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GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

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Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#321

Post by jacksmith21006 »

djsumdog wrote: post #109
digitalzombie wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the original comment is trying to convey is that perhaps developers should be wary of goodwill. Microsoft have done this in the past. They actively eat the browser market share with IE and left it alone after being the monopoly in web browser. This forced Netscape to become Mozilla. They also tried to be the gateway and believe OS is the gateway for all program and was left in the dust with web app and web se…

Google is pretty much doing the same thing with Chrome. Opera has switched to its rendering engine and Firefox's share is dropping (after Google pumped tons of money in them and used their work to enhance their own offering). Gecko is barely on the map while Google's render can be found in newer versions of Opera, Vivaldi, and others. I mean if you go back far enough, Microsoft did this with IE. IIRC, they licensed a…

Google keeps enhancing Chrome and where do you think http2 came from?

Heck Google created SPDY and gave to standards group who changed and then Google went and moved their SPDY to the standard.

Heck Google has over 60% of the browser market and the 2 most popular web sites in the world and easily could have kept to themselves as a competitive advantage. Most would consider that just good business.

But instead Google did the right thing while consistently MS does the wrong thing.

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#322

Post by fjsolwmv »

dkobia wrote: post #262

The GitHub acquisition feels like losing a piece of ones "coding" childhood if there's such a thing. When we grow up, find out how things work and the innocence is lost because it feels like there is a malevolent undercurrent.

GitHub's past 3 years didn't already lose that piece of childhood?

Also, my impression was that young coders don't have Microsoft loathing that is held by programmers who were new before Git/GitHub were invented.

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#323

Post by kevin_b_er »

oblio wrote: post #214
fetbaffe wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redhat? Company that is currently infiltrating every Linux distro with systemd bloatware? No, thanks.

> Redhat? Company that is currently infiltrating every Linux distro with systemd bloatware? No, thanks. Perspective is everything. For me it's: > Redhat? The company that managed to standardize the init system across distributions, thereby making it trivial to create robust system services for Linux?

It is not the init system replacement. It is the cruft around it, like systemd-resolved. Please avoid motte and bailey arguments.

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#324

Post by perfmode »

pfortuny wrote: post #253
dbingham wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't trust self interest. Especially not in my butcher, brewer, or baker. Pure self interest gets you McDonalds, Bud Light, and Debi cakes. I consume exactly none of those things and have no desire to consume any of those things. They taste terrible, are bad for me, and the companies themselves are generally bad for their communities and the world. A good butcher, brewer, or baker is driven by craft first - care f…

You are conflating self-interest with greed. That is a great mistake in trying to understand Adam Smith. They are not the same thing. Values, ethics, morals... are part of self-inrerst for lots of people.

then it’s practically a tautology

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#325

Post by [deleted] »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #117
djsumdog wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is pretty much doing the same thing with Chrome. Opera has switched to its rendering engine and Firefox's share is dropping (after Google pumped tons of money in them and used their work to enhance their own offering). Gecko is barely on the map while Google's render can be found in newer versions of Opera, Vivaldi, and others. I mean if you go back far enough, Microsoft did this with IE. IIRC, they licensed a…

Chrome is absolutely the new IE... it’s just in the heyday stage instead of the “ancient barely supported monster” stage that IE was in when developers began to hate it. The need for greater variety in the spread of popular rendering engines is dire and real. Browser monoculture is dangerous and I refuse to use any browser that’s Chromium/Blink as my daily driver for this reason. I seek alternatives for sites that ob…

[deleted]

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#326

Post by fjsolwmv »

icebraining wrote: post #227
caymanjim wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stack Overflow was founded by Joel Spolsky, who is a Microsoft veteran from their era of peak dominance. I suspect it's a passion project of his that he'd like to hang on to, but he's also pragmatic and everything has its price. And it's profitable. I wouldn't be surprised if someone bought it. I can envision synergy between Stack Overflow and GitHub. Satya Nadella seems to really "get it", though, and I don't antici…

Spolsky certainly had a strong influence with his ideas and feedback, but I don't think he was ever very directly involved in the project - the main driver was Jeff Atwood. At least that's what I got from listening to the podcast, back in '08.

