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GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

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Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#281

Post by tluyben2 »

Applejinx wrote: post #249
arthurfm wrote: post #90

With Google recently investing $20 million in GitLab [1] and helping them migrate from Azure to Google Cloud Platform [2][3], what are developers going to do when Google inevitably acquires GitLab? Move their repositories back to GitHub, switch to BitBucket or something else entirely? [1] https://techcrunch.com/2017/10/09/gitlab-raises-20m-series-c... [2] https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/06/why-and-how-gitlab-abando..…

Dunno. The thing is, Microsoft knows they are ruthless. The thing that worries me about Google is, they are completely inaccessible, exist in a bubble and think they're the hero. Okay, three things.

Yes, I do think this is the worrying part and worse, all the others try to become like them (Google). That future is scary.

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#282

Post by klathzazt »

staticassertion wrote: post #71
notveryrational wrote: post #66

Microsoft can not buy goodwill with me, personally. I worked at the company and was privy to "strategic conversations" whereby they were looking to regain trust with developers to get them back from Android and Google to Windows stack. Microsoft practically forced us to use Windows stack for anything and everything, even when there were much better tools. Under Satya, it was better, but the emphasis is still very muc…

I kept reading, waiting for the insidious part. So what you're saying is that Microsoft has a company wide strategic vision to improve its relationship with developers? Did you leave some part out?

I think the bad part is the act of MS buying complete control of the worlds largest open source code (and other) repository. Maybe it goes without saying that this is not a good thing, given the MS track record of EEE and FUD.

An example of what could now happen is that MS could decide one day at will to drastically change how your data is accessed from github, maybe even requiring MS version of git, with added "security" and requiring you to login with your hotmail account or whatever they call it these days.

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#283

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

stefs wrote: post #235
mdpopescu wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft doesn't care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." (Adam Smith.) I don't trust benevolent people. I trust self-interest. I don't need to offer my undying allegiance to Microsoft - I can like them as long as they do things that benefi…

the problem here is that the self-interests of github and microsoft might differ fundamentally. github wanted to make money from their paid services to create a profit. microsoft couldn't care less about the money paid github accounts make (as long as it's not hemorrhaging too much), it's unlikely they'll get a ROI from paid accounts in anyones lifetime. they need github to increase their earnings elsewhere, e.g. by…

FOSS will interpret Microsoft as damage and route around it.

GitHub is going to turn into the FOSS version of the MySpace wasteland. I'm sure GitLab and other alternatives are seeing a stampede of new sign-ups right now.

The question isn't really what MS will do, because - as is often the case - it won't matter.

MS bought Nokia Phone, trashed the company, flailed around dramatically for a while, and in the end nothing much changed in the phone space - except that WinPhone hung on for a year or two longer than it would have otherwise.

MS bought Skype, trashed the product, bolted it awkwardly onto Office, and in the end nothing much changed, because anyone with any sense moved to an alternative.

It's going to be the same with GitHub. There will be drama in the short term, but in the longer term MS will receive little or no benefit, except for maybe some closer integration with VS.

The money will simply be wasted.

The real winners will be the investors and owners of GH, who have walked off with a big pile of MS stock they can convert to money and use to buy nice things.

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#284

Post by Double_a_92 »

wnsire wrote: post #221
oblio wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've heard of Open Core, I imagine? That's what everyone does. Even the GitLab everyone's talking about in this context is Open Core. And regarding your claim, you can do all of that, even with Vim if you want. You just have to build some scaffolding. After all, they can't be expected to implementing everything for everyone. More than that, they were actually nice and created LSP ( https://langserver.org/ ) and now…

>You've heard of Open Core, I imagine? It's not "Open Core" if the core is not open. In this case a debugger is core part of a language. It's a very clear movement in order to keep C# devs within their ecosystem and guarantee revenue with Azure. They loose money here , they must get it somewhere else. This guarantee a total monopoly over the .NET ecosystem , Rider is probably one of the only tools that tried to offer…

Influencing the things you care about in a way you like, seems like a sensible thing to do...

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#285

Post by thg »

tallanvor wrote: post #140
gear54rus wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To get the developers to help write obnoxious garbage like win10 which forces users into all sorts of things they don't want? They want an undo button? It's right under their nose: stop with the bullshit auto-update that re-enables itself, document all telemetry and make a big button to disable it. But they don't do that, do they? Any idea why? Spoiler: it's all fake bs again, take one flashy but insignificant step f…

Updates are lose-lose. Either you get complaints from people about how they're being forced on them, or you get complaints that Microsoft isn't doing more to protect people from exploits because they've all shut off updates. I'm not a fan of the telemetry either, but they do have it all documented now, which is more than, for example, most phone manufacturers: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/privacy/basic-le…

> Updates are lose-lose. Either you get complaints from people about how they're being forced on them, or you get complaints that Microsoft isn't doing more to protect people from exploits because they've all shut off updates.

