Hello, GitHub
natfriedman.github.io
natfriedman.github.io
1) They’ve acknowledged the skepticism around the acquisition.
2) They’ve expressed their commitment to keep GitHub an independent platform (like they did with LinkedIn.)
3) Nat Friedman, although I was not familiar with him prior to this, seems like an ideal candidate to run GitHub.
This, overall, is giving me a more positive impression of Microsoft. Now what remains to be seen: Will they follow through on these commitments? Will they continue to listen to the community?
1. What is happening to Atom? I have tried VS code and don't really like it due to the difference in how the 2 systems are designed to work (Atom being more "plugins are king", VSCode being more "kitchen sink included by first-party"). I'd hate to see my favorite editor lose it's major backing. If MS makes a commitment to continue to develop Atom, or they work with someone else to "transfer" development over to them in a way that's not half-assed, it would go a LONG way toward solidifying the trust they are trying to build (at least to me).
2. How will other companies who are hosting on GitHub react to this? Will Facebook/Google/Apple start pulling their code from GitHub? Will we go back to having to learn how to contribute to each project individually?
There's definitely major benefits for diversity in this area (meaning not having the vast majority of projects on one platform), but I'm hoping we (as developers in whole) don't throw the baby out with the bathwater here.
GitHub has by most accounts helped bring in a renaissance of open source software. It's never been easier to contribute to FOSS at any level, and I'm hoping we don't lose that as everyone diversifies where they host their source code...
For these companies who owned GitHub hardly plays a role. They want to attract developers and go wherever the crowds go. If there is mass migration to mercurial-superhost.com they will follow. It's just an outlet.
The question is more relevant for companies and communities who built their infrastructure on it and might worry for good or not so good reasons.
I could be wrong but my perception is that Atom is losing market share to VSCode all on its own– new devs are much more likely to adopt vscode & no growth ~= decline for an editor. Couple that with the fact that no one pays for Atom...
IMO They don't need to "kill" atom, they just need to wait a couple years, at which point it will just Yet Another Editor down the list with TextWrangler et al., if the next Atom doesn't come along and hasten its decline even further.
[0] https://github.com/atom/atom/issues/17454#issuecomment-39442...
Github should announce that Atom has become an Apache foundation project. Github then says it will provide x number of developers for an initial three year period. Probably won't make everyone happy but it should defuse most of the angst.
Funnily enough, this was my immediate concern, followed by Electron generally. It actually prompted me to go all-in on Vim: I've used Vim in terminals for a very long time, but never found a graphical Vim that I liked. Happily, I've now found Oni, which provides a VS Code-like interface around Neovim: https://www.onivim.io
Git hosting and the associated tools are replaceable, the strength of GitHub is the network effect, so we'll have to see what happens. Regardless of what happens, we've progressed a long way from Subversion and BugZilla, so I don't mind if projects move to a more diverse set of modern hosting. Personally, I'll put my own public repositories whereever the community goes.
Since they said Github will remain independent, so Atom will, I think. Maybe I'm too optimistic but when I think about VSCode's business model, promoting Azure rather than selling the editor itself, they have no reason to kill Atom. They might be integrating Azure with Atom.
How will Microsoft/GitHub handle such secret requests? Will Microsoft even sue the DoJ to stop it - or will they settle again the moment they obtain a small compromise from the government?
Biggest hurdles normally are: - big chunk, own branch, small chunks? - Contract to sign? - signed commits, unsigned commits? - changelog file? - patch via mail? - extra review tool? ...
In the end it's always a git push. Github only makes it look more beautiful.
Atom had more plugins for some time, but they had mediocre quality.
Perhaps tooling can help with this. Github, Bitbucket, and Gitlab (and I presume some of the lesser used solutions out there) all support some type of forking and pull request model, even though that's not core git. An abstraction layer atop that can hopefully obviate a hard dependency on one platform.
> 1. What is happening to Atom? I have tried VS code and don't really like it due to the difference in how the 2 systems are designed to work (Atom being more "plugins are king", VSCode being more "kitchen sink included by first-party"). I'd hate to see my favorite editor lose it's major backing. If MS makes a commitment to continue to develop Atom, or they work with someone else to "transfer" development over to them in a way that's not half-assed, it would go a LONG way toward solidifying the trust they are trying to build (at least to me).
> 2. How will other companies who are hosting on GitHub react to this? Will Facebook/Google/Apple start pulling their code from GitHub? Will we go back to having to learn how to contribute to each project individually?
> There's definitely major benefits for diversity in this area (meaning not having the vast majority of projects on one platform), but I'm hoping we (as developers in whole) don't throw the baby out with the bathwater here.
> GitHub has by most accounts helped bring in a renaissance of open source software. It's never been easier to contribute to FOSS at any level, and I'm hoping we don't lose that as everyone diversifies where they host their source code...
