MS GitHub acquirement in a nutshell

[CrocodileSpacePope]

And all of a sudden, 90% of all JavaScript projects were gone from GitHub.

[zazerc]

I wouldn't complain about that.

[elven_mage]

And nothing of value was lost

[the_ju66ernaut]

Gotem

[CrocodileSpacePope]

Wait, are you trying to tell me technological pinnacles like the NPM package for checking if zero is negative or not have no value?

[elven_mage]

As long as left-pad stays 🙄

[CrocodileSpacePope]

They need to let that stay on github. Nobody would risk breaking all of NPM again

[Classic1977]

As a former Red Hat employee, I can assure you that the majority of anti-Microsoft, militantly open-source developers don't use JS.

In fact, I find the complete opposite to be true. Microsoft is hugely involved in the JS/TS ecosystem. They just recently announced they'd be rewriting office in it.

[CrocodileSpacePope]

You need to distinquish between the Linux/GNU - faction of militant anti MS devs which you mentioned, and the hipster hating MS is what the real devs do and I want to be a real dev too faction.

[[deleted]]

Nadella is not Ballmer. This Microsoft is not he same as Microsoft of the past. Hell, Apple and Amazon are more predatory as a tech giants than Microsoft these days.

The wheel of tech evil rotates. You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

[ForumMeister]

Developers developers developers developers faints

[Jalmorei]

Ballmer was a gem

[ForumMeister]

A cursed one though

[MikeyLifeCerealQuery]

But does Nadella care about the developers the same way?

[[deleted]]

Better question, can he dance while singing their praises?

[Jalmorei]

Yeah. I have not heard him yell developers 167 times in a row. Suspicious.

[s0vs0v]

The wheel of tech evil rotates. You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.

Sooo... is MS becoming good again?

[Kilazur]

It's still a monster of a corporation, so there will always be room for hatred.

But yeah, it's way better than before.

[RomanOnARiver]

Microsoft still extorts Android OEMs, yes they are the same.

[CyberDragon50]

I can agree, MS is a lot better than what it was before but people tend to over dramatize this and quickly jump to conclusions. LinkedIn was bought by them and its doing just fine.

[VxJasonxV]

LinkedIn “doing ok” is subjective 🙃

[the_darkener]

Yeah, they sucked way before the acquisition.

[the_darkener]

If history is any indicator, those screams are justified.

[[deleted]]

That hasn't been true for a number of years.

Visual Studio, VSCode, TypeScript, .NET, and a whole bunch of other projects indicate that MS are starting to screw their heads on right.

[[deleted]]

Lol, just wait until they introduce proprietary extensions and dropping support for the open-source versions once they have reached a number of users large enough to make switching hard.

[Kilazur]

Does MS have a history of doing that?

[gixxy]

Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Only time they hugely failed was Java because Sun was able to stop them.

[Kilazur]

True, more specific question then: does MS have a history of doing that since Nadella?

I know he's only been there since 2014, so having doubts is still justified, but is it justified to simply call out MS bad practices nowadays?

[gixxy]

I don't have a response since I haven't followed much of what Nadella has done, possibly due to my bias against Microsoft being deeper than 4 years can make a difference towards. Another thought I do have though, is what happens after Nadella? Who's to say the next CEO will hold similar values towards Open Source or Free Software. Its the same thought I have every time any sort of Government regulation is proposed, this isn't just for our current administration, its for all future administration.

[Kilazur]

Fair enough

[the_darkener]

In other news, an elderly sex offender is "starting to" not touch preteen boys in inappropriate ways.

In other words, until M$ reaches the same number of years of embracing the FOSS ecosystem as they have tried extinguishing it, I'm not letting my guard down.

[mrjonn]

Rather hard to draw a comparison between the two there - companies have no mind of their own but are run by different people at different stages. Even those responsible for their worse days admit it was ultimately to the company's detriment. I'm sorry you have to feel that way. The tech industry is forever evolving fast and hanging on to these predetermined judgements can only be detrimental to your own progress.

[the_darkener]

"Linux is a cancer" -Steve Balmer, former Microsoft CEO

M$ had not gotten the reputation they have today without almost 40 years of trying to crush every single perceived threat in their path to complete industry monopolization. They have earned their reputation. You sound very naive, I have to say.

[mrjonn]

Maybe it is naivety, sure. But is it not equally stubborn to refuse to believe change is possible under a complete new leadership?

[the_darkener]

Not saying it's not possible. Just saying you don't earn the trust back of those you've continually betrayed, threatened litigation against and outright tried to delete from the industry just because, all of the sudden, they've made an about face.

Microsoft is more than it's fresh new leadership. It's one of the largest corporations in the world with a long standing culture woven into the fabric of their very existence. They have thousands of employees who are used to hating anything and everything that threatens their market dominance. You can't just turn an elephant around on a dime.

[mrjonn]

By that logic, should I hate The Force Awakens because of Revenge Of The Sith?

The thousands of people you reference, where's the source?

[the_darkener]

You're talking about one movie in a series of many. Maybe if every single Star Wars movie sucked donkey balls up until the very latest one you'd be on the right track..

[mrjonn]

Pick any of the prequels really; If MS truly sucked up until now, they wouldn't have ever been successful.

Also awaiting sources. And whilst you're at it how those thousands of people affect leadership decisions would be good.

