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We are moving the Roslyn code to GitHub

blogs.msdn.com

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Re: We are moving the Roslyn code to GitHub

#61

Post by InclinedPlane »

iamcreasy wrote: post #14

Pretty cool! Are all these happening because Satya Nadella is trying to steer MS in new direction?

It's a natural evolution from long standing internal pressures. There has always been a strong contingent of folks within Microsoft who have espoused the "hacker" ethos more or less. Folks who cared as much about building cool things and pushing the state of the art as for making a dollar. Folks who pushed for open standards and cooperative rather than coercive interactions with other companies, customers, the dev community, etc.

For a while those forces have struggled to have their voices heard but now they have a bit more cohesion and momentum on their side so you're seeing more of these things.

Re: We are moving the Roslyn code to GitHub

#62

Post by taspeotis »

thesimon wrote: post #58
Watabou wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

git != Github. Github just hosts git repositories. You can use git and not host on Github. They were using git, but hosting the repository on CodePlex.

>We are moving our code to GitHub as well as switching to use git internally But they were using a different tool internally.

Probably TFS, which Microsoft use quite a bit internally [1].

[1] http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2013/08/20/t...

Re: We are moving the Roslyn code to GitHub

#63

Post by pron »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #59
tdicola wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does MS gain? Is online source code storage really going to be a million or billion dollar business for them? It seems like it's just a race to the bottom with costs, just like Dropbox, Box, etc. etc.

pjmlp has it right, but I'll add some further clarifications. One of the most important aspects of Microsoft's success is network effect. People use Windows and Office because other people use Windows and Office. But network effect also works on the development/platform side. Devs write apps in the technologies they know and are comfortable with, and those tend to be the technologies they've used for personal or work…

> But the idea of using C#, .NET, or coding Windows Apps? Far fewer devs under 30 are doing that than they were 10 or 20 years ago.

Except I'm not sure MS is still betting on Windows apps, and they're not making money off of .NET either. Of course, it's very prestigious to have your own dev tools/platform/language and all the big kids have them, but none of them are making money.

Re: We are moving the Roslyn code to GitHub

#64

Post by josteink »

davidgerard wrote: post #44
Joeboy wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft or otherwise, I don't think the idea that GitHub is going to be run like a public utility forever is a smart bet.

It's reasonably easy to pick up your repo and leave. How easy is it to pick up your bugs and leave?

It seems it's pretty easy with Github wikis too:

http://stackoverflow.com/a/22002422

Re: We are moving the Roslyn code to GitHub

#65

Post by josteink »

pjmlp wrote: post #49
tdicola wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does MS gain? Is online source code storage really going to be a million or billion dollar business for them? It seems like it's just a race to the bottom with costs, just like Dropbox, Box, etc. etc.

Hipster value. All the cool kids are now using Github.

In a non-sarcastic world it's called "community" and it increases the chance of getting collaborators contributing to your project.

You know, the point of open-source being that everyone should be able to contribute and all that.

Re: We are moving the Roslyn code to GitHub

#66

Post by josteink »

sixothree wrote: post #57
icehawk219 wrote: post #6

> HOW: This will be a simple switch – turn off CodePlex, turn on GitHub. You’ll be able to see our check-ins on GitHub that same day. It's probably a safe bet that CodePlex's days are numbered. Which is kind of a shame. It was definitely heavily lacking but I can't help but think that some more competition in the space would be a good thing.

I definitely like how CodePlex has dedicated tabs for documentation, as well as discussion and issues. It seems like every repo I come across on github is often just a dump of files with very little in the way of documentation. My guess is that because CodePlex makes documentation prominent, it incentivises its use while the opposite is true for github.

Github has its own issue-management, which I quite frankly find way better than anything Codeplex has, because of how it interacts and links with the source-control commits themselves. Github also supports per-project wikis, and if people aren't using them to write documentation on Github, they wouldn't be writing documentation on Codeplex either.

The reason you see more Github repos without documentation is because writing documentation is "boring" work, and mostly bigger organizations can afford the staff to write and maintain documentation.

And most codeplex repos were Microsoft's own, where they had an interest in keeping their stuff documented. On Github anyone can (and does!) open a repo.

So missing documentation has nothing to do with Github itself as much as the users and organizations it primarely attracts.

Re: We are moving the Roslyn code to GitHub

#67

Post by josteink »

pjmlp wrote: post #51
cpayne wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe? But I think its more just a natural evolution. Scott Hanselman has been making noise regarding open source for years [1]. I'm not saying Scott is responsible, just that many people have been suggesting it for a long long time. I saw a job today asking for TFS skills. THAT is a dying product... [1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ExampleHowToContributeAPatchTo...

You missed the part that TFS is much more than just source control and since TFS 2012 also supports Git.

You mean like. Application Lifecycle Management? ALM? Bug-tracking, release-management and stuff?

Which they now will be using Github for? Oh. That's definitely interesting.

Re: We are moving the Roslyn code to GitHub

#68

Post by Stratoscope »

weego wrote: post #60
deanclatworthy wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be a smart buy for a large software company, hedging their bets on moving into open source. I don't think it's out of the realms of possibility either.

It would be a horrible buy for any polarising brand. Microsoft is about as marmite as you get in software (along with Oracle perhaps) regardless of their recent attitude to being open. We have to be past the point where anyone with purchasibg power believes you can aquire credibility.

> Microsoft is about as marmite as you get in software (along with Oracle perhaps)...

Sure, I have fond memories of the days when trendy developers would see me using a ThinkPad instead of a MacBook and ask, "Mike, when are you going to move away from the dark side?"

Not so much any more. People I talk with seem reasonably impressed with the way Microsoft has been open sourcing .NET and other projects, making Visual Studio Professional free (as in beer), etc.

Now Oracle, that's a different story. We all still love to hate them!

Re: We are moving the Roslyn code to GitHub

#69

Post by rbanffy »

tdicola wrote: post #36
bcantrill wrote: post #17

This is getting terrifyingly close to my prediction that Microsoft should/would/will buy GitHub. When I first started predicting this two or so years ago, it was mainly for its comedic value (it always got laughs, followed by "yeah, they should!" followed by nervous laughter followed by "wait, do you think they would actually do that?!"), but after the open sourcing of .NET I honestly think anything is possible. Espe…

What does MS gain? Is online source code storage really going to be a million or billion dollar business for them? It seems like it's just a race to the bottom with costs, just like Dropbox, Box, etc. etc.

> What does MS gain?

Image.

Microsoft's message has been it's a one-stop-shop for your IT needs, as opposed to the general open-source ecosystem where everything has a different vendor (if at all). This, and the difficulty of moving to other platforms/vendors/tools was the core of its vendor lock-in power. In the 80's and most of the 90's, I went full Microsoft, from runtime to database to developer tools, because everything worked so well together.

Microsoft has been changing, of course, but if not even Microsoft uses Microsoft products, why should companies use them?

With this, again, we see the tacit admission a product or service built on top of free software is somehow better than the technologies Microsoft sells.

Re: We are moving the Roslyn code to GitHub

#70

Post by nawitus »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #59
tdicola wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does MS gain? Is online source code storage really going to be a million or billion dollar business for them? It seems like it's just a race to the bottom with costs, just like Dropbox, Box, etc. etc.

pjmlp has it right, but I'll add some further clarifications. One of the most important aspects of Microsoft's success is network effect. People use Windows and Office because other people use Windows and Office. But network effect also works on the development/platform side. Devs write apps in the technologies they know and are comfortable with, and those tend to be the technologies they've used for personal or work…

I'd like to add that a lot of "cool kids" code in TypeScript, which is a Microsoft project.
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