I started with sublime, went to atom, went back to sublime, and finally moved to vscode.. trust me you can't go wrong. It has everything and extensions.
It's everything I wished for.
It's also really weird how people idealize GitHub. Did they forget GitHub was not a non-profit association, they were losing money, they deleted users repositories on their own, they had management issues, and people have been waiting some features for very long, specially open source maintainers? Also GitHub "forced" a lot of organizations to migrate somewhere else when they changed their pricing model[1].
Moreover, although I agree Microsoft is making efforts to change [1], pro-Microsoft partisans make it clear much of this is due to the new CEO. What one CEO does, another can undo. GitHub's bus factor is now 1.
I would much rather have seen them go public. They were losing money, but not, last I saw, at a rate that was absurd for building a SaaS business. Is there some reason to think they couldn't have gotten into the black? And if so, is there some reason to think Microsoft will let them burn cash forever without getting anything valuable in return?
Previously, GitHub's success depended on GitHub serving their customers and users. Now it depends on the notions of some guy in Seattle. Some guy whose job is, at least by market cap, 99% focused on other things. It's reasonable for customers to worry about that.
It's quite common to have the following scheme:
1) nothing significant happens for 1 to 2 years, the big company slowly integrates the smaller one.
2) historical dev/ops starts to be tired of the heaviness of the processes and all the politics going on in the big organization. After 3 to 4 years, they start leaving, and knowledge begins slowly to get lost.
3) new features are slower to be pushed in production, often with major regressions.
4) after 5 years the service is becoming more and more unstable and/or is not evolving anymore.
5) after 7 to 10 years, the product is killed-off or put in limbo.
Really? For its size? It seems like Google, Apple, and Facebook are all much more productive in OSS. The only open source Microsoft product I'm aware of using is VS Code. To my understanding, they haven't open sourced Edge, their JS engine, their compiler, their word processors, or really anything else of note. I guess I can give them a little credit for .NET Core, but would that even have happened of Mono hadn't existed?
You think the privacy nightmare of windows 10 happened in the 80's-90's?
Nat Friedman is a legend in the open source community. He founded Ximian in '99 with Miguel de Icaza, who both meant a lot for the Gnome community (e.g. via products such as Ximian Evolution) and Mono (FOSS .NET for *NIX). They got bought by Novell where he also got a top position. Nat has been busy with FOSS for a long time, and he _believes_ in it.
Some verification on the above plus other details can be found here on Wikipedia [1]
As a final note, "I’m not asking for your trust, but I’m committed to earning it." is very humble, professional, and clever.
Which is a pattern we have seen from their takeover of hotmail and more recently with skype, where they also waited a few years before starting the transition from independent brand to a sub brand under one of Microsoft estates.
What you are going to see when MS is done integrating the leadership of github into MSFT and Nat have been replaced by a next phase CEO, is that githubs CI hooks will become more and more symbiotic with azure, and the a lot of the documentation tools offered will hook directly into office365 tools, which will require a synchronization of accounts with MS other SaaS offerings.
Microsoft is a gigantic organisation with very good working conditions. This leads to people with very long tenures working in highly defined and specialised roles within the company. Career development does happen, and is actively encouraged by Microsoft, but you're usually moving into a role which is just as niche as your last.
When a major acquisition occurs of a smaller organisation, it's usually done with a promise of keeping independent leadership and a degree of organisational separation. However, as middle-management staff rotate out of the smaller company naturally, the roles that they vacate are very attractive to Microsoft employees who want to have a bit more of that start-up feeling, and a slightly wider remit to make change.
So through a kind of organisational osmotic pressure, even if the leadership of the acquired company remains independent, the middle ranks of the acquired company become permeated by life-long Microsoft-ers. None of this is particularly bad - I just want to make it clear that Microsoft's definition of independence is not everyone's definition thereof.
Their absolute best bet is to sit on GitHub, feed it money, offer the paid features as an additional perk for MSDN subscribers through an account linking method, and call it a day. The developer goodwill they can buy being a good steward of GitHub far surpasses any other value they could extract from it.
(Although, IIRC except for WhatsApp most of these didn't make many promises.)
In fact, I think there's a strong 'once a criminal, always a criminal' mentality that takes a healthy skepticism to an unreasonable level. At least with the benefit of the doubt you can be wary of what Microsoft's intentions really are, but I don't think it's productive to go 20 years into the past and pretend that absolutely nothing has changed since, and rehashing everything from that time as if it only happened yesterday. It's an unreasonable standard and if nothing else, it presents the self-fulfilling prophecy where you're only satisfied once you've found proof that Microsoft today hasn't changed at all. So you've practically doomed GitHub to fail post-acquisition because you've already decided it _will_.