Is "co-founder" and "strong influence with ideas" not direct involvement?

Spolsky has a long and impressive resume. What was he doing during the SO era if not working on SO?

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#327

Post by fjsolwmv »

mdpopescu wrote: post #200
notveryrational wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing where they are going to gas all the developers or something. Nope. It's more about priorities and intentions. Microsoft doesn't care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. It recognizes that its image makes that difficult. The GitHub acquisition: Microsoft didn't suddenly get more beautiful. It put on a mask. It will kill GitHub - or at least let it flounder - if that's what's best…

> Microsoft doesn't care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." (Adam Smith.) I don't trust benevolent people. I trust self-interest. I don't need to offer my undying allegiance to Microsoft - I can like them as long as they do things that benefi…

You don't trust the creators of Python or Linux then, eh?

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#328

Post by fjsolwmv »

ysavir wrote: post #239
mdpopescu wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft doesn't care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." (Adam Smith.) I don't trust benevolent people. I trust self-interest. I don't need to offer my undying allegiance to Microsoft - I can like them as long as they do things that benefi…

I think GP's point is that the nature of MicroSoft, as a platform, isn't lined up with your interests. They aren't looking to be developer friendly--that is, present you, as a developer more and better options. Since MicroSoft is a _platform_, their interest is to _limit_ your options to MicroSoft so that you aren't developing and enriching competing platforms. GP, if I am understanding correctly, is implying that th…

This is getting tinfoil hattery.

Microsoft sells a platform. The success of that platform is based on convincing users and their agents to buy the platform. The platform is appealing because developers make money by creating apps or it. Has Microsoft done awful and possibly illegal things to competitors? Of course. But they've been the best for developers. Best dev tools, most powerful and widely deployed OS, at least in the PC era that made them famous and infamot.

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#329

Post by marcus-grant »

tallanvor wrote: post #140
gear54rus wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get the developers to help write obnoxious garbage like win10 which forces users into all sorts of things they don't want? They want an undo button? It's right under their nose: stop with the bullshit auto-update that re-enables itself, document all telemetry and make a big button to disable it. But they don't do that, do they? Any idea why? Spoiler: it's all fake bs again, take one flashy but insignificant step f…

Updates are lose-lose. Either you get complaints from people about how they're being forced on them, or you get complaints that Microsoft isn't doing more to protect people from exploits because they've all shut off updates. I'm not a fan of the telemetry either, but they do have it all documented now, which is more than, for example, most phone manufacturers: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/basic-le…

Nothing was done about Telemetry (maintain state after updates, better options to disabling PARTS of it, documenting it) till AFTER people discovered it and there was a public outcry. And they still didn't document it till it was becoming clear that GDPR would go through and they'd be legally liable for not doing so. And there's currently still no way to completely disable Telemetry's data collection. It's a simple on/off toggle and potentially a registry entry that determines if the startup scripts of the OS should start the Telemetry application at all. I'm sorry but at best that's pretty myopic for a company who claims (paraphrased) "trust is our most important resource", or (literal) "judge us by the actions of our recent past, our current actions and our future actions". And it certainly doesn't help to shake the notion that they have larger and more maligned plans for what they intend to do with their greater OSS influence, certainly not when you consider their history. But even if we're to take those statements at face value they still don't completely align with their actions.

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#330

Post by scarface74 »

notveryrational wrote: post #91
staticassertion wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kept reading, waiting for the insidious part. So what you're saying is that Microsoft has a company wide strategic vision to improve its relationship with developers? Did you leave some part out?

Nothing where they are going to gas all the developers or something. Nope. It's more about priorities and intentions. Microsoft doesn't care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. It recognizes that its image makes that difficult. The GitHub acquisition: Microsoft didn't suddenly get more beautiful. It put on a mask. It will kill GitHub - or at least let it flounder - if that's what's best…

Do you think the founders of GitHub, who after the sell to Microsoft will be the 2nd largest owner's of Microsoft stock, started GitHub because they "cared about developers"?[1]

It's always about the money. No one "cares" about developers not even your own employer. They only care about making money and we are all just a cog in the machine.

[1] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-b...

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