Another reminder, alongside the apparent Microsoft GitHub acquision, that regulators need to step up and prevent large tech firms from acting anti competitively. From another Economist article ("How to Tame the Tech Titans", https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/01/18/how-to-tame-the... ): > Two broad changes of thinking would go a long way towards sensibly taming the titans. The first is to make better use of exist…
Seeing that Github is reportedly unprofitable, if they aren't acquired by a profitable company, what's the alternative? What do you think Microsoft would do to harm Github? I doubt it would be as bad as what became of SourceForge.
I don't have a stake in Github. I am a user with 2 distinct roles. In one role, I work for a company that pays for Github's services. Github has done a very good job hiring people who have maintained the service as it scaled to very high levels. I am concerned that Microsoft will be unable or even unwilling to keep those teams intact. They may wish to restructure the organisation. They may wish to change middle management in an attempt to make it profitable, etc, etc. Github has had a good track record with us. Organisationally we have no experience with Microsoft, so it's a risk.
Personally, I spent a chunk of my career working in the MS world (working with gold/platinum level partners). This is ancient history by now (10 years ago), but my experience with MS support was abysmal. Essentially "support" amounted to having a telephone number where I could report issues. No follow up allowed. No notification if the issue was ever resolved. Upgrade to the next version when it comes out and check for yourself to see if it has been fixed. Hey, that's why we pay for those MSDN subscriptions! Though, if you have about 1000 seats in your license, you can get real support (if you are lucky). Maybe that's all changed and they are fantastic, but once bitten twice shy as they say.
In my other role as a consumer with Github, I have my personal repositories there. I still vividly remember MS's push to create a division between "hobbyists" and "professional developers". The idea was to provide different levels of access based on the idea that "professional developers" work for large companies that will pay for high licensing fees and extensive support contracts (which only really seem to count if you have at least 1000 seats... see above). "Hobbyists" are intentionally crippled by giving them just enough access to seem like they can do something, but denying them crucial things.
With the release of VSCode, etc, I can see that the company has changed, but old ideas die hard. 10 or 15 years is not enough time for me to feel like I can trust the company. Will they slowly screw me over by using their dominant position to "boil the frog" -- slowly crippling their "hobbyists" without ever doing anything overt enough to cause them to jump out of the pot? Only time will tell, but yes I'm quite concerned. To be fair, MS is not the only potential purchaser who would concern me. At least it isn't Oracle!