I'm not sure why you'd want that. So on that level I hope that Microsoft doesn't betray the gigantic community that has built around GitHub, which itself has taken open source to a whole new level. It's an appeal to emotion, I know, but I just don't see the value in being straight up negative in the light of recent evidence that suggests the contrary. You would never hold yourself to such an unforgiving standard (unless you wanted to sacrifice yourself on the altar), so it's better to give it a chance instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
(Secretly, I'd love it if they, for example, rethought the pricing strategy and offered free private repos the same as every competitor does.)
That said, it's a little worrying that tech is continuing to consolidate around the giants.
That's a good general point; if you find you dislike someone's POV or behavior, and you're not simply being tribalistic, you should be thinking along the lines of, "what do I want this person / group to do differently?"
They clearly have greater ambitions than increasing Visual Studio sales. For example, what about forced integration of LinkedIn with personal Github repositories?
What I haven't seen is a moralistic rejection. Microsoft tried to kill Windows gaming, they tried to kill Linux, they tried to kill Firefox, and countless other things. Their operating system design is nearly abusive and even their open source development (tracking, licensing) has been lined with traps. I want nothing more than for them to disappear, and if them buying a $7B company which ends up with 0 users is one step on that path then I absolutely support it.
It has nothing to do with whether they promise they won't do bad things _this_ time, or whether they claim they'll be independent (they're clearly not independent - Microsoft now owns Github).
Treating large companies as Manichean monolithic entities is unhealthy. Microsoft like every large company has bright spots and dim spots, good leaders and bad leaders, good ideas and bad ones. They're complex and so your relationship with them should be, too.
As an argument, this comment is terribly myopic and naive. As a mirror it's fascinating.
Huh? If you mean "gaming on Windows", I can't imagine how that could possibly be true, and if they tried, either nobody got the memo or they did a really bad job at trying. PC gaming has always been defacto Windows gaming. If you mean "Windows Games", that's still a thing, they're just integrating closer with their XBox platform, which makes perfect sense given that XBox is integrating closer with Windows 10 from the other side.
> they tried to kill Firefox
So did Google (they're still trying). So did Apple. Are you holding grudges against either of them?
> Their operating system design is nearly abusive
Heavily subjective. Windows has had its regressive moments, but overall it's consistently been more usable than anything on the market. 95 was a joy, 98 was a joy, XP was a joy, Vista was bad, 7 was a joy, 8 was bad, 10 is amazing. Compare that to MacOS* which only started competing with OSX and peaked at 10.5 (Leopard) and has been basically going slowly downhill since, with regressive behaviors, hostility to anyone that doesn't want to live in their walled garden, hostility to legacy software (many Windows XP programs still run perfectly with explicit compatibility settings, meanwhile OSX barely supports apps that are built for 3 major releases back-- that's only 3 years of support) and deprecation/removal of core OS APIs with zero intention to replace them. You want abusive? Try developing on a platform that competes against its own developer community and keeps APIs private for competitive advantage. Try developing on a platform that strong-arms you into paying yearly fees just so you can deploy applications that work out of the box on client machines. Comparatively, Apple has been much more hostile to developer communities than Microsoft ever has.
> I want nothing more than for them to disappear
Clear indication of an unhealthy long-kept grudge. Even if Microsoft has done all the things you claim, you don't really have a moral high ground if you're sitting there rooting for their failure. You can feel free to not use their products, but to want them and all of their customers to fail because you don't like what they've done in the past isn't really a "moralistic" viewpoint, it's just brooding.
...and you're going to have to move past the brooding if you want to make it to Acceptance.
[1] It's only for public projects with a license that doesn't prohibit Google from mirroring it, and only for projects Google depends on.
Or do the opposite. If Microsoft decides to make private repos on GitHub free, I can see VERY big issues for other players. I suspect more people use GitHub alternatives for cost reasons, rather than ideological ones.
This is a willful misunderstanding of the word decentralised.
How many "new Microsoft" have we seen already?
"Will they follow through on these commitments? Will they continue to listen to the community?"
No and no. Microsoft is not in the business of making good software, it is a PR firm, an awesome marketing department with tons of experience in shady practices, and the bare minimum dev team to make Windows somewhat competitive.
Microsoft is a big company with a big NIH syndrome. Github is antinomic with their culture.
To me Microsoft under Nadella have changed substantially. they're more open and more collaborative. Sure they want to make money, but that's a given for a corporation.
As to NIH, well I was at KubeConEU and the Microsoft engineers on the Microsoft stand were running Macbooks, and the Microsoft Keynote speaker was running an Ubuntu desktop, so it maybe isn't quite as cast-iron as it used to be.
What is baffling for me, is how worried some people seem to be. If you understand the Git hosting space, you would know Microsoft tried to compete with GitHub and failed miserably.
