Hello, GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: Hello, GitHub

#521

Post by Iv » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:09 AM UTC

ericabiz wrote: 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…

People who have known Microsoft and struggle with their tech and unfair practices in the 90s are skeptic because we have seen this movie already.

How many "new Microsoft" have we seen already?

"Will they follow through on these commitments? Will they continue to listen to the community?"

No and no. Microsoft is not in the business of making good software, it is a PR firm, an awesome marketing department with tons of experience in shady practices, and the bare minimum dev team to make Windows somewhat competitive.

Microsoft is a big company with a big NIH syndrome. Github is antinomic with their culture.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#522

Post by Iv » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:12 AM UTC

I wonder if MS went all the way to pay people to comment and vote on HN stories and comment. It would make a lot of sense for them to do. I wonder if HN has any protection against this?

Re: Hello, GitHub

#523

Post by sdesol » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:20 AM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #508

sdesol wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It helps smaller players (Gitlab, etc.) to break the monopoly of Github Or do the opposite. If Microsoft decides to make private repos on GitHub free, I can see VERY big issues for other players. I suspect more people use GitHub alternatives for cost reasons, rather than ideological ones.

Microsoft already offers free private git hosting, project management, build servers, etc through VSTS for up to five users.

Microsoft currently offering free private repos and them acquiring GitHub may be quite telling. I don't think people fully realize what kind name recognition GitHub has, on the Git hosting space.

When Microsoft shutdown their competing product to GitHub, I think they had like 200 active users. Compare that to GitHub, which had millions of active users. Maybe this is the same with private repos. That is, the number of paying GitHub customers is an order of a magnitude more than free VSTS customers.

I really think Microsoft wants what Amazon has and if they can funnel GitHub users to their cloud service, this acquisition will become a no brainer. Plus, the data that GitHub is able to gather from issue conversations, code reviews, etc. may well prove critical for ML/AI research, that can help Microsoft develop intelligent software tools.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#524

Post by kerng » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:34 AM UTC

rapind wrote: post #495

sequoia wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Anything that came out after vi is just another editor.

What is vi? Lol

Re: Hello, GitHub

#525

Post by coldseattle » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:34 AM UTC

Will he fix these sorts of problems:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966118

and also issues of people being removed from projects _by GitHub Management_ because of political or personal opinions expressed in other forums that were unrelated to the open source project?

This is why I don't use GitHub

Re: Hello, GitHub

#526

Post by bgongfu » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:34 AM UTC

ctrlaltdestroy wrote: post #361

bgongfu wrote: 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…

> And the open question is what they learned in the process They were the biggest corporate sponsors to open source and also Linux kernel in the past few years. They acquired github, the biggest place for open source devs to meet and contribute code, and promise to keep it independent. How open of a question is this really?

I guess the question is if they actually changed or just retreated back to the Embrace phase with plan B.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#527

Post by bgongfu » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:40 AM UTC

mkirklions wrote: post #209

bgongfu wrote: 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…

>I think I'm going to leave my code in there for now and give them a chance to redeem themselves. Why would you do that? I mean, at least import the code to other repos

I wouldn't trust any corporation with something I couldn't afford to loose, Microsoft or not. Corporations, by definition; have no souls.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#528

Post by 8_hours_ago » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:42 AM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #514

8_hours_ago wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assumed that Microsoft has security policies to ensure that all confidential information (e.g. non-open-source code and strategic discussions) is stored on infrastructure controlled by Microsoft. The company I work at is very careful about keeping our intellectual property on our infrastructure, and I am surprised that a larger company like Microsoft doesn't have similar policies.

Microsoft aims to make most of its money in the immediate future by convincing every major business in the world to let MS host that company's email, internal documents, spreadsheets and powerpoints on Microsoft's office365 servers. It would be highly contradictory for MS to take the position, as a matter of policy, that it is too risky for them to ever place confidential business data onto a third party cloud-hosted…

My company is concerned about that as well. We don’t use any cloud storage from Microsoft or anyone else, and we self host Exchange and SharePoint servers.

That is a good point though, it’s becoming more and more inconvenient for a company to self host everything. Microsoft does stand to benefit from everyone becoming more accustomed to relying on 3rd party services in the cloud.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#529

Post by reilly3000 » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:52 AM UTC

Minecraft is evidence in my mind of Microsoft being a reasonable corporate overlord. They could have fought modders and killed off java, but instead have been continuing development on it. I think they have gotten to understand the value of existing communities and maybe how not to accidentally destroy them.

For all these companies with the free time to migrate repo hosts on the same day, get back to work and make something worth your focus.

Re: Hello, GitHub

#530

Post by fagnerbrack » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 2:55 AM UTC

Can somebody change the title to "GitHub is joining Microsoft and a former GNOME developer will become the new CEO" or something like that? "Hello, Github" doesn't say anything...