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I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

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Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#191

Post by foepys »

darzu wrote: post #140
foepys wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure that VSTS will live more than two more years? I'd suspect that Microsoft will eventually want to integrate GitHub with their CI and get rid of TFS (of which VSTS is just a hosted version) entirely. I don't know if you've used TFS/VSTS but it's not exactly user-friendly and well designed. Especially their CI configuration is horrendous.

VSTS hosts git repos as well. I don't know of anyone that still uses TFS, but I'm sure they exist. I've been using VSTS daily for the last year and a half, and while it has it's quirks I think it's a powerful and productive environment.

Team Foundation Server is more than Team Foundation Version Control.

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#192

Post by lucb1e »

whatever_dude wrote: post #153
lucb1e wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't really answer it, though. We, too, would "find it amazing to see what could happen". But that doesn't tell us anything whatsoever.

He's a CEO-to-be, not the tyrant who can make all the decisions and know all the answers months before he even starts the job without consulting anyone involved.

Yeah. And even if he were CEO right now, there is always his boss at (or at least goals set by) Microsoft. I see the point of this AMA.

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#193

Post by curun1r »

ishbits wrote: post #177

What is the root of all the Microsoft distrust? I’m older, and left Windows for Linux back in 1997 and haven’t really paid attention since. I wonder if this mistrust is valid? Are they any worse than Apple?

Well, there are a lot of web developers that we're saddled with supporting ie6 for many years after Microsoft won the browser war with Netscape and proceeded to let it stagnate for years. That amount of pain that was inflicted on the web dev community left a lot of lingering resentment.

Then there was their locked-down file formats, their role in killing off BeOS and preventing pre-installed Linux machines, their "embracing" of open technologies like Kerberos only to make their version subtly incompatible. For well over a decade, almost everything they did technically rubbed us tech folks the wrong way.

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#195

Post by diroussel »

peterburkimsher wrote: post #183
rafaelvasco wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why move though ? Just curious.

I don't know if I'll move yet. Since 2006 or so, I've maintained a personal website for code/résumé, etc. At first it was hosted on http://peterburk.free.fr , my parents' ISP. That was fine until I no longer lived with them, and I can't trust that it'll always be available. Also, I wanted a .com subdomain instead of a .fr domain. So in 2011, I moved to http://peterburk.appspot.com on Google App Engine. No problem, un…

I've started using React-static on netlify. Works well, and will auto deploy on commit to GitHub.

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#196

Post by earenndil »

codinghorror wrote: post #139
kartan wrote: post #6

Nat is being really smart here. It should not backfire unless he acts pedantic or insults Redditors intelligence. I think that both are unlikely. Maybe Nat is trying to counteract any PR damage to GitHub, or maybe he just wants to see how much can skyrocket his account's karma. If I was in his situation I will be happy doing it for both reasons.

I can't imagine a world where anyone would care about their Reddit account karma. I periodically destroy any Reddit account I have to use as a matter of online hygiene. (and yes, I destroyed the account I did an AMA on a while back as well.)

Plenty of people care about karma -- if they didn't, then reddit would have removed it.

Unrelated, but I really like your blog[1]! It's one of the few I read.

1: https://blog.codinghorror.com/ (for the people that don't know it).

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#197

Post by earenndil »

whalesalad wrote: post #17
emilsedgh wrote: post #14

Microsoft should just make Github open source. It would be a great PR move and an amazing build of trust. I don't know why Github was not open source to begin with. Why do companies still think source code is a big deal? This is not Google Search or some advanced AI.

Great PR move? Amazing build of trust? Microsoft bought GitHub for over seven billion dollars. You don't buy something for that kind of cash unless it has that kind of value . Saying they 'should' do something as though there is a problem is silly. Engineers here on HN are so quick to say what someone "needs to do" something... but in response to what? What problem are you identifying? A vocal minority of engineers h…

Github is SaaS and its value lies in its userbase and network effect. They do license out the github software product, but I imagine that that's a relatively small section of their money intake, and there are plenty of opensource alternatives (gitlab, gogs/gitea, others). They would probably more than recoup the costs with the goodwill they'd get.

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#198

Post by earenndil »

kthejoker2 wrote: post #184
lcfcjs wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of January 2018, over 144 million copies had been sold across all platforms, making it the second best-selling video game of all time behind Tetris. ^ from wikipedia If they sold each for $10, then thats $1.5 bil (if my maths right). So I think it's safe to say that they have not made their money back ... yet.

Merch? Every kid I know has Minecraft Legos, Minecraft pajamas, Minecraft fidget spinners ...

Minecraft legos are a funny thought. Minecraft basically _is_ digitized lego.

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#199

Post by superflyguy »

sdesol wrote: post #53
bovermyer wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That IS a small number. Consider the context.

Yeah I really think people are trying to read way too much into things. The only true bellwether in my opinion, are influential open source projects leaving GitHub for something else, like self hosting with GitLab/Bitbucket/etc. If nodejs, google, and other big names/organizations decides to leave, then I think it is time for Microsoft to worry.

Gnome, Debian and gimp have all left.

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#200

Post by HelloNurse »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #162
ProAm wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you just host a git server yourself? Not trying to be snarky but seems doable.

You can. It's very doable. Plenty of people do it. But the real value of GH was "social coding" - open public access to open public projects. That's going to fragment, even if GL takes over. And that will be a loss. The real problem is the lack of open public server infrastructure. In the same way that everyone has access to a browser, everyone should have access to a private server, which is secure-by-default, contr…

What you call "social coding" is simply the convenience of contributing to a huge number of projects without needing a separate account or quasi-account (joining a mailing list, using OAuth/OpenID, etc.) for each. It is not necessary, it predates and doesn't need GitHub (as Sourceforge demonstrated 20 years ago), and it will simply move to other project hosting communities, with a modest decrease of convenience in the transition between one account and a few accounts.
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