It is quite clear the value that GitHub provides is data and there is ABSOLUTELY no way Microsoft would want to disturb this. In fact, Bitbucket, GitLab and others should be concerned that Microsoft might treat GitHub as a loss leader and provide private repos for free.
People should get to know who Corporate VP + Chief IP Counsel [Erich Andersen] is. GitHub will be under his watch and all these years he has done nothing but wonders for the developers and the brand. "During this time when customers are rapidly adopting #AI solutions across industries to solve important problems, Microsoft is helping to protect those investments by offering #AI patents as part of #AzureIPAdvantage" [1]
#AI #AzureIPAdvantage! Isn't it wonderful that Microsoft is protecting developers from the patent troll ecosystem? From the likes of Intellectual Ventures and Conversant/MOSAID, Myhrvold and Gates? Why look at what Microsoft has done over decades past? We should look at what Microsoft is doing now. People should get to know just how reformed-from-evil Microsoft is.
[1] https://twitter.com/erichandIPG/status/961651306459901952
This is Microsoft. I cannot understand why people trust this company. Actually trust their PR messages. It's amazing.
Is just making GitHub better worth $7.5 billion dollars for Microsoft? It will stay independent for this pile of cash? Why they bought it? For prestige?
For me the answer is that it can't be independent for long as it was (with VCs on its back was it ever?). It will gain Live login, maybe they will integrate it so you could login with your GitHub credentials to your computer if you so desire. But that's hardly worth billions.
Maybe the better thing would be what others suggested - setup a non-profit that would run GitHub and all those big companies could put something in the jar. Certainly less than what was paid. But I know it can't work, VCs want their exit.
For me it's a same game for GitLab. Current situation probably will accelerate GitLab's burn rate so prepare for the next acquisition.
I'm posting them here for easy ref -
1. "Second, we will accelerate enterprise developers’ use of GitHub, with our direct sales and partner channels and access to Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure and services. "
Above means - More revenue for MS.
2. "Finally, we will bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services to new audiences."
This also means - more revenue for MS
More answers here - https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://c....
Briefing above ppt here - MS will report Github revenues as some part of Azure. They are looking for growth and diversification of income sources. Linkedin and this acquisition are steps in that direction.
5) Will they merge multiple accounts into one account, even though the user wants them separate, similar to how that was done with Skype and other services?
We will see what Nat Friedman does but Miguel de Icaza did have a bit of a falling out with the gnome community and started Xamarin where the developed a closed source IDE that didn't run on Linux. So a bit of a 180 he did there.
I preferred Github to be an independent thing, and I wonder if the world's changed to where you can't have independent things, you can only choose your master, and you can't actually choose that either. If it's that, could be worse.
Nat is a great PR guy, no doubt about that. You may have no issue with his previous behaviour at Gnome when founding Ximian with respect to open source commitments etc. - but you should know about it and decide for yourself.
On that basis alone, not sure how anyone can cheer this acquisition
Linkedin? It maybe ok now, but to see who in the network clicks on you and more recruiters... at a prime membership of $30/mo? With the same opptys as Indeed? And with more spam and solicitations? Aside from Linkedin being on the edge of being another FB+Tinder.... Well, I think we see where it's going by year end of 2019. Wouldn't be surprised if it gets engineered into irrelevance too.
As for these new managers like Friedman: they'll will hold the FOSS torch for a year, get frustrated by internal politics and leave likely.
MS will likely listen to the community, but it's to exploit them into MS products, mainly Azure. And of course the community will be smaller than today. No way MS would abandon MSVS/TS--much like Oracle: too much invested and a good size community.
2) They can express whatever they like but keeping their word is optional.
3) How do you know? Have you met him?
It is sad that Hacker News, once a community for hungry entrepreneurs has digressed into a hipster, anti-corporate, anti-capitalism community.
>3) Nat Friedman, although I was not familiar with him prior to this, seems like an ideal candidate to run GitHub.
Nat seems like a decent candidate for GitHub CEO, but i'm having trouble reconciling Microsoft's commitment to keeping GitHub an independent platform with their installing a new CEO. that's not really how "independent" works.
People saying that it is easy to migrate don’t know what they are talking about. GitHub isn’t just Git hosting, but a social network of open source developers and projects. You can’t migrate stars, issues with comments and the history of PRs, all linked to the profiles of their authors.
And sure you can self-host GitLab, I pushed for it at my previous employer and works great for on premises deployments, but it’s not the same for OSS if the community you care about isn’t there.
That said I am glad to see Nat Friedman as the new CEO. This gives me some hope for its future.
> People saying that it is easy to migrate don’t know what they are
> talking about. GitHub isn’t just Git hosting, but a social network
> of open source developers and projects. You can’t migrate stars,
> issues with comments and the history of PRs, all linked to the
> profiles of their authors.
