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Hello, GitHub

natfriedman.github.io

481–490 of 671 posts

Re: Hello, GitHub

#481
post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No sir, I do not. And I'd rather not have to.

I'm sometimes amazed at how afraid otherwise competent software dudes are of a bit of sysadministration.

It's not fear. It's experience. Having to keep an extra OS and software patched and up-to-date (often times different to the rest of your SoE because it's different software) and keep it safe from real-world threats takes a lot of time and context-switching to do well.

Hosting anything well takes up a lot more effort than the $100+/month we pay to GitHub and even the $7/month I pay personally.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#482
Microsoft might contribute to open source now and again, but their business model is actually worse than it was when everyone hated them. Now Microsoft is a surveillance machine like Google and Facebook, but they've also got enterprise captive audiences using their telemetry packed cloud and OS.

All this good will because they developed a telemetry packed browser-based text editor or finally started providing a not-dog-crap shell environment is stupid. Their binary editor is licensed like Chrome, who builds VSCode from source?

Both Google and Microsoft are doing a hell of a lot of embrace and extinguishing and I think that pattern will continue unnoticed as long as they keep devs happy with silly gimmicky pro-developer products.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#483
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.

What? You really imagine that they would delete private repositories belonging to competitors, to attempt to gain an advantage? If Microsoft did that they would be sued so quickly, and for so much it would be unreal. Additionally, there would probably be criminal charges. I just can't imagine a world where this is a possibility...

Re: Hello, GitHub

#484
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…

Ask some of the Gnome developers who were around when Nat and Miguel did mono as the open source C# vm and tightly integrated it into gnome over a lot of disquiet what happened next.

Nat is a great PR guy, no doubt about that. You may have no issue with his previous behaviour at Gnome when founding Ximian with respect to open source commitments etc. - but you should know about it and decide for yourself.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Ato…

Personally I've seen more people using Atom than VSCode, but that is just anecdotal.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#487
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…

I'm looking into Bitbucket right now, actually, and "unlimited private repos" is the first selling point listed on their pricing page ( https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing ). What I haven't been able to discover yet is what they charge for public repos, which are all I care about.

I cant understand this policy from Atlassian - if they arent going to try and become the next default OSS Git repo service on the back of this aquisition they need to fire their strategy team.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you run a recruitment web app that competes with LinkedIn?

What if? What if I run an operating system project, IDE project, email client, etc.? MSFT is going to steal or shutdown every type of software that competes with one of their products? Doesn't add up to me.

>"What if? What if I run an operating system project, IDE project, email client, etc.? MSFT is going to steal or shutdown every type of software that competes with one of their products?" Doesn't add up to me.

It doesn't matter.

The "what if?" is enough to cause a chilling effect. This will be the effective death of GitHub. I'm certain projects that are all-in on the platform will stick around out of momentum. But yesterday was the last day anyone would ever consider starting a new major project on GitHub.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#489
post #285
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…

> Nat Friedman, although I was not familiar with him prior to this, seems like an ideal candidate to run GitHub. Nat Friedman is a legend in the open source community. He founded Ximian in '99 with Miguel de Icaza, who both meant a lot for the Gnome community (e.g. via products such as Ximian Evolution) and Mono (FOSS .NET for *NIX). They got bought by Novell where he also got a top position. Nat has been busy with F…

> Nat Friedman is a legend in the open source community.

No not really, he and Miguel are known as sellouts and Microsoft shills/dickriders in the Linux community.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes same here. I’m really surprised by all the Microsoft hate as if we were still in the 80-90’s. MS is one of the biggest open source contributors nowadays. It's also really weird how people idealize GitHub. Did they forget GitHub was not a non-profit association, they were losing money, they deleted users repositories on their own, they had management issues, and people have been waiting some features for very long…

Once bitten, twice shy. Moreover, although I agree Microsoft is making efforts to change [1], pro-Microsoft partisans make it clear much of this is due to the new CEO. What one CEO does, another can undo. GitHub's bus factor is now 1. I would much rather have seen them go public. They were losing money, but not, last I saw, at a rate that was absurd for building a SaaS business. Is there some reason to think they cou…

>What one CEO does, another can undo.

I completely agree with that as a general principle, and I don't disagree with anything you've said outside of this quote. But are you suggesting that Nadella is going to leave Microsoft anytime soon?

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