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Hello, GitHub

natfriedman.github.io

371–380 of 671 posts

Re: Hello, GitHub

#371
While Microsoft has a lot of nice marketing and really good PR, they are still a corporation that makes money off selling SQL server licenses and office suite and increasingly by harvesting your user data.

Microsoft is addicted to your data. They siphon it off whenever they get the chance, often times by default and without your knowledge or consent. Even their cli Linux tools have """analytics""".

This will never change, no matter what slick marketing materials they produce, what PR fluff they have, or shills that shill for them.

The simple fact is I cannot trust Microsoft, especially to not touch code in my private repositories. I am sure they just want some "metrics" and to do some "analytics" on all the private data held in GitHub.

To use GitHub now, is to trust the same company who works hand in hand with the government and the NSA to make sure you stay insecure and known to agencies who just want to run some "metrics" and do some "analytics" on you.

No thanks.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#372
post #337
post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think Microsoft is handling this really well. What is baffling for me, is how worried some people seem to be. If you understand the Git hosting space, you would know Microsoft tried to compete with GitHub and failed miserably. It is quite clear the value that GitHub provides is data and there is ABSOLUTELY no way Microsoft would want to disturb this. In fact, Bitbucket, GitLab and others should be concerned that…

If you look at how the Xamarin acquisition went, this seems like a likely outcome.

I think Microsoft can really help GitHub in the Enterprise space. Imagine GitHub being able to offer GitHub Enterprise for free for the first 10 users. Imagine being able to discount GitHub Enterprise heavily.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS employee here: Long before the acquisition, we've been hosting important stuff in private GitHub repositories. Including having strategic discussions in those private repositories. We've also done a lot of that stuff in public too. Some might say a bit too much, given that we've had things leaked and/or misinterpreted w.r.t product direction in the past. I still agree with your point, but I believe more of this so…

> Long before the acquisition, we've been hosting important stuff in private GitHub repositories. Including having strategic discussions in those private repositories. Wow! I am very surprised by that. Is that an officially allowed policy? Or is it something that is "don't ask for permission, ask for forgiveness"?

How so? What was going to be controlled, by whom?

Re: Hello, GitHub

#374
post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, Microsoft will use their new power to block Go development by deleting their repo, or grind the thousands of Facebook employees to a halt by blocking the React repository. Maybe replace the go repo to a redirect to .NET Core.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#375
post #304
post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not entirely true. Microsoft puts (almost? Yet to find anything that isn't) all our code on VSTS which is accessible remotely, without VPN. I've checked in a (very very minor docs) fix to the Windows code base from my Android phone over LTE.

That's amazing. Contrast that to my friend who works on code at Apple that's so guarded that he can't even access it from Apple HQ. He has to travel to his office in an unmarked Apple bldg several miles from HQ (in an unmarked van) and access the code from inside the bldg. Any attempt to work on his code outside that bldg, on the Apple employee shuttle for example, will result in immediate firing with possible crimin…

This sounds proportionate if a state might go after the code. For example phone encryption might be a big prize for the Chinese or even American government.

Microsoft actually hand over OS code to states regularly for certain contracts so I figure they don't need to protect most of thier code like that.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#376

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…

> 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.

My opinion of Microsoft isn't based on whether or not it owns Github.

My opinion is based on other aspects of their behavior, such as:

- Do they force mainstream Windows users to provide telemetry data to Microsoft?

- Do they threaten Android developers with lawsuits regarding violation of unspecified patents?

- Do they use OS upgrades as an opportunity to reset opt-out telemetry gathering.

- Have they recently used dark UI patterns to trick users into installing Windows 10?

- Do they make telemetry collection opt-out (and non-obvious) for the .net CLI tools?

Any meaningful reinvention of Microsoft would involve (1) stopping those kinds of behaviors, and (2) making a compelling, public argument for why we should never expect those behaviors again from Microsoft.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#377

Are there actually people dumb enough to think microsoft employees will be browsing their private repos?

This was the company that would (allegedly) start acquisition talks and then after they learned what they needed during due diligence they would back out of the deal and create a competing product. (Unfortunately, I don't know the words to search for any articles.) So, while I, personally don't think they would, I also wouldn't take the risk. FB employees looked at people's private details; if you can, someone will do it at some time.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#378
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You make a good point about the just-move-to-Git[whatever] being the entrenched social aspect of many repos! I can't imagine if, say the day comes when developers flee GH en-masse, it will be at all easy to retain the discussion history behind repos.

There is an API https://developer.github.com/v3/issues/ It could be not trivial to map those data into the new destination, especially if they don't have an API too. This is how to programmatically create a new issue on GitLab https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/api/issues.html#new-issue and in Bitbucket https://developer.atlassian.com/bitbucket/api/2/reference/re...

Gitlab already support this, no need to go with home grown bit banging.

https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/import/github.html

Re: Hello, GitHub

#379

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…

Depending too much on Github and Azure (because you rely on their integration), instead of depending too much on either Github or Azure, is a clear risk increase that most users should avoid, not something "awesome". The only amazing opportunities are for vendor lock-in.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think public code will still live on github, but I See FAANG 100% avoiding any private github repos from now on.

FAANG, I've never seen this before! Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google?

Correct, It's often used in modern context when talking about what stock is powering the market right now. It's a "FAANG" market.

EDIT: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/faang-stocks.asp

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