It is not an accident that it is difficult for non-trivial projects to "just leave GitHub." That is by design, it is part of how it grew to become the 800 pound gorilla, and it is part of why Microsoft bought them.
You're right in a lot of ways.
A personal detail is that I've developed a bad habit of searching "github <project name>" when I need to find something. As if any project worth its salt is on github.
I'm changing that habit, I even started sharing my projects between github and gitlab over a year ago.
Nat can be best described as a OSS geek gone CEO, and thus I can't imagine a better executive within Microsoft to lead GitHub besides him. In fact, when I heard the first rumors and Chris not wanting to run operations anymore I immediately thought of Nat to run GitHub when Microsoft was crazy enough to buy it.
Seems I was right :)
If Microsoft can somehow manage to gain trust from Github users, which is very possible and desirable for them, it will make Azure more compelling in many ways than Amazon as a cloud computing platform.
After Amazon's acquisition of Cloud9, Microsoft is the first big company to try something really bold and inventive in cloud computing. Github can prioritize making code deploy to all clouds AND make it especially appealing for customers to choose Azure, as there will exist amazing opportunities for end to end product optimizations here. Seems really smart for me, and given that Microsoft is really hell bent on changing people's negative opinions about them, they have all the right incentives to make Github even more awesome than it already is.
My opinion of Microsoft isn't based on whether or not it owns Github.
My opinion is based on other aspects of their behavior, such as:
- Do they force mainstream Windows users to provide telemetry data to Microsoft?
- Do they threaten Android developers with lawsuits regarding violation of unspecified patents?
- Do they use OS upgrades as an opportunity to reset opt-out telemetry gathering.
- Have they recently used dark UI patterns to trick users into installing Windows 10?
- Do they make telemetry collection opt-out (and non-obvious) for the .net CLI tools?
Any meaningful reinvention of Microsoft would involve (1) stopping those kinds of behaviors, and (2) making a compelling, public argument for why we should never expect those behaviors again from Microsoft.
So much negativity!
Also, as long as Windows, Office and Azure are closed, I cannot take all this "we love Open Source" stuff seriously. It is a big tech-marketing and recruiting vehicle, but nothing more. I am not saying, they should open those, I am saying that they are not an OS company and therefore should stop pretending.
On a serious note though, they deserve all the skepticism coming to them. I know they’ve been working in the last few years to revert their status as OSS public enemy #1 but remember, this is the company that said the GPL is cancer.
Let them earn our trust. Keep the pressure, stay vigilant and be ready to change vendors.
The last few years have been very positive for Microsoft in my eyes from an outsider perspective. They're saying and doing the right things.
More viable competition on cloud hosting is definitely a good thing for society at large.
Microsoft is addicted to your data. They siphon it off whenever they get the chance, often times by default and without your knowledge or consent. Even their cli Linux tools have """analytics""".
This will never change, no matter what slick marketing materials they produce, what PR fluff they have, or shills that shill for them.
The simple fact is I cannot trust Microsoft, especially to not touch code in my private repositories. I am sure they just want some "metrics" and to do some "analytics" on all the private data held in GitHub.
To use GitHub now, is to trust the same company who works hand in hand with the government and the NSA to make sure you stay insecure and known to agencies who just want to run some "metrics" and do some "analytics" on you.
No thanks.
you can’t trust MS to not read your code? do you trust amazon to host your binaries? or database? or google cloud? or do you trust no one and rent your own cage and keep it locked?
aws has an entire cloud for US gvoice. they work hand in hand with government requests. google is very tightly coupled as well. do you host entirely on foreign providers?
I lived through Microsoft's dark ages, when the victory of open source was still hanging by a thread. The reason we're seeing a softer Microsoft is that they lost, they were forced to change. And the open question is what they learned in the process.
On the other hand, they're producing pretty decent software these days; dotNet Core, TypeScript & VSCode just to name a few solid projects. Open source, no less; imagine that back when monkey boy was running the show, literally.
But then I keep hearing about shady Linux licensing deals and endless privacy intrusions over in Windows land.
Tricky indeed, I think I'm going to leave my code in there for now and give them a chance to redeem themselves.
They were the biggest corporate sponsors to open source and also Linux kernel in the past few years. They acquired github, the biggest place for open source devs to meet and contribute code, and promise to keep it independent. How open of a question is this really?
Why would you do that?
I mean, at least import the code to other repos
Now this post from Nat, talking about how open source literally changed his life and made all things possible (which I agree with), bothers me even more. How can you say such things when your actions are so completely opposite? The hypocrisy is appalling to me.
Don't misunderstand, I do think Github has done great things for open source. However, it's time for them to either practice what they preach (open the code) or else we need to move to gitlab of gitea or something else.
I'm actually a bit optimistic that MS might open source github in the long run. It's a long shot, but they have really been incredible with how much they have opened up. I'm more optimistic now with MS at the reins.
