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Microsoft acquires Github

blogs.microsoft.com

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Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#631

Post by azurelogic »

kbenson wrote: post #603
dj-wonk wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do people say "X and Y aren't comparable" and then proceed to compare them? :) I'm not (only) trying to be pedantic here -- I'm just pointing out the loaded language. In both business models and product recommendations, people use the word "comparable" to justify their conclusions, rather than to explain their comparisons themselves. It is all about framing a decision for a particular use case at a particular pri…

Part of it is due to an alternate definition of comparable, which is "of equivalent quality; worthy of comparison", as opposed to "able to be likened to another; similar". It's being used as shorthand for "they aren't equivalent", and then they go to justify that assessment. I get your point though. The form and structure of the language used, consciously of subconsciously, often conveys quite a bit more information…

Exactly. With this definition, the phrase "compare and contrast" makes much more sense. The point here was to leap frog the fact that GitHub and GitLab have very comparable feature sets, and instead highlight the things that GitLab has that GitHub is totally missing.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#632

Post by aphextron »

marricks wrote: post #605

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that come Monday morning all the reasonable critiques are buried at the bottom of the page and all the GitHub + MS love is upvoted to the top, hyping up all the "amazing business synergies". Multibillion dollar mergers like this are huge things, especially for with a big player acquiring a smaller beloved brand like GitHub. Makes one wonder how many of those leaks over the past week w…

It's like that super rich kid who really wants to hang out with you and your friends so bad and he's kind of nice, but just a total dork. So then he has his dad buy the abandoned lot everyone plays wiffle ball in and forces you to let him join your team. And it's like "Oh yeah sure Microsoft....come on and play... yeah sure we were just about to invite you..."

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#633

Post by ethbro »

sametmax wrote: post #132
ethbro wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS PR astroturfing HN is one potential cause. Another possibility is that HN members are responding favorably to MS's recent moves. Be careful not to dismiss anything that runs counter to your own narrative as fake. Like you said, we'll see!

I had this debate for the last 10 years, and everytime there are persons to say "maybe this time they changed", and everytime use something like "Be careful not to dismiss anything that runs counter to your own narrative as fake". The problem with a PR machine is that it never get tired of repeating the same story, while we do. And people eventually listen to the PR machine anyway. That's why it works. Not because it…

I've been watching MS for the last 23 years. So I'm not oblivious to history. ;)

And granted that's how PR works, but the problem with carrying distrust to defend against it is that is eventually makes one paranoid.

Personally, I aspire to objective reevaluation at the current point in time.

In 2018?

Microsoft historically did terrible things to open source, Balmer was an asshole about casting it as us vs them, and they still have substantial legacy OS and Office revenue streams to protect.

At the same time, their cloud business is rapidly growing, they've realized the only way to compete there is to embrace open source, and that's beginning to permeate the rest of the company. Largely via promoting someone from the dev / server / cloud business as CEO.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#634

Post by ryanisnan »

marricks wrote: post #605

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that come Monday morning all the reasonable critiques are buried at the bottom of the page and all the GitHub + MS love is upvoted to the top, hyping up all the "amazing business synergies". Multibillion dollar mergers like this are huge things, especially for with a big player acquiring a smaller beloved brand like GitHub. Makes one wonder how many of those leaks over the past week w…

It's interesting strategy. Even in their corporate merger photos, I can't help but sense how deliberate Satya's and Nat's clothing choices were. Regardless of the intent, we are being told a story.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#635

Post by jehlakj »

aphextron wrote: post #632
marricks wrote: post #605

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that come Monday morning all the reasonable critiques are buried at the bottom of the page and all the GitHub + MS love is upvoted to the top, hyping up all the "amazing business synergies". Multibillion dollar mergers like this are huge things, especially for with a big player acquiring a smaller beloved brand like GitHub. Makes one wonder how many of those leaks over the past week w…

It's like that super rich kid who really wants to hang out with you and your friends so bad and he's kind of nice, but just a total dork. So then he has his dad buy the abandoned lot everyone plays wiffle ball in and forces you to let him join your team. And it's like "Oh yeah sure Microsoft....come on and play... yeah sure we were just about to invite you..."

Or that time when they bought Skype.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#636

Post by dcbadacd »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #48
Totoradio wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand those concerns, but what can they do to convince you they have changed?

(1) Make it easy for alternative OS to run on Surface/Windows-certified devices: Both x86 and ARM. (2) Support OpenDocumentFormat in their office apps. Still remember how they corrupted the ISO certification process by creating OOXML (which is just a wrapper over binary blobs produced by MS-Office) (3) Stop suing Android OEM's for patent licenses

There's a nice documentary about Microsoft vs. FLOSS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wGLS2rSQPQ

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#637

Post by slrz »

distances wrote: post #327
squarefoot wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nokia had Maemo/Meego which wasn't on par with Android at that time wrt the software ecosystem, but with some investment in development could have killed it pretty easily: thanks to native code a device could offer the same performance using slower CPUs and less RAM, or be a lot snappier with the same hardware. Given due time, manufacturers and users would have noticed. As probably did Microsoft. You can have a full…

I really liked the Maemo and Meego phones that got released, but your scenario would not have happened. Nokia's DNA was not in software development, and they couldn't really compete with Google on that. Furthermore, Nokia wouldn't have shared a successful OS with others like Google did if they had one. That meant all other manufacturers were going to stay with Android, and I greatly doubt that they would've succeeded…

> Nokia wouldn't have shared a successful OS with others like Google did if they had one

But that was exactly the plan. When they cooperated with Intel to build Meego, the resulting OS was available to all other handset manufacturers and there were test suites in the work for vendors to be able to claim Meego compat, just as with Android.

The Meego OS was actually quite solid and very nice to develop for. Its major problem was the unwillingness of most app developers to support additional platforms besides Android and the Iphones. Just as with Windows Phone.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#638

Post by ethbro »

superkuh wrote: post #245
ethbro wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'll have to walk me through your logic on that again. How is repeated exposure more likely to increase positive opinion?

It is more likely to be perceived as a common opinion and then people tend to go with what they think the crowd thinks. (PDF) http://erewhon.superkuh.com/library/Neuroscience/Psychology/...

That would work through repeatedly exposing people to positive or favorable news. Aka astroturfing. Aka what I asked about.

Parent comment specified the same news, which makes less sense.

If I hear 100x that MS is buying GitHub, that doesn't make me more likely to respond favorably.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#639

Post by lern_too_spel »

sanbor wrote: post #422

This is a wake up call. Too many things are relying on Github right now. Microsoft was part of the PRISM program. If Microsoft shares SSL certs with NSA they could do MITM attacks. What if in some very specific cases you download dependencies from GitHub and they give you a different version with malicious code? It's the NSA. They could be smart enough to only deploy those attacks on production servers were nobody is…

> If Microsoft shares SSL certs with NSA they could do MITM attacks.

There is zero reason to believe they do.

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