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Microsoft acquires Github

blogs.microsoft.com

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Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#771

Post by Fnoord »

merinowool wrote: post #758
Fnoord wrote: post #648

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who has this access. The NSA? They didn't have this access when GitHub was independent? Says who? Backed up by which facts?

Fact is Microsoft is a hostile company and will have access to private repositories.

Fact? How do you define whether Microsoft is hostile? What are your criteria?

Look, I hated Microsoft in the '90s and '00s. I was there. I grew up in a world where IBM dominated the market though. They've both changed. The market has changed and both of these companies had to deal with that.

The reality is that nowadays people pay with their privacy instead of with currency for a product; they are the product. Does it matter much who owns the product (independent US company, big player like Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, or Apple?)

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#772

Post by Kalium »

morley wrote: post #735
sanbor wrote: post #685

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't mean that this is going to happen. I wanted to give an example of a potential threat. My idea was to show one of many problems with centralization and relying so much in GitHub and GitHub SSL certs. Maybe we can start signing our commits to increase security giving the potential threat. The same way that after the Snowden revelations we started using more and more HTTPS. We can also think of better ways of s…

> I wanted to give an example of a potential threat. I really don't like this line of thinking. It's the same one used by news organizations to plump up their stories, or by politicians to make an improbable threat seem more real. In both of those cases, I think the long-term effect is to cause the public to think that very rare events are a lot more common. The result is not a culture of wariness but a culture of fe…

OK. Let's not talk about potential threats. That's the language of fear, control, and paralysis. It's the language of liars and demagogues and exaggerations.

Let's talk about risks and goals. The language of opportunities.

An approach of `curl | bash` takes a needless amount of risk to accomplish its goals. It can do far too many things, of which it actually needs to do a small subset. It offers a lot of opportunity for bad things to happen to seize the opportunity for the things we want. Maybe there are ways to do the same things, to get the same ends, without taking on so much risk.

How do you feel about this subject?

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#773

Post by Stranger43 »

daniel-levin wrote: post #625
codetrotter wrote: post #15

> And Microsoft is all-in on open source. We have been on a journey with open source, and today we are active in the open source ecosystem, we contribute to open source projects, and some of our most vibrant developer tools and frameworks are open source. When it comes to our commitment to open source, judge us by the actions we have taken in the recent past, our actions today, and in the future. It’s a fair point bu…

The MS of today has massive skin in this OSS game. They've been contributing to the Linux kernel for years now [0]. They've got over 4000 repos on GitHub. Many projects are actively developed on GH. As an example, the VS code team solicits contributions on GH [1]. It's hard to say what kind of resources have been invested in .NET core and the open source compilers (Roslyn) and the CLR. Substantial resources. If you t…

The new Microsoft only exist in markets where the old Microsoft have been pushed to the fringes. In the markets where Microsoft still have the ability to set the rules their behavior is even worse then the bad old days when they still believed the windows market could grow(as anyone trying to get a telemetry free copy of windows10 can tell you).

What we are seeing now is Microsoft reacting to being kicked out of several markets by going back to the embrace phase in an attempt to regain some of the ground lost from Balmers failed attempt to secure a foothold for MS in the mobile and web framework markets.

If they had really been about embracing open source and open standards we would have seen them do something useful for Linux like releasing a version of excel for Linux or opening up the protocols outlook and exchange use to talk to each other, but that kind of openness was never on the table.

What i would expect to see with github is that if/when ms decide they want to utilize their investment for profit is a heavy integration with the azure environment in the form of CI hooks designed around azure api's to the point where other CI platforms become 2nd degree citizens in the ecosystem and i would not be surprised if a github account becomes a add on to an office365 subscription rather then a stand alone product.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#774

Post by deadcast »

icedchai wrote: post #695
deadcast wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just finished moving all my 20+ repos over from github and deleted all of my github accounts. Feels good actually. I'm glad to see gitlab getting good attention. I bet all of the people behind gitlab are feeling pumped/anxious/excited right now! ^_^

Congratulations! That sounds like a really good use of your time. Nobody ever get fired for choosing Microsoft...

It was actually very easy for me lmao. ^_^ I'm nooooooo noob to computer technology.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#775

Post by z3t4 »

heckanoobs wrote: post #45

I'm excited by this. I feel trapped between Google who will give everything away in exchange for spying on me, and Apple who will respect my privacy but shake me upside down with the most ridiculous vendor lock-in tactics. I'm glad someone as powerful as Microsoft can play the underdog role and provide a viable third alternative. Windows laptops that run Linux well enough for development. VS Code. I now develop on my…

Can you give any examples of these "little problems" ? I'm sure there are many people on here that would like to solve them, if they only knew what your problems are !

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#776

Post by manigandham »

hinkley wrote: post #770
manigandham wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point of your comment? Care to explain what "destructive" means then since you're claiming to be better educated about this?

No, I don’t care to explain. You opened with incredulity, an Appeal to Accoplishment/Authority, and now you are playing Prove Me Wrong/Teach Me.

The original poster claimed it was "destructive" which doesn't logically sound like a way to build a lot of value, especially to be one of the top 10 companies on the planet, at the very least without clarity on what they are supposedly destroying. From the votes and other comments, I'm clearly not alone in wondering. You had your chance to enlighten us but went with juvenile retorts instead, ultimately only really proving that you don't know either. Thanks for playing I guess.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#777

Post by andy-x »

kumarharsh wrote: post #712
toofy wrote: post #647

Part of the reason we trusted GitHub with our projects and our code was they were a neutral party simply providing a service. Sadly, being bought out by microsoft completely removes their neutrality. Whether they will abuse the trust of having complete and total access to every private repo and all of the code inside or not remains to be seen. But I certainly don’t view GitHub as neutral site anymore. Sadly, from a b…

Why will they kill of Github? They just shut down their own repository website (Codeplex) and moved all their code to github. That's perhaps the most misplaced fear I've read here. Plus, from what I've read, MS was perhaps the best possible buyer of GH - and no, a federated distributed model was definitely not a possibility given the huge sums of investor money involved.

They don't need to literally kill, they can just make many useful features internal to Microsoft developers, or make some features that are free now subscription-only.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#778

Post by cobalt »

oaiey wrote: post #736
cobalt wrote: post #679

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so microsoft should just shut down the company?

In the end his statement is not against Microsoft but capitalism.

but particularly msft it would seem. Many of the larger oss projects are maintained by companies who either make money off the products or are funded by the other things they work on

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#779

Post by eanzenberg »

passivepinetree wrote: post #690
eanzenberg wrote: post #669

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally am not worried. If I was running some nuclear centrifuge in Iran/N.Korea/etc. then I'd be worried.

This is another phrasing of the worn-out "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear" argument, and it doesn't have any place here.

Sure if I am the moral equivalent of an authoritative gov't seeking nuclear arms.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#780

Post by flamtap »

sushisource wrote: post #580
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…

They could also do it regardless of whether or not Microsoft owns them or whatever favorite acronym authorizes them, or whatever. I've never understood why people love freaking out about this stuff. If the NSA felt like spying on you, pro tip, they're gonna be able to do it. If you care about keeping your shit secure, it shouldn't be on the internet at all.

>If you care about keeping your shit secure, it shouldn't be on the internet at all.

If only we lived in a world where this was practical.

I don't think it's unreasonable to be concerned about privacy this way, or to take issue with the possibility that this acquisition could make it easier for one to be spied on or surveilled. However, we should also cautious that our tin foil hats do not grow too heavy.

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