Perfectly normal use of FOSS; I'd say, not ironic. If GitHub wanted, they could have kept the work to themselves and avoided others benefiting from it.
FOSS is like people coming together with their own bricks and building a cathedral for everyone. There's little point in participating if you either don't want others to pitch in or don't want others to benefit from it.
Had Github been bought by an foundation operating outside the confides of the market, then such statement would have been believable. Microsoft will naturally use Github maximise its wealth, thus when disagreements arise then Microsoft will put its will through.
It is of course easy to imagine ways Github could be used by Microsoft, fore instance mere access to valuable user data, strategic focus on integration with Microsoft products or sigle sign on with Azure, Github, LinkedIn and Skype.
It's kinda painful and annoying to read about all the negativity and tinfoil hat theories but that's the price to pay (I guess) and we'll see what happens. Microsoft has every interest in playing nice with the community and everything to lose from trying to do anything hostile to it.
That's the price for being a deeply un-ethical company for many decades.
I can imagine. You may wish to switch employers.
> and tinfoil hat theories
Are you saying that all complaints about MS conduct are delusional?
> Microsoft has every interest in playing nice with the community and everything to lose from trying to do anything hostile to it.
So let's have a candid discussion about telemetry. Or sneaky Windows 10 upgrades. Or vague patent threats.
I'm sorry, but few software developers who follow Microsoft's actions will accept you crying martyr.
Only problem is that this move was net-negative wrt developer trust.
1. If you want to develop software for Microsoft’s Linux distro/kernel (Azure Sphere for IoT), it appears you must use Windows 10 + Visual Studio, https://seeedstudio.com/productDetail/3052 & https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/developing-an-azure-s...
> To use MT3620 Dev Board for Azure Sphere, you’ll need a Windows 10 PC with the latest Windows Updates, along with the Visual Studio Tools for Azure Sphere (which will be available for download from Microsoft). These tools will include application templates, development tools and the Azure Sphere software development kit (SDK). Terms: This development board can be only used for prototyping, it cannot be built into a product for commercial distribution. It cannot be re-sold or used as part of a production environment.
Since IoT is one of the “next big things”, it would be nice to use Microsoft Linux ARM kernel with open hardware (no terms of service for hardware resale) and open software (e.g. use open-source Linux dev tools with the Azure SDK. Will this be an option?
2. What is Microsoft’s position on EU upload filters for copyright screening of code uploaded to Github? Has Microsoft taken a public position on this issue? Does Microsoft currently use upload filters for open source code screening?
https://blog.github.com/2018-03-14-eu-proposal-upload-filter...
What is surprising is that one of the younger members of our team really equated "Git" with "GitHub". I think the brand is so strong, but now "Github" by microsoft makes clear github is not git..
The nice thing about it is, everyone who keeps their Git repo up-to-date (and who has the transfer.fsckobjects setting set to true) has a complete copy of the Git repo. And GitHub provides APIs to pull other stuff. I think the hardest thing to move would be sites on GitHub Pages.
So, since I can pull out relatively easily, I'm gonna give them the benefit of the doubt.
My interpretation is that transfer.fsckObjects just checks that all of the fetched objects are properly formed and contain no broken links. I cannot confirm whether or not this fetches any extra objects from the remote; this is the first time I've heard about this feature.
I am really excited to see what Nat and team bring to the table
C:\GITHUB> git clone https://github.com/my/repository
Cloning into repository...
remote: Counting objects: 57583, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (36/36), done.
..................
Resolving deltas: 100% (42949/42949), done.
Install Bing Toolbar? (Y/n):As far as I'm aware nothing has changed. A leopard never changes its spots.
I work on Windows 10. It is normal for me to have many programs open while I do development along with dozens of web pages containing information I need. Days worth of "state" are stacked on the screen.
Every few days Microsoft reaches out and REBOOTS MY MACHINE, losing my work. My various linux boxes all have uptimes listed in YEARS. So next time you think Microsoft cares about your work be sure to thank them for random reboots. After all, a Microsoft 'update' is MUCH more important than your work. You're "just a developer".
Microsoft cares about Microsoft, not your work. Expect the same attitude to slowly, eventually, take over Github.
You'll need a Microsoft login. You'll be hosted on its server farm, requiring a login. You'll see Microsoft-branded forks of software, prioritized in github searches. You'll see a "Microsoft Git GUI" as the required interface for push/pull. The Microsoft Git will use incompatible hashing from the open source version (it's called "embrace and extend"). Microsoft Git repository communications (e.g. git://github.com) will only work with a Microsoft Git GUI over a Microsoft-login connection.
So again, Microsoft is a corporation dedicated to making money. My time is only worthwhile if Microsoft can make money. So, naturally, in order to keep them from destroying my work I have to BUT an "professional" version.
