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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

#651

Post by sytse »

youseecomrade wrote: post #305
nyxtom wrote: post #197

It's interesting that the HN community continues to make reference to the prospect of a decentralized internet when Git was built to be decentralized in the first place. In spite of this, we all have congregated around GitHub for the community and are shocked when the centralized source we've been using gets acquired by a company we don't trust. That's sort of the whole point of centralization, you can't trust it. Ma…

I think the network effect is too great to ignore. I would guess the number of potential contributors you get just by using GitHub, where many people have an account and know the workflow/UI, is bigger than any other place. 5 years from now when GitLab is acquired by Google we'll have to migrate again.

Or export you projects to someone else running GitLab. All the functionality to run a forge in GitLab is open source and export/import is open source as well.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#653

Post by dredds »

Yhippa wrote: post #599
LeanderK wrote: post #45

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.

Why did the F/OSS community put all their eggs in one basket? Hell a lot of big companies did also. I wonder how they're going to react to this?

Exactly. Code.google.com even provided links for porting repos to GH. Will Google revive it's own code repository in light of this move?

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#654

Post by wand3r »

My dissenting opinion is that this is good. I am not a Windows user and only peripherally use their services however ironically I believe Microsoft is now the challenger if monopolies:

- Bing is one of the only english search engines with a big userbase; provides a google alternative. I like ddg but it isnt mainstream yet.

- Provides alternative to gmail and enterprise services

- a big 3 cloud provider, competes with AWS and GC. Likely why this github acq makes sense

- runs linkedin to keep fb in competition

There are a lot of examples where they drop the ball, but they are surprisingly the challenger in a lot of new markets providing an alt to the leader/incumbent

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#655

Post by jabits »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #34

This is sad news. Partially because I don't care for Microsoft, but mostly because Github was a neutral third-party without any priorities. I hope they don't discontinue Atom or apply their UX styling to the site/desktop app. Like Spotify, I felt safer that a company was just doing hosting in their domain (of music or code projects) and wouldn't try to shovel some other tech into it like Apple making Apple Music terr…

"because Github was a neutral third-party without any priorities"...what are you talking about? They are a company with a purpose to make money. And when I think about some of the other possible buyers, I am fine with Microsoft.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#657

Post by tomxor »

phantom_oracle wrote: post #390

I don't quite understand why people are sad or disappointed about this acquisition. You should be extremely elated about it. You know why? Github was never an Open Source product itself but sat on top of the Open Source community and used that "goodwill" to license and sell its proprietary software. Now that another proprietary software-maker has acquired this company, maybe we can all finally adopt the principle tha…

I love open source, but it doesn't mean I think absolutely everything must be open source... the most important part here _is_ (git), github was (omg I'm already speaking past tense) a decent platform sprinkling some nice simple collaboration on top and convenience, it's not vital, and it's replaceable (so we have choice), and for a long time it was the best there was.

People are disappointed because many of us don't trust or like MS and want nothing to do with them, people complain about Google removing their "do no evil" clause, Microsoft basically has a fucking "do evil" clause but they will always tell you the opposite, they are probably even being sincere, it's just not true though.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#658

Post by gerdesj »

chrisan wrote: post #576
gerdesj wrote: post #503

Soooo .... Linus Torvalds knocks together a code repo thingie a few years back because Bit Keeper became a bit too non free (nice one Tridge P) and calls it Git. Git is specifically designed not to need centralisation. It turns out that git is not just for Linux and can be used to manage lots of software development. A few companies spring up with some paid for value add stuff - mainly centralisation with a pretty fr…

Perhaps Linus should have knocked together all the other things GitHub created/glued together, or more importantly grown such a large community under a single roof There’s a reason MS bought GitHub and not GitLab

Actually my real point was: scratch an itch and find you have lice living off you. No, err that's not it.

It is genuinely nice to see hard work pay off. Github have seriously put their back into it to create an environment that a lot of people feel comfortable with. I sincerely hope that MS do not fuck it up and wish them both all the best.

We still have git itself - that has never changed. That is the power of open source software.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#659

Post by TheAceOfHearts »

nyxtom wrote: post #197

It's interesting that the HN community continues to make reference to the prospect of a decentralized internet when Git was built to be decentralized in the first place. In spite of this, we all have congregated around GitHub for the community and are shocked when the centralized source we've been using gets acquired by a company we don't trust. That's sort of the whole point of centralization, you can't trust it. Ma…

You can easily migrate your repo to a different service, so having lots of developers rely on GitHub isn't really a big deal. Many large projects have GitHub mirrors.

I'd say the biggest issue is that Git doesn't include better built-in support for issues, wikis, PRs / code reviews, and releases. Compare that to Fossil [0], which lets you bundle up everything into a single file. If there was better built-in support you could migrate everything more easily to self-hosted alternatives like Gitea [1]. Regardless, it's possible to migrate manually, even if it's a bit more work.

[0] https://www.fossil-scm.org/index.html/doc/trunk/www/index.wi...

[1] https://gitea.io/en-US/

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#660

Post by sdesol »

ergomarky wrote: post #405
miguelrochefort wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure GitHub will introduce free private repos soon enough.

I'd be surprised if the announcement didn't also come with that change. Easiest way to even the field.

If Microsoft decides to make GitHub free for all, this can honestly have a devastating affect on GitLab and Bitbucket. I really think Microsoft is a lot more interested in:

- capturing developer data for ML/AI research

- identify new product ideas

- identify ways to improve existing products

- create a funnel to existing products

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