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Microsoft acquires Github

blogs.microsoft.com

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Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may sound like a harsh statement, but exactly because corporations are not like people, they seem to be harder to change, in my opinion. I'm not saying Microsoft can't change, but it's easy to forget that the main goal of any corporation is profit, specially when it's so big.

I think the profit motive is exactly why change happens. As soon as a company realizes it can make more $$$ with new strategy B than their original strategy A, then boom -- changed. (Sometimes you have to get rid of the old believers, but that already happened at Microsoft.) If you look at MSFT's stock price, it's ~tripled since Satya became CEO, after being stagnant for years. He seems incredibly committed to open-s…

> He seems incredibly committed to open-source -- because in the long run it will ultimately be more profitable for Microsoft, no?

I think it's just because in the short run Microsoft ran a very high risk of getting pushed in a corner.

They are embracing what's hip most of all to improve their image, especially so as to be more attractive for talented technical people.

The "Windows everywhere" vision is not pursuable at this time, so it makes sense to let some things go and focus on what can get you the most money right now (cloud, IA, individual profitable products and services).

And maybe, just maybe, surreptitiously spread your patents everywhere... =0

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#822
post #507

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because you don't appreciate hardware design. Its understandable that you might be confused because of the presence of x86 compatible hardware. There is no such thing as "ARM Laptop". All ARM devices choose their own ARM processor implementation integrated with a custom motherboard with an undocumented firmware design. Not to mention custom drivers for all of the I/O. You can't install any OS on any random har…

You can install Linux on ARM architectures. It's commonplace that people install it on low end ARM laptops (and yes, those definitely exist in the 2-in-1 market). Also what do you think a Raspberry Pi is?

>You can install Linux on ARM architectures.

No, you can maybe install and boot Linux on SOME arm devices. Furthermore, installation and booting does not guarantee full operation of all attached peripherals. Only those devices that have the blessing of the manufacturer will work properly with Linux. There is no expectation that any random ARM device will be able to install and boot Linux. I would invite you to read up on the topic. ARM hardware compatibility is absolutely nothing like x86.

> Also what do you think a Raspberry Pi is?

I have one on my desk right now. What about it?

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can understand those concerns, but what can they do to convince you they have changed?

(1) Make it easy for alternative OS to run on Surface/Windows-certified devices: Both x86 and ARM. (2) Support OpenDocumentFormat in their office apps. Still remember how they corrupted the ISO certification process by creating OOXML (which is just a wrapper over binary blobs produced by MS-Office) (3) Stop suing Android OEM's for patent licenses

They'll do it the day they think it's profitable for them to do so, as their public company status obliges them to do, unless their shareholders vote otherwise.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#824
post #805
post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The success of Atlassian shows that you can have a great business in development tools without caring much about developer experience.

Enterprise purse strings are controlled by support and checkboxes, with developer experience a distant third. After all, the people buying the software/service aren't the ones who are going to be using it every day.

It's a culture thing :(

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#825
post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Linux is a winner for server apps but on the desktop it seems to get worse over time, not better. No, not really. The problem is too many people (like you maybe) associate "Linux desktop" with "Gnome (3)". That's false; there's a bunch of different DEs for Linux. Just look at Xfce; it isn't getting worse. KDE seems to be getting no worse too.

I do not associate it with Gnome3 but I have to ask (as I am not longer a desktop Linux user), do they still rewrite every system utility every couple of releases? Back when Fedora Core was a thing, they rewrote the GUI utilities every couple of releases, without actually improving them from what I could tell. And despite installing a binary distribution, they insisted on writing these in Python with bindings to the…

I don't know, because I never used Gnome much, and have avoided Gnome3 like the plague. Fedora is very much a Gnome-centric distro, so of course it's going to be like what you say.

At home, I use KDE, so of course they're not going to have system utilities binding to GTK. KDE is Qt-centric, so most stuff there is most likely in Qt-flavored C++. Xfce is GTK, but it's known to be fast (I use it at work and it's quick), so I seriously doubt it has system utilities in Python.

Honestly, I think all your complaints are really about Gnome3.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#826
post #745

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Not sure about the job part being about Miguel, but it's certainly not true about Nat. Nat interned at Microsoft in 97 and I was his manager. He did a great job and was well liked. I don't think he ever applied for a full time position after graduating as I would have heard about it. I think it's just that he wanted to do something Open Source based, rather than what Microsoft was doing at the time.

You must be proud of Nat :)

Oh I am. I'm proud of him and his boss, who was also on the same team.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#827

#2 in Hackernews "GitLab sees huge spike in project imports" I see no reason to trust Microsoft, all they are really doing is trying to buy out any opposition as is what they have always done. Microsoft rips off developers and pays bloggers to say nice stuff about them. No thanks, not now not ever

Having looked at it, it seems good, I have an old reaction to Microsoft which is a bit silly

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#828
post #804

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good question. The specific problem that I'd like to tackle is sharing code as safe as possible. The happy path is that you have some code to share and I want to get it exactly as you wrote it. Right now the current issues with just using GitHub to share your code are the following: 1. GitHub app gets hacked and let's someone else do a commit (like the rails hack mentioned above). 2. GitHub employee modifies files in…

Have you looked at git-ssb? https://git.scuttlebot.io/%25q5d5Du%2B9WkaSdjc8aJPZm%2BjMrqg...

I haven't. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#829
post #823

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(1) Make it easy for alternative OS to run on Surface/Windows-certified devices: Both x86 and ARM. (2) Support OpenDocumentFormat in their office apps. Still remember how they corrupted the ISO certification process by creating OOXML (which is just a wrapper over binary blobs produced by MS-Office) (3) Stop suing Android OEM's for patent licenses

They'll do it the day they think it's profitable for them to do so, as their public company status obliges them to do, unless their shareholders vote otherwise.

Of course. That's the point of criticizing them. So that they can see the potential profit in behaving nice.
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