What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub

#101

Post by lorenzobr » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 9:34 AM UTC

mixedbit wrote: post #70

onion2k wrote: post #13

Assuming GitHub was actually losing money and couldn't fix that problem quickly enough it's fair to assume they had to sell, and it's reasonable to believe there aren't that many companies who could have bought them if you think an understanding of the domain is important, then you're really limited to Facebook (user surveillance, adverts), Apple (bad at software, not developer friendly), Google (user surveillance, a…

How about Atlassian?

Atlassian would have pretty much no reason to buy GitHub, unless it's to shut it down.

They have Bitbucket and I think is pretty safe to say that they don't care about people hosting their open source stuff.

Of course you can use Bitbucket for free but where the big bucks are for Atlassian is the enterprise market. I don't have market data but I don't think there are many big corps using GitHub as opposite to Bitbucket together with other Atlassian products.

Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub

#102

Post by gurkendoktor » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 9:35 AM UTC

raesene9 wrote: post #4

The idea that some companies must be forever tainted by their misdeads in the past seems odd to me. Companies change leadership, direction and style and it seems odd to suggest that there's some underlying quality which means that, regardless of that, you can never trust them (or in reverse that you should always trust a company you once trusted) There seems to be a trope with Microsoft that they're still the same co…

> the senior leadership aren't the same people and I'd imagine neither are the staff.

And what about their clients/cash flows? Microsoft still sells to enterprises and governments, so their incentives are to keep adding backdoors and Orwellian telemetry to everything.

At least in the late nineties I felt that Microsoft was merely unfair to their competitors. Now they're openly hostile to their end-users as well.

Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub

#103

Post by beagle3 » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 9:35 AM UTC

cube2222 wrote: post #25

RyanZAG wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 is really recent though. That said, since I like controversy: I'm happier to see Microsoft buy Github than I would be to see Google or Facebook buy it. And also! A big shoutout to Linus for helping to make source control distributed and open, which means swapping between git providers (for the code at least) is simple, easy and impossible to block. The amount of good Linus has done for the world is incredi…

Well yes, Windows 10, finally a practically usable Windows in my opinion. Finally working, with a lot of polish and Dev tools available. (Like wsl)

It was pushed down the throat of customers, using dark patterns and “better ask forgiveness than permission” ethics. It also took away choice from the vast majority of users, and started sending opaque and vaguely described telemetry.

The problem with Microsoft wasn’t that their software sucks (some does, some is great).

It is that they have been bullying users and companies for the past 30 years. Many people point to a “new Microsoft”, and the win10 rollout is a stark counter example to that claim.

Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub

#104

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 9:35 AM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #59

ssijak wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use AppCode. XCode being a mess is not making Apple developer unfriendly, it just means that they don`t know how to make a good IDE. I don`t mind 100$ per year if it means better support then nonexistant Google support. Also if I am making money off the platform I don`t mind paying. And it also stops random people submitting crap apps to the store.

And it also stops random people submitting crap apps to the store. It clearly doesn't work.

It's much better than the Windows app store though.

Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub

#105

Post by ekianjo » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 9:35 AM UTC

raesene9 wrote: post #4

The idea that some companies must be forever tainted by their misdeads in the past seems odd to me. Companies change leadership, direction and style and it seems odd to suggest that there's some underlying quality which means that, regardless of that, you can never trust them (or in reverse that you should always trust a company you once trusted) There seems to be a trope with Microsoft that they're still the same co…

But companies dont change shareholders much. They are the real bosses in the end of the day.

Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub

#106

Post by _fwu1 » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 9:35 AM UTC

Microsoft is not a company that ever contributed my life as a Linux user and open source contributor for years. In fact, it always made life harder for me.

Here is a recent example; because Microsoft made a deal with Lenovo, now new Thinkpads are designed for just Windows. If you're a Linux user, good luck in your new adventure. People say "isn't it like IOS or Android?"; it's not. We had this freedom of using Linux, and Microsoft has been taking it back.

Microsoft doesn't appreciate freedom, this is why they used to fight open source and make open source communities look like bunch of marginalized geeks. It's sad to see they now own Github.

Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub

#107

Post by badsectoracula » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 9:35 AM UTC

raesene9 wrote: post #38

RyanZAG wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 is really recent though. That said, since I like controversy: I'm happier to see Microsoft buy Github than I would be to see Google or Facebook buy it. And also! A big shoutout to Linus for helping to make source control distributed and open, which means swapping between git providers (for the code at least) is simple, easy and impossible to block. The amount of good Linus has done for the world is incredi…

I think MS made mis-steps on the Windows 10 privacy setup for sure, although they've largely fixed it in later releases with improved visibility of Privacy options and better docs on how to disable most of the telemetry stuff. Personally I like Windows 10 as a general purpose client OS, WSL is great and stability for me across a number of devices has been very good.

> and better docs on how to disable most of the telemetry stuff.

How about disabling all of the "phone home" stuff, telemetry or whatever else? There is still only two options "Basic" and "Full" options without any "None" option and really most of the relevant options are scattered all over the place, making it a chore to disable them (and you need to redo that stuff every big update). This is either extremely dumb (which i doubt) or done with malicious intent so that people will miss stuff and/or get tired of them.

Unless they provide the means to completely stop all communication with their servers with a single switch, there is no reason to give them any benefit of the doubt.

Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub

#108

Post by cube2222 » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 9:36 AM UTC

setquk wrote: post #92

cube2222 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well yes, Windows 10, finally a practically usable Windows in my opinion. Finally working, with a lot of polish and Dev tools available. (Like wsl)

I don't buy the usability argument of WSL. The thing isn't anywhere near a useful Linux environment other than for some noddy stuff that cygwin can already handle. Try running a background process, a service, use a serial port or drag some half decent performance out of it and you'll see. It is ultimately backed with NTFS and NT's buffer cache. Running a VM is still several orders of magnitude more productive. And yo…

That's… completely false. At least for me. You should really stop and think before accusing people to have noob workloads.

Even cronjobs work… The performance is sometimes better than on native linux, as a few of the syscalls are better implemented on windows. The file performance is abysmal, but that only hurts if you're using npm (and there you're in a world of pain already anyways).

The only thing lacking, is that some debuggers don't work, which is a pity, but then I just start a docker container and mount it on my filesystem.

I am using services on it too actually, everything works as expected. I can actually create windows bat files to redirect to linux binaries, which lets me do for example OCaml development, with the linux toolchain, on a system that actually works reliably. (my experience is, that as of windows 10, desktop linux environments crash way more often than windows ones)

Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub

#109

Post by badsectoracula » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 9:37 AM UTC

mpartel wrote: post #24

RyanZAG wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 is really recent though. That said, since I like controversy: I'm happier to see Microsoft buy Github than I would be to see Google or Facebook buy it. And also! A big shoutout to Linus for helping to make source control distributed and open, which means swapping between git providers (for the code at least) is simple, easy and impossible to block. The amount of good Linus has done for the world is incredi…

Another recent example: lockdown of ARM-based Windows machines, preventing the installation of other operating systems.

I really dislike how you get downvoted (your message is faded out) here. Do people really applaud removal of control of their own devices?

Re: What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub

#110

Post by rbanffy » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 9:37 AM UTC

Quarrelsome wrote: post #62

ssijak wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is Apple not developer friendly?

Apple store EULA agreement with developers is the most macabre and lengthy mis-spelling of the words: "fuck you". Its not a nice agreement.

Apple places users first, developers next, hardware makers (direct competitors) last.

Microsoft places competitors (people who develop operating systems, databases, etc) on an entirely different list.