I spent eight years building software on .NET, so I have a lot of time for Microsoft, but I fully understand why a lot of people aren't happy with this news. It's been good to have a leader in open-source that is unaffiliated with anyone but the tech they chose to use (Ruby/Rails). For me, it doesn't matter who takes it over - it's just sad to see a neutral player disappear. With all that said, things have changed a…
I also spent years working with Microsoft’s proprietary technologies. The reality of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish was still alive and well as late as 2011 when I mostly stopped dealing with them. Since that time they have definitely taken a new direction, with increasing adoption of Linux in particular, but I have trouble belieiving the corporate DNA has been so thoroughly overwritten in the last few years that this d…
Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub
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Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub
#712It'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…
Bluntly, I doubt this will shock the world of software development into being less centralized. The practical benefits of centralization are, apparently, too large to be readily overcome.
Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub
#713Earlier quoted context omitted.
Centralization has an undeniable fundamental attraction. Everything, really, seems to naturally trend towards centralization, and then major scandals reverse the trend. We will probably swing back and forth between the two in perpetuity. The whole darn internet was built to be decentralized. And yet we all use GMail, the same handful of DNS servers, the same short list of major trunk hubs, the same shrinking list of…
I think the big problem is not so much centralisation as it is that people are locked into platforms. There's nothing wrong with using Gmail for email hosting if you have your own domain name, it's easy to then switch over. But if you use an @gmail.com email address and Google decides to ban you, you're screwed. Same story with Facebook, there are quite a few people that I would possibly never be able to contact agai…
You can loose control of your domain too. And if someone else snatches it up they could even read your newly incoming email. I'm willing to bet when gmail bans an account, they don't recycle it.
Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub
#714Wonder where the big tech companies will move their projects to? GitLab?
We finally has a single, neutral site for code and which everyone uses and MS messes it up.
I do hope once and for all we can put to rest this idea MS has changed. Clearly these actions show they have not change.
Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub
#715It'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…
So we had limited trust in the centralized missions we gave it: communications, issues, pull requests.
I am sure that as soon as a good tool allows to do that in a decentralized fashion, we will switch to it.
Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub
#716I am also well versed in JavaScript/Node.js ecosystem and have a deep interest in DevOps, Cloud, and the new serverless tech. I care very deeply about Developer Experience and most of my open source work is related to dev-tooling.
Now that you know this about me, it's easier for you understand why I am writing this post, and maybe why I think my opinion matters. Below is a copy-paste from the Twitter thread that I created on this topic:
1️⃣ @Microsoft is about to acquire @GitHub. A lot of folks are skeptical. But I have a different view. Many of you know I am building a course on VSCode.pro for that, I've seen firsthand, how 🆚@Code repo is one of the best #OpenSource repos out there
2️⃣— Once I created a GitHub issue at 🆚@Code repo for markdown and I was impressed by how vscodebot auto-assigned @MattBierner (who works on Markdown of VSCode) to the issue and then @tonybrix from MarkedJS helped me out. It was best GitHub automation WITH results ever!
3️⃣— Don't "@" me coz I know about @Microsoft's history with #OpenSource. I am a full-time open sourcerer and I can't sit here quiet instead of supporting what looks like the new @Microsoft — @SatyaNadella's moving the company from @Windows dependant to in-house @Linux dev
4️⃣— Every other day I find/meet people working at @Microsoft using Linux/Mac based devices — even bought by the company for them. Guess what? 1,000 MSFT Employees pushing open source code on GitHub. This is a BIG 🆕 change. Taking it lightly in 2018 would be tomfoolery.
5️⃣— I've been most inspired by teams behind 🆚@Code (@auchenberg ) and @Azure — I think that @JeffSand has built an incredible team of @AzureAdvocates folks like @ashleymcnamara @sarah_edo @jawache @burkeholland @simona_cotin @_clarkio @John_Papa @holtbt @film_girl @TommyLee
6️⃣—I'm a big fan of "Dev Experience" (DX) that's why I pay $200 for a font I use in 🆚Code & have built s of #OpenSource dev-tooling github.com/ahmadawais—Teams at @Azure are doing a lot to make DX better for the cloud → @AzureFunctions + @Code integration is impressive!
7️⃣— GitHub's been struggling to find a new CEO for a year. What if? It's my primary code hosting company. It's helped me go full-time open source with the support from awesome dev community/companies. Safe to say that @GitHub has made #OpenSource better
8️⃣— @Microsoft has done a lot for #OpenSource in the last 4 years with @SatyaNadella.
🆚 @Code's love. @Linux Subsystem on @Windows. Draft.sh for @kubernetesio didn't have a Windows version and still offers @MacHomebrew as the go-to way of installing it!
9️⃣—@GitHub is not exactly a cash-cow. @Microsoft has put money where their mouth is — out of 1.5 Million organizations on GitHub MSFT has most GitHub contributors to its repos, it's the biggest company with over 1000 employees contributing code to GitHub →proof of good faith!
— I think @Microsoft is changing for good. The intent here's to connect with developers and not offend them by disrupting a good company. MSFT won't change a lot but this acquisition might make GitHub a lot better. Also, MSFT will jump into ROR. It's high time for #OpenSource.
What are your thoughts on this whole thing?! Peace! ️
Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub
#717It'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 y…
Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub
#718This 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…
Just wish MS could have left alone. They just do not help move things forward. Now wasted cycles have to be spent to deal with this thanks to MS.
Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub
#719GitLab on the other hand is focused on solving every facet of the development lifecycle within their core product. From their blog post about GitHub's acquisition:
> ... instead of integrating multiple tools together, we believe a single application, built from the ground up to support the entire DevOps lifecycle is a better experience leading to a faster cycle time.
It will be interesting to see how the different strategies play out.
[0] https://github.com/marketplace [1] https://github.com/marketplace/pull-reminders/