"Nice place you got here, be a shame if anything happened to it."
The belief that Microsoft will help open source is simply naive.
Ubuntu pops up a window telling me that updates are available. Apple does the same thing. You don't have to be destructive "by default".
You can be certain that Microsoft will "just know" that a Microsoft login "adds value", that cloud-hosting Github "adds value", that SHA-256 is better than SHA-1 for git hashes, that a Microsoft GIT GUI is better than a command line, and that a Microsoft protocol is better than a git:// protocol. Slowly, but surely, the Microsoft attitude will make github into a Microsoft "product".
If Microsoft REALLY wanted to help developers they would fix the money problem.
Open source needs a way to get grants so people can attend conferences, pay for servers, pay for bandwidth, etc. (not salaries). But grants require accounting. Accounting requires accountants. Somebody, somewhere has to "manage the money", keep the books, and clear the receipts. Otherwise grant organizations and the federal government won't give grants.
So if Microsoft REALLY wanted to help open source developers they would hire a few people to manage grant applications and grant money management. Then we could apply for a grant, the money would be held by this non-profit.
We're programmers. If you can think of it, we can do it. But it takes someone who has the motivation and the time. Motivation is easy to find but time is not. Because Time is Money (as I'm sure you've heard). So the real issue is open source funding.
I've spent the last 18 years trying to get Axiom funded.
I tried the NSF. They will not fund Axiom because there is a "competing commercial product" (aka Mathematica).
I tried the Air Force (AFOSR). They cannot give grants to open source work because it requires financial tracking. Somebody has to managed the funds and the receipts. When I was at City College I did get a grant but they have a Provost (who took 55% for "support").
In order to handle accounting open source needs an "accounting office" with professional, certified accountants. I approached several companies (e.g. IBM, TI, etc.) with the idea of "donating a certified accountant or two" to an organization that would "manage open source grants" with services like funds management, receipt clearance, taxes, etc. That way an open source project could accept grant money. So far, nobody wants to donate people. I think such an office could completely change the whole open source funding issue.
I've tried setting up donations for Axiom. The idea was not to pay people to work on Axiom, just to support things like setting up a conference or paying to attend a conference. I was the only donor.
Open source is not free. I estimate that I spent about $3000 per year on things like travel to attend a conference and paying for hosting services. I now have the Axiom server under my desk on a $1200 dollar computer. In order to ensure Axiom runs everywhere I have to buy computers like the Apple (used to be a non-Intel processor), the PowerPC, a Windows machine, a Linux machine, etc. It all adds up to a lot of money.... not to mention the cost of books to keep up. Oh, yeah, and my time is written off as "free".
We launched Marketplace just over a year ago and continue to heavily invest in it. We want it to become the place that any entrepreneur in the software space is able able to grow their own successful business. We're just at the beginning of that journey.
Looking forward to what's to come and to seeing more developer tools thrive on our Marketplace.
Microsoft paying 7.5B for something that looses money every year ? And not having any problems with that ? What will the shareholders say ?
So, they can have the existing product operate as-is, and Microsoft can make money by moving their legacy high-paying consumers to something better.
Love this line. I had followed Xamarin when it was independent and I get a strong feeling that Nat wrote this himself and it's not just a PR speak. I am cautiously optimistic about GitHub going forward.
A profitable, developer focussed business built using Microsoft stack.
I don't know how much sense it makes for Microsoft to be making money through selling job ads, but if they're gonna take over all the tools that developers use then SO and the SE network seems a good fit.
And what about gitlab ...? Maybe they want my money more than GH does...
The question is, what will happen to Atom?
What will happen to the X-Ray research project?
Atom is irrelevant to all of this, as far as I can tell. Can someone please educate me?
Worked at Xamarin as an intern before the MS acquisition. So not too long, but enough to get a coffee downstairs with Nat at the coffee van. I also joined his all-hands. Great guy who has a great attitude towards open-source and has a positive leadership style. I was skeptical of the Xamarin acquisition, but MS open-sourced and made the platform free for everyone. Nat knows how this MS stuff goes, and I think he's a perfect fit to preserve the core of Github.
I have nothing relevant to add, since I don't really know Nat or how good he'd be leading Github (but I'd guess pretty good), I just thought it was a fun anectdote.
People in an organization are usually not evil. It's the organization as a whole. And I'm pretty sure that this CEO has someone and their business with priorities in his neck. It's scary how easily it seems people here move on after seeing a face with a good reputation and a CEO sticker even though they'll still have to dance to another's wishes.
MS now has the capability to not only snoop on smaller competitors' IP but gain visibility into their dev team composition, work habits, pipeline etc.
This acquisition smells like something that could get litigated to hell and back, though I'd assume they've already prepared for that
It's important to me that my GitHub account and my LinkedIn account are allowed to be 100% separate. I don't want people able to hunt me down like that.
