Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#561

Post by gurkendoktor » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 11:06 PM UTC

youdontknowtho wrote: post #557

gurkendoktor wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say that Microsoft is worse than most other companies because it caters to governments, not consumers. Skype and MSN mysteriously worked in China at a time when no other service did. What's their incentive to push back against LE backdoors when they're not an edgy consumer brand anyway?

"caters to governments" Corporations only exist as legal constructs. I'm not trying to be pedantic. I'm just saying that it is always going to be the case that a business, any business, will work within the law and with lawful government because they ultimately depend on contract and property law.

All companies have to comply with the law, but Microsoft sells lots of software to governments. They aren't going to put up a fight over end-user privacy if they make more money from gov't contracts than from privacy-conscious consumers. The financial incentives are completely different than for e.g. Apple, and I don't see how that is ever going to change.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#562

Post by openfuture » Mon, Jun 04, 2018, 11:24 PM UTC

hk__2 wrote: post #539

openfuture wrote: post #415

Aaand this is the weakness of centralizing everything in Github. Inevitable that it gets acquired by something with other motives (or is forced to exploit its central position in some way because business). The fact it may be Microsoft that seals the deal is just a cherry on top. We need proper decentralization. There could still be aggregators for browsing projects and bookmarking but the structural weakness of keep…

> We need proper decentralization. > There could still be aggregators for browsing projects and bookmarking but the structural weakness of keeping all the eggs in one basket will never go away. No matter how much wishful thinking you throw at it. The Web is decentralized, and so everybody’s using Google to discover it. The problem with decentralization is you still need global entry points, i.e. some sort of centrali…

These entry points could be run by networked organizations like Sensorica (except more developed) and run on free software.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#563

Post by emodendroket » Tue, Jun 05, 2018, 8:51 PM UTC

mihaela wrote: post #538

emodendroket wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's .NET Native, not to mention older techs like Win32.

Not the same as real native like C++.

Probably news to the Win32 devs of the world that their technology is "not the same as real native like C++." What distinction do you mean to make here?

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#564

Post by youdontknowtho » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 11:38 AM UTC

gurkendoktor wrote: post #561

youdontknowtho wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"caters to governments" Corporations only exist as legal constructs. I'm not trying to be pedantic. I'm just saying that it is always going to be the case that a business, any business, will work within the law and with lawful government because they ultimately depend on contract and property law.

All companies have to comply with the law, but Microsoft sells lots of software to governments. They aren't going to put up a fight over end-user privacy if they make more money from gov't contracts than from privacy-conscious consumers. The financial incentives are completely different than for e.g. Apple, and I don't see how that is ever going to change.

All companies, including Apple sell lots of products to the government because, next to Walmart, its the largest employer in the country. It has a $4T budget.

Apple doesn't give a s* about your privacy. They claim to give a s* about your privacy. Those are different things.

If you want this to change you have to get involved with legislation to change the rules/law. That's the only option. None of them "care" about you or really anything, because they aren't human. Companies respond to changes in the law which bound the approved set of behaviors. That's it.

EDIT: I got the budget wrong. Changed that.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#565

Post by gurkendoktor » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 6:15 PM UTC

youdontknowtho wrote: post #564

gurkendoktor wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All companies have to comply with the law, but Microsoft sells lots of software to governments. They aren't going to put up a fight over end-user privacy if they make more money from gov't contracts than from privacy-conscious consumers. The financial incentives are completely different than for e.g. Apple, and I don't see how that is ever going to change.

All companies, including Apple sell lots of products to the government because, next to Walmart, its the largest employer in the country. It has a $4T budget. Apple doesn't give a s * about your privacy. They claim to give a s * about your privacy. Those are different things. If you want this to change you have to get involved with legislation to change the rules/law. That's the only option. None of them "care" about…

I don't care what Apple claims to care about, just like I don't care about Microsoft's newfound love for free software (haha).

However, I highly doubt that government and enterprise purchases make up a large share of Apple's income. And consequently I'm convinced that news of a backdoor in iMessage would cause Apple way more financial damage than these things did to Microsoft: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5728294, https://www.scmagazineuk.com/skype-backdoor-missed-by-micros... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/11/microsoft-nsa-...

And the more Apple doubles down on protecting its users, the bigger this financial incentive becomes. Of course that doesn't stop me from supporting better legislation (GDPR was a great start).

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#566

Post by Roboprog » Wed, Jun 06, 2018, 10:29 PM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #502

Roboprog wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack Overflow works pretty well. But perhaps not without some pain for those involved making it: https://blog.codinghorror.com/why-ruby/

I've done legacy work in both and I'd never choose Ruby over C#. It might be a little faster to write the code the first time around, but maintaining a big legacy project stinks. Also, none of Atwood's reasons is "I don't like working in C#." And several of the concerns in this post are obsolete.

Actually, I find Ruby code much easier to look at than most Java / C# UglyCapsRunOn word-soup. YMMV.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#567

Post by emodendroket » Thu, Jun 07, 2018, 3:54 AM UTC

Roboprog wrote: post #566

emodendroket wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done legacy work in both and I'd never choose Ruby over C#. It might be a little faster to write the code the first time around, but maintaining a big legacy project stinks. Also, none of Atwood's reasons is "I don't like working in C#." And several of the concerns in this post are obsolete.

Actually, I find Ruby code much easier to look at than most Java / C# UglyCapsRunOn word-soup. YMMV.

Well who cares about that, really. I'm not talking about how pretty the code is; I'm talking about the ease of maintaining it. Ruby code frequently requires digging through the method and methods it calls to figure out the expected input.