When updates that only add telemetry (Windows 7), or that upgrade an installed Windows 7 / 8 to Windows 10 without even asking, among other garbage, are classified as "critical security updates" by Microsoft, it really should come as no surprise that people disable all automatic updates in response.

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#286

Post by LeifCarrotson »

dbingham wrote: post #240
mdpopescu wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Microsoft doesn't care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." (Adam Smith.) I don't trust benevolent people. I trust self-interest. I don't need to offer my undying allegiance to Microsoft - I can like them as long as they do things that benefi…

I don't trust self interest. Especially not in my butcher, brewer, or baker. Pure self interest gets you McDonalds, Bud Light, and Debi cakes. I consume exactly none of those things and have no desire to consume any of those things. They taste terrible, are bad for me, and the companies themselves are generally bad for their communities and the world. A good butcher, brewer, or baker is driven by craft first - care f…

I've met a large number of great craftsmen who I would rate trustworthy and who are driven first by craftsmanship and for whom self-interest is a secondary interest.

I'm privileged to work at a great shop with some 20 other people for whom profit is just a small part of the goal. We call fiscal health "oxygen": It's something we need, but if it's present it should be allowed to fade from the forefront of our minds, instead focusing on more rewarding targets.

This works great when you're working with a small number of people, and when the company is driven by and owned by a very small, close-knit group of people - ideally, you can count them on one hand. This allows non-fiscal values to be communicated. Unfortunately, communication is difficult among large groups, and the easiest and most common means of communicating values is in dollars.

I'm not sure that a $7.5B company can maintain this idealism. "Behemoths" are going to be present whenever you have economies of scale, and post-industrial-revolution we don't have craftsmen who are butchers, we have vertically integrated behemoth butchers with million-dollar tractors growing the grain that rolls in on conveyors to feed the cows that are butchered and packaged by automated machines, so each package of beef has less hands-on time than it takes the craftsman to wrap the finished product in paper and twine. The craftsman is going to be relegated to the edges of that industry.

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#287

Post by sbhn »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #279
sbhn wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft successfully pushed internet explorer to the front by making it cheaper and more accessible than Netscape. If they didn’t, the internet may have still lacked competition today and you’d still be paying money for Netscape. The foresight and competition that Microsoft brang to the browser market was probably the most significant factor for the adoption of the internet by the whole world back in those days.

I never, ever paid for a version of Netscape. Hardly anyone did. I - like everyone - paid a huge cost in wasted time and non-existent security when I tried to use IE or develop a site compatible with it.

If you never paid, well that’s because you entered the scene after Microsoft’s commoditising effect of the browser market had taken effect. You now had a choice.

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#288

Post by pfortuny »

ionised wrote: post #270
pfortuny wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are conflating self-interest with greed. That is a great mistake in trying to understand Adam Smith. They are not the same thing. Values, ethics, morals... are part of self-inrerst for lots of people.

Careful, Friedman and Hayek basically took Smith's theories warped it beyond recognition, and it is these two men that most of western economics has been tirelessly focused on this last few decades. Believing that humans are merely information processors acting at all times only in their 'rational self-interest' is an incredibly narrow and simplistic view of humanity.

Well, exactly, that is in another way, what I am stating: rational self interest is inherently unmeasurable because "rationality" is not something that can be objectively counted. So at any time one should assume that people act in their "self-interest": what at the time they deem "better" (in whatever their will decides is "better" at that point). I am not arguing that people never change or never act wrongly or never do things harmful to themselves. I am arguing that if one wants to "objectivize" their actions then one should assume that their decisions show their interests and their values at each time.

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#289

Post by pfortuny »

dbingham wrote: post #264
pfortuny wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are conflating self-interest with greed. That is a great mistake in trying to understand Adam Smith. They are not the same thing. Values, ethics, morals... are part of self-inrerst for lots of people.

Sure, you could argue that, and maybe Adam Smith was at the time. It's been a long time since I've read him, I'd have to go back and re-read it to decide to what degree I think he's making that argument. But that is not how most people understand self interest in an economic context and that is not how Adam Smith is mostly wielded today (see the post I'm responding to for an example). Most people understand "self int…

Of course: that is why Adam Smith speaks of people and not corporations. And I was speaking of people as well.

Corporations are a different subject matter.

Re: GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button

#290

Post by rainbowmverse »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #58
Zyst wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say that, as siblings echo. I genuinely think that, for instance, Microsoft is genuinely doing a better job of doing open source than Google right now (With Facebook at the top, MSFT #2, Goog #3 from FAANG). That might be because I'm deeper into web development though, and both TypeScript, and VS Code are great contributions. Maybe I'd feel different if I worked in ML, and used Tensorflow daily.

Considering Google has over 2000 plus open source projects I find it hard to believe how Microsoft is doing a better job of doing open source than Google . Additionally, I find it comical that you would even suggest that a company that has sued other companies for using open source software is even in the conversation with companies that have championed open source software since their inception. There is no undo but…

I assume you're not using Google's GitHub profile as a measure since Google's has fewer repositories than Microsoft's. Where does the 2000 number come from?
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