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Microsoft’s purchase of GitHub leaves some scientists uneasy

nature.com

11–20 of 148 posts

Re: Microsoft’s purchase of GitHub leaves some scientists uneasy

#11

> "[..] researchers used the platform to share and cross-check daily patient counts." No concerns about private datasets in the open on Github ? I get they like the workflow but they traded ethics for convenience there. Medical ethics.

If it's anonymized data, I see no problem. All scientific datasets should be in the open.

Re: Microsoft’s purchase of GitHub leaves some scientists uneasy

#12

The cool thing about git is it doesn’t matter what happens to the platform. You can take your repo and push it somewhere else if you don’t like how Microsoft runs the show. Given how Microsoft took Github’s idea with Atom and ran with it to make VSCode, I wouldn’t be surprised if Github improves under Microsoft’s rule.

The problem lies in the comments and issue tracking, which are not stored in git. Sure, you can clone the repo, but you can only take the wiki with you, the rest would be lost.

Re: Microsoft’s purchase of GitHub leaves some scientists uneasy

#14
post #11

> "[..] researchers used the platform to share and cross-check daily patient counts." No concerns about private datasets in the open on Github ? I get they like the workflow but they traded ethics for convenience there. Medical ethics.

If it's anonymized data, I see no problem. All scientific datasets should be in the open.

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft’s purchase of GitHub leaves some scientists uneasy

#15
post #11

> "[..] researchers used the platform to share and cross-check daily patient counts." No concerns about private datasets in the open on Github ? I get they like the workflow but they traded ethics for convenience there. Medical ethics.

If it's anonymized data, I see no problem. All scientific datasets should be in the open.

Indeed, the first four repository I found for a google search with `ebola outbreak github` terms only have statistical data.

Re: Microsoft’s purchase of GitHub leaves some scientists uneasy

#16
This article seems to have a very focused interest on data in GitHub repositories, as opposed to source code. I get that the article is aimed at scientists, but I don’t see the problem here: if Microsoft takes down your dataset just move it somewhere else. You’re not tied down with pull requests or comments like code repositories are.

Re: Microsoft’s purchase of GitHub leaves some scientists uneasy

#19

"Open Science is not compatible with one corporation owning the platform used to collaborate on code" That was already the case before Microsoft purchased GitHub. So why did they start to use it in the first place, if they had this concern?

Now the whole data set in GitHub, the metadata, being able to analyze all the projects may not be as open since it can conflict with other microsoft products, such as LinkedIn if you're looking for candidates, or possibly AI training data.

Re: Microsoft’s purchase of GitHub leaves some scientists uneasy

#20
post #8
post #2

"During the 2014–16 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, for example, researchers used the platform to share and cross-check daily patient counts." Pretty sure this is referring to the lab I used to work in. Honestly, I'm not particularly worried about the buyout - pretty sure the chances of them just scrapping the whole service are slim, and "GitHub disappears" seems equally as likely burning through VC cash as it does ow…

the chances of them just scrapping the whole service are slim, and "GitHub disappears" seems equally as likely burning through VC cash as it does owned by Microsoft. Right, the people who should really be worried are VSTS users. And GitLab users funnily enough. They are VC backed and will have to exit too, and everyone’s looking at them now. The least worst thing that could happen is bought by Atlassian and folded in…

VSTS does a lot of stuff GitHub doesn't, and has had GitHub as a source control option for a while.
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