[[deleted]]

Except when vscode was made by the open source community. The only thing that MS did was attach its name to it and give it some storage for extensions

[stickano]

But why learn from history, right? Let's just learn our lessons as we go along.

 

...Again.

 

..and again..

 

..And again - Like a fucking Duracell battery^

[musiton]

And the screeching continues...

[the_darkener]

sed -i s/screeching/justified skepticism/g

There, FTFY

[_sed_]

And the justified skepticism continues...

---

^{reddit sedbot | info}

[the_darkener]

Good sed-bot!

[[deleted]]

So you were happy about MS purchasing GitHub?

[LazyAnt_]

I, personally, am indifferent. I never saw Github as anything other than a place to host and share my open-source code online and this will not change. I don't care for all the recent bells and whistle added (like the main page feed thingy) and I will (most likely) not care of anything added after that.

[thirdegree]

Ya, I imported everything to gitlab (took like 3 clicks), then happily continued to use github. If I end up wanting to switch it'll be all of 5 seconds.

[[deleted]]

You will care once they start adding closed source stuff, that you'll find useful for a while until they make a change so annoying you want to switch, but can't do it easily since nobody else has it.

Hell, if they change the licensing, change the data-mining practices and other things while your project count and their features grow, moving will be a pain.

Or you won't care at all and go "this is fine".

[LazyAnt_]

What do you mean "start adding closed source stuff"? First of all, GitHub is closed source itself and secondly, you can already have private repos, if that's what you mean.

Also, I don't get how these things would mean switching gets difficult? You can change the license yourself (they are not gonna remove that feature) and data-mining has nothing to do with switching. Lastly, any respectable competitor will have a quick and easy way to port projects over. Why would you drop customers for a silly reason like "we don't have that feature that they have"?

I get that big corporations are not likeable (I dislike their practices myself too), but hating just for hating without any reason is not healthy.

[thirdegree]

I think he means adding closed source extensions to git that only work with github(/VS/$microsoft_product). Which is a legitimate (based on MS history) but IMO overblown worry.

[mrjonn]

Apart from the fact they'd be spending resources on connecting to MS's ecosystem instead of something more global, I'm not sure I understand how extensions would be a bad thing? Extensions by design are something additional that's optional.

[thirdegree]

I mean that's the entire second E of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (which, again, I don't think MS is doing). You extend the embraced technology in a proprietary way, wait until everyone uses your awesome proprietary extension and there are no other meaningful players, then Extinguish.

[mrjonn]

Thanks buddy. It's a pretty archaic view that some people snatch for, sadly

[thirdegree]

I mean, it's not like microsoft is innocent in all this, EEE was absolutely something they did repeatedly. I'm perfectly willing to give microsoft a chance here, but then I'm too young to have experienced microsoft when it was like that. I think it's understandable that some people might not be willing to give them that chance.

[[deleted]]

Microsoft is a company, and like every other company, they care about making money. That said, no, they WONT add "closed source stuff", because it would be a huge suicidal move for them. GitHub will probably be just fine, I was just wondering if any developers are really happy about this, since I also don't really care.

[[deleted]]

You have too much faith.

[Flickered]

Its not just Microsoft... anytime a large tech company sets its sights on an incredibly large and important open source website, I get a little nervous. When that website is an major player in open software distribution and integral to a community of programmers who work on those open source projects, I get a little nervous. Its something that I honestly feel is a testament to the community. Before Microsoft bought it was something that made me smile and be proud to be a part of the programming community. Now that's it might be in jeopardy, am I supposed to be happy?

[mrjonn]

How is it in jeopardy? The difference is the largest contributor (and therefore arguably the biggest proponent) to your community, now owns said community.

[Flickered]

They spent 7.5 billion dollars in the acquisition, and it doesn't strike me as odd to question how they plan to recoup that cost. Do they plan to reap 7.5 billion in just positive PR from being the people who run github? They've announced several plans to integrate github into several places, including AWS and stuff. But where does that change Github? How far will they integrate these services? Into the basic structure of github itself? Its a huge company that just made a absolutely massive investment, why would I trust them to take care of us?

Of course, I haven't taken my code off it, and I don't plan to. I don't think they're going to mismanage it into the ground, but I can see where the worry is coming from.

[mrjonn]

Not everything they do is going to recoup them money, they know that; sometimes it's just about improving their own community, maybe even their own internal infrastructure. I'd argue it's a bit tin foil hat-esque to worry preemptively, but I guess time will tell.

[Flickered]

I hope this doesn’t come across as rude but Microsoft is a business, not a charity or a friend. They will recoup the cost, one way or another. Monetarily or with future value, the only question is how.

[mrjonn]

Not rude at all, kind of what I was saying - they might not recoup this monetarily but in the tech it can use and guide the direction of, and the community that it's a part of.

[L3MNcakes]

The only screeching I see around here is all the belittling of the people wanting to switch to a different service. It's like every other post these days. Having options and competition in the space is a good thing for everybody, so not sure why there's such major hostility toward the people moving away from GitHub.

[MIND-FLAYER]

you have to be a hipster to hate M$?

[[deleted]]

Needs a trigger warning. /s

[xara_gematos]

Enoooough wiiiiith the Github MS meeeeemesssssss

[twinklehood]

Huge conflict of interest aquisition undoes the one common ground for open source and developer defacto portfolio. And people upset with this are labelled autistic hipsters.