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GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

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Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#321

I’ll never understand why they ruined GitHub. They had everything they needed - the one place in the world where 99% of open source projects were hosted, where all the discussions happened. A product that people were so used to that it was a no brainer when it came to hosting private repos. And they had to ruin it and give space to GitLab and other competitors. What a waste…

> why they ruined GitHub

Are we living in the same world? GitHub is not ruined at all, it still works great (as in it’s completely usable), it’s still where 99% of open source projects are hosted, and it’s still a no brainer to use it for public or private repos (having used Gitlab extensively, GitHub is just so much more user friendly). There is more competition, which is good, but GitHub is still the default option for open source by a long margin

Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#322
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was much better than the closed source SourceForge which existed before it. A lot of small projects dont have the energy to self host. Plus for small projects the barrier of entry is an issue. I recently found a typo in an error message in Garage but since they run their own Forgejo instance and OpenID never really became a thing I never created a PR. It is first now with Codeberg there is a credible alternative.…

> It is first now with Codeberg there is a credible alternative. There is no credible alternative, because 3rd party hosting of the canonical repo is a bad idea to start with. By all means use 3rd party hosting for a more public-facing interaction, but its about time that developers understand that they need to host their own canonical repos.

We understand, and say no thanks. The benefits don’t outweigh the costs

Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#323

I’ll never understand why they ruined GitHub. They had everything they needed - the one place in the world where 99% of open source projects were hosted, where all the discussions happened. A product that people were so used to that it was a no brainer when it came to hosting private repos. And they had to ruin it and give space to GitLab and other competitors. What a waste…

I'll never understand why anyone thought they wouldn't ruin it. It's a miracle it even exists anymore.

it's not ruined yet. it can recover, but it will require an immediate 180 degree turn on all changes they've made since acquisition.

microsoft, you suck at aquisitions.

stop shoehorning copilot into everything. holy hell, stop it. just stop. please. no customers ask for this. none. zero open source developers ask for anything like this, ever. stop it. stop. holy moly, stop. i mean it. but you won't stop because you don't understand why we don't want it, because you suck at acquisitions.

stop usurping github culture and replacing it with microsoft culture. you know what happens when microsoft culture arrives: all of the things that people love about your company vaporize almost immediately. you dorks don't understand this, though, because you suck at acquisitions, so this'll never change.

stop letting people with MBAs make decisions. this is the big one. people with MBAs know enough to be catastrophically dangerous, and they don't know enough to know if what they're doing will drive people away. MBAs lose all respect for customers and only see things in terms of value. MBAs do not see customers as valuable, they only see product as value. MBAs are insane. Fire the fucking MBAs and get some older engineers who do not have MBAs to assemble teams to help them pick product direction and product features. This is obvious to everyone except you dummies because you dummies suck at acquisitions.

you CAN keep the "GitHub" brand, and the clout, but you must stop doing everything you started doing since you acquired them. and I do mean that. you must let GitHub culture return. GitHub will die a slow, painful death if you do not. It will live on a bit longer as the git host of choice for some enterprises, but it will not last very long in that form. This is obvious to everyone except you because you suck at acquisitions.

you look at your shiny new pet and you grab it and you dash its head against the concrete wall until you see its eyes poking out and then you cry because it's dead, not understanding that it was you who killed it. you only wanted to make it better! but you didn't make it better, did you? you killed it. as you always do.

you strip everything that customers love out of these companies and you crush everything that the employees love about the companies with extreme efficiency because you don't fucking respect these things. you don't even know that you SHOULD respect these things, because knowing that requires that the MBAs be taken away from the acquisitions steering wheel and be permanently banned from the company. you are filled with cancerous MBA decision making and those MBAs will never admit it to you, because they are the engine behind these acquisitions you fucking suck at.

Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#324
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But compared to GitHub it's much more complicated in terms of UX as it covers more enterprise use cases that GitHub doesn't.

Why do you think this? It really isn't.

