Microsoft’s purchase of GitHub leaves some scientists uneasy • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by dmos62 » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:14 AM UTC

Fomite wrote: post #25

saagarjha wrote: post #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.

The problem is the stable of the pointer. From a paper of mine: "The code and simulation results are available online at https://github.com/mylabname/ project." That's in print . In another paper, I expressly cite a GitHub repository as the source of the data used in the analysis. Pointing to data in papers is the way most of the scientists I know use GitHub - because it's relatively stable, not tied to an institutio…

It should not be complicated to move the repository somewhere where a search engine query with "mylabname/project" would find it.

As a side note, it would be nice to see scientists stop using git for dataset management. There are alternatives that are considerably better adapted to managing data.

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

#42

Post by rjsw » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:17 AM UTC

Fomite wrote: post #25

saagarjha wrote: post #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.

The problem is the stable of the pointer. From a paper of mine: "The code and simulation results are available online at https://github.com/mylabname/ project." That's in print . In another paper, I expressly cite a GitHub repository as the source of the data used in the analysis. Pointing to data in papers is the way most of the scientists I know use GitHub - because it's relatively stable, not tied to an institutio…

What is wrong with an institutional account ? We used university FTP servers for many years to host software created by research projects at that institution.

I work on an international standard, we are moving our repository in a couple of stages from being hosted at Sourceforge to being hosted directly at iso.org. Reference data in this standard will also be

Maybe the research funding agencies should start providing their own hosting with the base URI derived from the project name.

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

#43

Post by geoalchimista » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:21 AM UTC

randomsearch wrote: post #32

geoalchimista wrote: post #30

To be honest, I don't think GitHub is to be blamed for how scientists use it. AFAIK there are data repositories more suitable for the purpose of sharing data sets and metadata, and out of the hands of big corporations (but may subject to big governments), e.g., Zenodo (funded by CERN) and DataONE (funded by NSF). Zenodo can even generate a DOI for your data set, which GitHub does not do. That being said, I think this…

“Why don’t scientists use modern tools like GitHub, instead of these crap bespoke ones? They shouldn’t waste their time duplicating effort.” “Why are scientists using inappropriate tools? These are for commercial use only!” In practice, GitHub works fine for collaborative code projects and sharing data over the next few years. If you’re looking to store large amounts of data over long periods, you’re right. If GitHub…

Don't make a straw man argument. I said none of the above. I'm NOT against open science. And I am glad that GitHub supports open science. In fact, GitHub does offer free private repositories to researchers who have an .edu email address.

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

#44

Post by pessimizer » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:48 AM UTC

ToFab123 wrote: post #13

"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?

It was a bad idea in the first place, and one of the dangers was that this one failure point could end up controlled by a company like Microsoft.

You can say that it was a bad idea for people to store all of their things in a warehouse with no sprinklers or smoke detectors, but after it's been done, it's pretty silly to scold people for not continuing to store things in a warehouse that is currently on fire.

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

#45

Post by jpalomaki » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:50 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #40

earenndil wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC they've said they intend to keep VSTS and github as separate products.

they intend to keep VSTS and github as separate product Still, consider Codeplex, which isn’t around anymore. I see the two merging over time, say in 5 years, and I expect the migration to be fairly painless, so I am not too worried personally, but I can see how some people might be.

Isn’t the existence of Github the reason Codeplex is no more? Github was so good alternative that it made no sense for Google and Microsoft maintain their own services geared towards open source projects.

Building a viable Github competitor would not have fitted to Microsoft strategy which was back then focused on Windows.

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

#46

Post by radicalbyte » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:53 AM UTC

gaius wrote: post #40

earenndil wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC they've said they intend to keep VSTS and github as separate products.

they intend to keep VSTS and github as separate product Still, consider Codeplex, which isn’t around anymore. I see the two merging over time, say in 5 years, and I expect the migration to be fairly painless, so I am not too worried personally, but I can see how some people might be.

Unlikely, they're targeting different markets. There is a place for both of them in Microsoft's portfolio.

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

#47

Post by my123 » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 7:55 AM UTC

jeremy_wiebe wrote: post #33

freeone3000 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

GitHub or just git? I thought just the latter.

Actually, both. GitHub is a nice option if you want to use VSTS for CI.

Note that Windows itself is in a Git repo on VSTS (os repo in the Microsoft tenant)

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

#48

Post by tanu057 » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 8:00 AM UTC

To survive, GItHub must provide the way to encrypt private repositories so that they can make sure that files cannot be read by github employees. Would that be possible?

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

#49

Post by geezerjay » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 8:02 AM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #44

ToFab123 wrote: post #13

"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?

It was a bad idea in the first place, and one of the dangers was that this one failure point could end up controlled by a company like Microsoft. You can say that it was a bad idea for people to store all of their things in a warehouse with no sprinklers or smoke detectors, but after it's been done, it's pretty silly to scold people for not continuing to store things in a warehouse that is currently on fire.

> for not continuing to store things in a warehouse that is currently on fire.

That metaphor is rather silly. Microsoft's purchase of github didn't set the metaphorical warehouse on fire. At most, it only raised attention to the fire hazard that was present since the warehouse was created.

What next? People will complain about the privacy risks presented in services such as Dropbox only after some major corportion buys it?

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

#50

Post by bonesss » Sat, Jun 16, 2018, 8:12 AM UTC

lotia wrote: post #38

Seeing this published on Nature's website is quite thick with irony. They have profited greatly from locking up access to academic papers in their most prestigious journals. The article includes the following tweet: “Open Science is not compatible with one corporation owning the platform used to collaborate on code. I hope that expert coders in #openscience have a viable alternative to #github,” tweeted Tom Johnstone…

See I hope that "expert" coders understand that 'git push' works even on non-MS controlled endpoints, and how to setup a damned wiki if need be...

GitHub is stupid valuable for MS, and will make their dev tools offerings much stronger (TFS is a dog, bringing GitHub Enterprise into MS Enterprise support & sales cycle is gonna make a loooot of scratch). But the value of the GitHub community persists only so long as the community is present. MS can't start destroying Open Science, because Open Science will be open any- and everywhere.

Frankly, disciplines should be creating their own community hubs and portals based on Git and the publishing standards of GitHub: leveraging GitHubs infrastructure and standards while capturing and engaging with the relevant users. That way they can always migrate and maintain the community.

Besides, even cynically MS is more likely to do a bad job of community management trying to upsell related services moreso than poop on things for the sake of pooping on them. If it becomes offensive you'll have a nice window to find a superior collaboration hub.