How on earth was Microsoft allowed to buy such a critical piece of tech infrastructure?
Was GitHub really critical at time of purchase? Or has Microsoft turned it into critical infrastructure?
Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
11–20 of 315 posts
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#12I read this article and then looked at my Github and a few other projects and found no issues created by Copilot. As someone else has said they need to be triggered manually, so therefore it's the same sort of problem as with the Curl project bug bounty, where people would be spamming with automatically LLM generated fictional problems. In that case because there's a potential for money to be made, and in the Github copilot case because I guess they're trying to contribute to open source for whatever reason.
As far as Visual Studio Code goes, I've not really used it much but it makes sense since it's Microsoft's free editor, so you will be a product and you will be marketed to. I do use Visual Studio though, and it does show Copilot in the UI by default, but there is an option to "hide Copilot" from the UI which does what is advertised. I will probably remove my important projects from Github though, but mainly so they are not used for LLM training than anything else.
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#13How on earth was Microsoft allowed to buy such a critical piece of tech infrastructure?
Was GitHub really critical at time of purchase? Or has Microsoft turned it into critical infrastructure?
It was the leading git storage at the time of acquisition, for many people synonymous with git itself
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#14> During Microsoft's July 30, 2025 earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella said GitHub Copilot continued to exhibit strong momentum and had reached 20 million users. Considering that they force it upon users and user cannot disable it, this sounds like a worthless metric. I get an email every month telling me that my Copilot access has been renewed for another month. I'm probably being counted amongst those 20M users. I cou…
GLENDOWER: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
HOTSPUR: Why, so can I, or so can any man; But will they come when you do call for them?
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#15How on earth was Microsoft allowed to buy such a critical piece of tech infrastructure?
Was GitHub really critical at time of purchase? Or has Microsoft turned it into critical infrastructure?
Even though Git is decentralised, people like having a simple client-server model for version control. So with Github being the most funded free Git hosting service it grew to being the biggest. They also built out the extra services on top of git hosting, the issue tracker, CI/CD, discussion board, integrated wiki, github-pages, etc.
I would say all of those things were present before the acquisition, enough that Microsoft itself started to use the site for its own open source code hosting.
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#16I read this article and then looked at my Github and a few other projects and found no issues created by Copilot. As someone else has said they need to be triggered manually, so therefore it's the same sort of problem as with the Curl project bug bounty, where people would be spamming with automatically LLM generated fictional problems. In that case because there's a potential for money to be made, and in the Github…
> and in the Github copilot case because I guess they're trying to contribute to open source for whatever reason.
The “whatever reason” can be to build a portfolio to apply for jobs. Or worse, to more quickly build trust to exploit vulnerable projects.
https://www.techdirt.com/2025/09/04/why-powerful-but-hard-to...
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#17How on earth was Microsoft allowed to buy such a critical piece of tech infrastructure?
There is no law against that, so I'm not sure what you're suggesting. And git lives on regardless of GitHub
> There is no law against that
Regulators can (and do) stop purchases which can be considered harmful to consumers. Just look at the Adobe/Figma deal.
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#18I went to https://codeberg.org/
I just became a donor :)
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#19How on earth was Microsoft allowed to buy such a critical piece of tech infrastructure?
It wasn't critical at that time.
But then who made it critical over the intervening years? That's on us.
It's easy to knee jerk on HN but let's try to do better than this.
Re: Let us git rid of it, angry GitHub users say of forced Copilot features
#20How on earth was Microsoft allowed to buy such a critical piece of tech infrastructure?
Was GitHub really critical at time of purchase? Or has Microsoft turned it into critical infrastructure?
If you travel back to 2018 and ask random software engineers "are git and github developed and owned by the same company", a fair number of them would say yes, just like today.