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Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

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Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#341
post #21

From at least two angles this is great news for Gitlab. But it feels a bit like the Atlassian / Trello arrangement, which has had little impact on users. From recent behaviour I'd expect Microsoft to have a very light touch here.

I'm not familiar with recent behaviour anything in particular? (My memory goes to Skype...)

The Skype buy was seven years ago, and it was a pretty user hostile piece of software before that.

Post Balmer we've seen a more open (in the transparent, consultative, community sensitive sense) attitude, with genuine contributions to free software.

People also seem to be citing LinkedIn as an example, but that doesn't feel like it got any more unpleasant since the buyout.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#342

Gitlab is a good solution for most folks. They have a for profit business powered by open source software.

GH also had a for-profit business. Apparently the profits weren't enough, but they were profitable and bootstrapped in their early days

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#343
post #16

Tangentially related, but maybe microsoft could actually do that : why is github's search so terribly bad ? If they had developed a good powerful code search (custom semantic engine for most used languages, complex queries, exact/fuzzy matches for syntax, use of history, etc) they could have become the primary way you interact with code you don't know yet. As it stands now it's simply more efficient to clone and use…

So we're asking the creators of Bing to fix it?

Or whoever implemented the start menu search.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#346

I am worried that a company as important to the open-source community as github is now owned by one of the major players. I think it really impacts the neutrality of github. If I would compete with microsoft in a certain space, I would really think twice about relying on github. Also, this monopolization is driving me mad.

Embrace

Extend

Extinguish

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#349
post #96
post #16

Tangentially related, but maybe microsoft could actually do that : why is github's search so terribly bad ? If they had developed a good powerful code search (custom semantic engine for most used languages, complex queries, exact/fuzzy matches for syntax, use of history, etc) they could have become the primary way you interact with code you don't know yet. As it stands now it's simply more efficient to clone and use…

It is shockingly bad. The fact that you can't code search in a fork blows my mind. How have they not fixed this basic, important feature after so many years? What could possibly make it more difficult than a few person-months of effort?

Maybe avoiding the costs associated with keeping the indexes available for every fork? I believe they use elastic search so maybe someone with more experience with that can comment.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#350
post #155
post #16

Tangentially related, but maybe microsoft could actually do that : why is github's search so terribly bad ? If they had developed a good powerful code search (custom semantic engine for most used languages, complex queries, exact/fuzzy matches for syntax, use of history, etc) they could have become the primary way you interact with code you don't know yet. As it stands now it's simply more efficient to clone and use…

SourceGraph tries to fix it, and the experience of searching, jump-to-definition and generally getting to grips with a codebase is way better there IMO. They also have browser plugins with integration to GitHub. I recommend you to check it out.

Sourcegraph CEO here. Glad you like Sourcegraph! Regardless of what happens with GitHub and Microsoft, we agree that developers need great code search.
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