my point

On the basic level, sure, autopilot merely means the vehicle is handling basic navigation duties. But on a deeper level, no, I can't say that Tesla is okay for calling their automatic navigation system "autopilot" because of what I just described.

 

EDIT: On another note, I'd argue airplanes are at Level 3 autonomy, whereas Tesla is still only Level 2 (based on https://jalopnik.com/whats-a-level-4-autonomous-car-this-chart-explains-eve-1785466324).

 

And I don't think we'll ever reach level 4. That's a political issue.

Edited June 7, 2018 by M.Yurizaki

[infamoustrey]

4 hours ago, GoodBytes said:

Honestly, I don't get it.

 - GitHub was deciding between Microsoft and Google offers

 - GitHub picked Microsoft due to them agreeing with the direction of the company that they are going with instead of Google.

 - Part of the GitHub deal is that GitHub remains independent, and not integrated with MS.

 

If they went with Google, probably by now, it would have been called GHub, with Google+ integration, and Google Hangout, and the website will start showing a million pop-up to use Chrome if you browse with something else, and fill every page with their data analytics and more. And probably be near the chopping block, like many Google projects.

 

If they said no to either, they would close their doors soon, as the company was loosing money, and desperately needed a CEO as the last one had serious sexual harassment issues.

Agreed, it's not the end of the world. And if people want to go somewhere else, it's a free market and they are free to do so.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

People get so salty whenever there's a news topic about Microsoft... or Apple. That's the LTT forums in a nutshell.

 

[TechyBen]

Nope. Nothing's gonna change. OH, new CEO at our beck and call: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/08/nat_friedman_github_ceo_elect_ama_session/

But, nope, nothing's gonna change. Pinky promise!!!

[Lent]

3 hours ago, TechyBen said:

Nope. Nothing's gonna change. OH, new CEO at our beck and call: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/08/nat_friedman_github_ceo_elect_ama_session/

But, nope, nothing's gonna change. Pinky promise!!!

This isn't a change, GitHub was already looking for a new CEO since the last one left. You can't change something that was not there.
These kind of arguments are petty, of course a parent company is going to fill in the gaps to their child company they just bought. That's not a change to the service, it's making sure that the company they just bought will remain to be sustainable. GitHub has problems, they've been working with Microsoft to try to fix them even before the acquisition.

[Lent]

Just wanted to post that The Linux Foundation came out with an official statement yesterday on their opinions on the matter.
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/microsoft-buys-github-the-linux-foundations-reaction/

[Lent]

6 hours ago, lacion said:

just as a point, you clearly do not understand the VC game. not having profit does not necessarily means they are losing money. that's is done by a lot of big companies and VC backed startups.

 

 

also, anyone knows of any big FOSS contributors actually running away from GH because of this? google GO repo is still in GH, same goes for the big popular libraries, influxdb still there, elasticsearch still there, sentry still there.

 

sometimes it looks like the people complaining are people with some unknown private repos.

 

We might have to see what happens come the end of the year. Google and GitLab has already announced a partnership and it makes sense to do so as Microsoft and Google are competitors. It's worth noting that the Microsoft GitHub acquisition does not actually close till the end of the calendar year, so Microsoft does not currently own GitHub yet. Same for the new CEO, he doesn't start till the end of the year. Of course there will be FOSS contributors staying, no doubt, but I figure a few will leave once the acquisition closes purely because they compete with Microsoft.

[Commodus]

1 hour ago, Lent said:

Just wanted to post that The Linux Foundation came out with an official statement yesterday on their opinions on the matter.
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/microsoft-buys-github-the-linux-foundations-reaction/

That was a very mature and responsible way to address the acquisition.  I don't think we want to assume Microsoft will be a perfect steward, but it's much more receptive to Linux and open source than it was under Gates and Ballmer.

 

As it stand, it often feels like FOSS supporters want it to be 2001 forever, when Microsoft was an obvious nemesis and old-school Linux developers were the main advocates of their cause.  They don't like having an absence of clear villains... or, for that matter, the realization that Linux hit the mainstream through Android and Chrome OS rather than 'pure' approaches like Ubuntu or Red Hat.

[TechyBen]

7 hours ago, Lent said:

This isn't a change, GitHub was already looking for a new CEO since the last one left. You can't change something that was not there.
These kind of arguments are petty, of course a parent company is going to fill in the gaps to their child company they just bought. That's not a change to the service, it's making sure that the company they just bought will remain to be sustainable. GitHub has problems, they've been working with Microsoft to try to fix them even before the acquisition.

Yes. GitHub was certainly going to hire the MS CEO MS chose. Yep yep yep. No change anywhere.

[dalekphalm]

7 minutes ago, TechyBen said:

Yes. GitHub was certainly going to hire the MS CEO MS chose. Yep yep yep. No change anywhere.

They were going to hire a CEO. Which CEO they would have chosen before the buyout is impossible to know, since they hadn't made a decision yet.

 

So, no, Microsoft choosing a CEO is not "changing" anything, it's fixing a problem that was going to be fixed, regardless.

[W-L]

Keep discussions strictly related to the topic at hand, there will be no further exemptions.

 

 

-Thread Cleaned- 

[dalekphalm]

While it's true that the new CEO is a Microsoft Employee, he has only been so since 2016. Before that, he spent almost his entire career in the Open Source world, working on things like SUSE Linux.

[LAwLz]

6 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

While it's true that the new CEO is a Microsoft Employee, he has only been so since 2016. Before that, he spent almost his entire career in the Open Source world, working on things like SUSE Linux.

At the end of the day, everyone who said GitHub would continue to be independent were wrong, and it just took a few days. 

 

I like Nat and hope he will be a good CEO. But appointing a Microsoft employee (Nat's history with Microsoft goes back far longer than 2016) as the CEO is not a "hands off" approach.

Like I said before, every decision he makes for GitHub once he takes over will be a result of the Microsoft acquisition. 

[TechyBen]

13 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

While it's true that the new CEO is a Microsoft Employee, he has only been so since 2016. Before that, he spent almost his entire career in the Open Source world, working on things like SUSE Linux.

Very interesting. So not only has MS been branching into "we have Linux APIs!!!!!!", but of cause to facilitate that hiring those with the skills. I'm still divided over Github purchase being ONLY to host their code base (they can do it internally as far as I know)... so it does look like they want to be involved somehow.

[dalekphalm]

5 hours ago, TechyBen said:

Very interesting. So not only has MS been branching into "we have Linux APIs!!!!!!", but of cause to facilitate that hiring those with the skills. I'm still divided over Github purchase being ONLY to host their code base (they can do it internally as far as I know)... so it does look like they want to be involved somehow.

I just think people are over thinking this. 

 

I assume Microsoft bought GitHub because it’s a service they already use, they see the potential value in the platform, and they want the platform to be the best it can be. 

 

So by buying it and fixing the financial issues, they could continue to use it,

make it even better, and profit from it all at the same time. 

 

Making it better doesn't have to be a negative for the FOSS crowd.

 

Sure Microsoft could Fuck it up. But let’s at least acknowledge and entertain the possibility that nothing nefarious will happen. 

 

Half the thread is acting like it’s an absolute certainty that GitHub will now be ruined in some fashion. Maybe it will... BUT maybe it won’t also.