Live data from Hacker News

Hello, GitHub

natfriedman.github.io

251–260 of 671 posts

Re: Hello, GitHub

#251

A nice, safe introduction. There's a lot of talk about people leaving github for other platforms. If there are actually doing it, it seems like a short-sighted move. I understand why people who lived through the earlier years of Microsoft are skeptical. Microsoft did a very good job of earning a lot of ill will. But things have changed. Microsoft's primary focus seems to be is Azure and everything they do needs to be…

Because it is the business interest to get people using Azure, how do you think this will effect Github?

I would guess that the acquisition will not affect Github in any detrimental way. I would argue that developer good-will is a more valuable commodity to Microsoft now than in the years past.

More happy users of Github => more happy developers using a MS product => more developer good-will => more developers/decision-influencers that might consider a MS cloud product (like Azure).

Re: Hello, GitHub

#252

developing when you were six? fuck off

Why not? I was programming on a Commodore Plus/4 at the age of five. I got my teeth into this industry by hand typing from magazine articles programs that done nothing more then making the sound of bird tweets, but it taught me A: the basics of how a programming language works, and B: how to debug to get around the inevitable typo in the magazine.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#253
post #63

I'm split on this one. I lived through Microsoft's dark ages, when the victory of open source was still hanging by a thread. The reason we're seeing a softer Microsoft is that they lost, they were forced to change. And the open question is what they learned in the process. On the other hand, they're producing pretty decent software these days; dotNet Core, TypeScript & VSCode just to name a few solid projects. Open s…

Your positives are more closely linked to your negatives than you might think: Microsoft's open source projects are actually working to bring those endless privacy intrusions over from Windows so you can enjoy them on other systems as well – .NET Core and VS Code will collect and send your data to Microsoft by default, without bothering to ask for your permission.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#254
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

viral how? You think it's morally ok to just use others work without contributing back any improvements/disclosing it to make money?

I wasn't expressing my own opinion on such licenses; 'viral' is accepted terminology for licenses like the gpl that require derivative works to use the same license. However, if you would like an argument, then yes. Or, rather, I think it's morally ok for people to make software under any license they choose, including licenses that allow big companies to use their work. Personally, I use bsd-3 for most of what I wri…

> I think it's morally ok for people to make software under any license they choose

Yes, you can make your own software under any license, GPL has no control over you. But it's not ok to fork a GPL software make internal changes and sell it like you wrote it.

If that applied to linux, no hardware vendor would be contributing to linux.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#255
post #7

I’m going to be a bit contrarian to “the sky is falling” posts on HN and say: I think Microsoft is handling this really well. 1) They’ve acknowledged the skepticism around the acquisition. 2) They’ve expressed their commitment to keep GitHub an independent platform (like they did with LinkedIn.) 3) Nat Friedman, although I was not familiar with him prior to this, seems like an ideal candidate to run GitHub. This, ove…

I agree, my biggest concerns are: 1. What is happening to Atom? I have tried VS code and don't really like it due to the difference in how the 2 systems are designed to work (Atom being more "plugins are king", VSCode being more "kitchen sink included by first-party"). I'd hate to see my favorite editor lose it's major backing. If MS makes a commitment to continue to develop Atom, or they work with someone else to "t…

Fellow Atom user here. According to Lee Dohm, Open Source Community Manager at GitHub, "Atom remains key to GitHub. Our product roadmap is set, and the team will continue all of their work." [0]

[0] https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/17454#issuecomment-39442...

Re: Hello, GitHub

#256
post #165

What nobody is really commenting on is how huge of an opportunity this is for Microsoft to reinvent itself in the eyes of the developer community. If Microsoft can somehow manage to gain trust from Github users, which is very possible and desirable for them, it will make Azure more compelling in many ways than Amazon as a cloud computing platform. After Amazon's acquisition of Cloud9, Microsoft is the first big compa…

The Microsoft bashing is painful. I also wonder about outcomes like that, positive ones for Microsoft, GitHub the platform and GitHub the community. So much negativity!

Painful... for you.

On a serious note though, they deserve all the skepticism coming to them. I know they’ve been working in the last few years to revert their status as OSS public enemy #1 but remember, this is the company that said the GPL is cancer.

Let them earn our trust. Keep the pressure, stay vigilant and be ready to change vendors.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#257
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People saying that it is easy to migrate don’t know what they are > talking about. GitHub isn’t just Git hosting, but a social network > of open source developers and projects. You can’t migrate stars, > issues with comments and the history of PRs, all linked to the > profiles of their authors. Every single for-profit company works their ass off to build a "moat" around their business and to create switching costs,…

He made it pretty clear that there wasn't a moat that he needed to forge but rather the missing the community, that's not really something that anyone could build a tool to transfer...

communities are moats too

Re: Hello, GitHub

#258
post #148
post #7

I’m going to be a bit contrarian to “the sky is falling” posts on HN and say: I think Microsoft is handling this really well. 1) They’ve acknowledged the skepticism around the acquisition. 2) They’ve expressed their commitment to keep GitHub an independent platform (like they did with LinkedIn.) 3) Nat Friedman, although I was not familiar with him prior to this, seems like an ideal candidate to run GitHub. This, ove…

Google and Facebook have tons of private repositories hosted on GitHub. I'd imagine it would be illegal for Microsoft to look into them but Microsoft being such a huge company, this acquisition could easily make Google and Facebook nervous.

...look into / lock / delete them. This gives microsoft the ability to all but stop work at companies who use private repos who compete with them, and/or delete critical repositories. Hope those companies have backups.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#259
post #7

I’m going to be a bit contrarian to “the sky is falling” posts on HN and say: I think Microsoft is handling this really well. 1) They’ve acknowledged the skepticism around the acquisition. 2) They’ve expressed their commitment to keep GitHub an independent platform (like they did with LinkedIn.) 3) Nat Friedman, although I was not familiar with him prior to this, seems like an ideal candidate to run GitHub. This, ove…

I agree, my biggest concerns are: 1. What is happening to Atom? I have tried VS code and don't really like it due to the difference in how the 2 systems are designed to work (Atom being more "plugins are king", VSCode being more "kitchen sink included by first-party"). I'd hate to see my favorite editor lose it's major backing. If MS makes a commitment to continue to develop Atom, or they work with someone else to "t…

> Atom

I could be wrong but my perception is that Atom is losing market share to VSCode all on its own– new devs are much more likely to adopt vscode & no growth ~= decline for an editor. Couple that with the fact that no one pays for Atom...

IMO They don't need to "kill" atom, they just need to wait a couple years, at which point it will just Yet Another Editor down the list with TextWrangler et al., if the next Atom doesn't come along and hasten its decline even further.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#260
post #36
post #4

He seems very reasonable, have a better feeling about this now. Maybe GitHub will be able to be a VSCode.

> Maybe GitHub will be able to be a VSCode. The question is, what will happen to Atom? What will happen to the X-Ray research project?

I don’t understand why I keep reading “what about attom”.

Atom is irrelevant to all of this, as far as I can tell. Can someone please educate me?

Post reply on HN