It really is… I’ve worked with Gitlab for years and moving to GitHub was like a breath of fresh air, everything is much less cluttered. Not saying it’s perfect, but GitHub just feels simpler

Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#325
post #321

I’ll never understand why they ruined GitHub. They had everything they needed - the one place in the world where 99% of open source projects were hosted, where all the discussions happened. A product that people were so used to that it was a no brainer when it came to hosting private repos. And they had to ruin it and give space to GitLab and other competitors. What a waste…

> why they ruined GitHub Are we living in the same world? GitHub is not ruined at all, it still works great (as in it’s completely usable), it’s still where 99% of open source projects are hosted, and it’s still a no brainer to use it for public or private repos (having used Gitlab extensively, GitHub is just so much more user friendly). There is more competition, which is good, but GitHub is still the default option…

I think maybe we're not living in the same world.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46131406 "Zig quits GitHub, says Microsoft's AI obsession has ruined the service"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47487584 "GitHub appears to be struggling with measly three nines availability"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45037365 "The GitHub website is slow on Safari"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44799861 "Why is GitHub UI getting slower?"

GH notification search doesn't search the title or description of the notifications. https://docs.github.com/en/subscriptions-and-notifications/r...

GH cannot search code that exists in non-default branches. Have fun responding to the next supply chain compromise in any org that has repos with multiple supported branches.

Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You cannot grow a business if your market is saturated At some point, a business should shift from growth state to a steady state. The idea that businesses have to grow forever is a sad consequence to how we fund companies. The only thing that grows forever unchecked is cancer.

> At some point, a business should shift from growth state to a steady state. I was on a department-wide call; many, many years ago. The person talking was telling us how well we were doing and how we needed to grow. At the end, they asked if there were any questions (which, thinking back, seems odd given the size of the meeting, but.. it was a long time ago). I asked them "Why? Why do we need to grow? We're doing a…

Businesses do not always need to grow at all, neither do investors as a class, demand that business keeps growing. A mature business generates a stream of dividends and everyone is happy. There are many, many such businesses.

One famous example is See's Candy, which Warren Buffet famously discussed in one of his newsletters. See's is a mature company with zero mandate to grow. It turns the profits over to Berkshire and Berkshire uses that to invest in other companies.

The economy as a whole keeps growing because human desires and ingenuity are unlimited. But a specific firm reaches its natural limit, at which point it turns into a cashflow machine to generate dividends for owners.

The problem you are facing is that Management does not want to acknowledge that it's time for them to start paying out dividends and leave growth alone, because that would be an admission that the profits of the firm are best invested by some other firm, and not by them.

It is all about management ego, in not recognizing their limitations, and then destroying the core company as they invest in areas where they can't compete. Shareholders and boards need to replace management when this happens, but it is hard to do because Management keeps insisting that they can earn an above average return if they keep the money rather than returning it to shareholders. And people love to hear stories of above average returns.

Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it's Microsoft. Categorically incapable of respecting their users. What's interesting to me is how many people went like 'Oh, Satya really gets open source, this time it will be different'. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17225599

I am not sure it is that. The job of Microsoft is to satisfy shareholders. That is the only target. They only care about users to the extend that helps the shareholders.

The shareholders would certainly understand, destroying a key tool for undefined gains is not good for the shareholders.

What it is, is purely incompetence. Revolving door of executives forcing shit ideas because they need to assert control.

Big Tech has become a space led by lizard brained nepo babies who have nothing to contribute to the world, but think they're entitled to it all.

Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don’t think that LLMs won’t result in an insurmountable volume of spam on all web foru Oh wait, your post was written by an LLM.

It was not! I don’t think it adds much to this thread to refute the accusation though, but I would add: if you’d tried to out me by asking me to write a haiku about buttons, you’d be reading a haiku about buttons right now. It’s as reliable a signal as looking to see if I use hyphens and dashes. (I love haiku!)

look at the c key

so faded and worn out from wear

always getting used

Re: GitHub backs down, kills Copilot pull-request ads after backlash

#330
post #276
post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a non-statement. The reverse is also true. I have no control over the technology that others use. Whereas I have direct control over my own morality.

When asking for moral progress rather then technological progress, it's not an inverse. People can build technology, or I can build technology, but we generally all get it. Its distribution requires nothing of me or others psychologically. You can't just build and distribute morality, and adopting it is a massive personal change.

You can build and distribute morality. It's called politics. Or religion. Or culture. Or marketing. Or propaganda. Or education.

There's so many ways in which morality is distributed.

There are also many things that stand in the way of adopting technology. Cost. Personal preference. Moral preference. Availability. Lack of awareness. Lack of specialized skill.

The two are not very different at all in how they diffuse through society.

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