I must ask the question now, though - is it time for a non-profit Github-like open source community with integrated source control / tools? Could that even exist due to the costs of running such a thing, and is it necessary? For example, it would be like if The Apache Foundation ran GitHub.
Or should we look into things like git over IPFS (or something similar) and try to go decentralized?
I have wrestled with the for-profit / not-for-profit conundrum my whole life, and I still do. Obviously, running such a utility / community costs money, so it is good to have one or more healthy companies supporting it. It should mean good things. But ultimately, both GitHub and Microsoft are primarily for-profit entities (although I know they both do a tremendous amount to support the not-for-profit space).
Perhaps Microsoft could even be the one to set up such a non-profit... like.. "The Microsoft Foundation for Open Source" or something similar. Knowing that the organization owning and managing such a utility and community is a non-profit - good or bad?
EDIT: ..perhaps like they have done with the .NET Foundation?
The time horizons on these kinds of acquisitions are 5 years out. In that time you`ll log into Windows 20, single sign in to Skype, Linkedin, Github all re-branded, all re-written code, with messed up ELUA and a shitty product.
Dont believe todays fluff and BS, the end game is many years out.
All this good will because they developed a telemetry packed browser-based text editor or finally started providing a not-dog-crap shell environment is stupid. Their binary editor is licensed like Chrome, who builds VSCode from source?
Both Google and Microsoft are doing a hell of a lot of embrace and extinguishing and I think that pattern will continue unnoticed as long as they keep devs happy with silly gimmicky pro-developer products.
There's a lot of talk about people leaving github for other platforms. If there are actually doing it, it seems like a short-sighted move. I understand why people who lived through the earlier years of Microsoft are skeptical. Microsoft did a very good job of earning a lot of ill will.
But things have changed. Microsoft's primary focus seems to be is Azure and everything they do needs to be looked through that lens. They need developers of all stripes using Azure. So they will do everything to attract all developers. It's in their business interest.
More happy users of Github => more happy developers using a MS product => more developer good-will => more developers/decision-influencers that might consider a MS cloud product (like Azure).
1. Late 90's/Early 2000's, Microsoft's implementation and inclusion of CDRW/DVDRW functionality native to the OS eliminating competition from smaller companies that had pioneered the technology and was selling their software to Windows desktop users.
2. Late 90's/Early 2000's, Microsoft's implementation and development of Active Directory which not only rivaled Novell's Netware flagship product but also went against RFC's put forth by the larger community that rivaled OpenLDAP. Because of the desktop shares and users already on the Windows NT platform put thousands out of work and nearly put Novell out of business.
3. Early to mid 2000's, Microsoft moves away from already found vulnerable MSCHAP, MSCHAPV2 authentication protocols in favor of the MIT Kerberos protocol for all network authentication of users and systems in Active Directory.
Not only did this put those companies out to pasture and eliminate a large amount of revenue but the idea of stealing and idea is very bad tact. Reverse engineering code to gain a larger market share is not only dishonest but plagarism and illegal in schools. Why should the free economy play by a different set of rules?
People wonder why Microsoft has a bad reputation, the three things I have witnessed over the years in conjunction with the snatching up smaller companies and parting them out make me and I am sure many others very skeptical of their desire to snatch up the worlds largest source code repository.
When the new CEO has to make a public personal appeal to the users to keep them from jumping ship, that says something (though I'm not sure what that is).
That said, it feels lazy and deeply mired in a Browser Wars-era IRC discussion about wether Netscape Navigator or Lynx is the way forward. Or any other, equally tedious, period of paeolithic tech history.
Microdollaroft have been pretty well behaved recently, especially with regards to their developer stuff. Heck, I'd even argue forced updates to a desktop os used by huge swaths of non technical users may not quite be up there with Hanz Fritzel in terms of taking people's freedom away.
But then I generally don't have an ideological standpoint on which operating system, text editor or source control I'm using as long as I can get work done, so perhaps I'm just a bit of a weirdo.
In the end as long as companies people traditionally dislike try to make money, there will be people who traditionally dislike them there to remind everybody about the time a previous CEO said something egregious or they attempted to build a monopoly of some description (aka being a very successful business)
Really?
For all these companies with the free time to migrate repo hosts on the same day, get back to work and make something worth your focus.
I’d say it would probably be easier to replace git with hg or something than to pull out and redo the k8s infrastructure.
- don’t charge me money! - don’t raise your prices! - don’t raise money! - don’t sell your company! - don’t shutdown! ...
Me, I don't care. I work for myself.
I often tell the story about the first program I wrote (at 8) and how I got beaten by good old flesh and blood.
I don't tell people I was a developer at six... I wrote a program... semantics matter here.
The photo got me... The fake over done smile, the "I had a professional take this" pose. The Hoodie. It just smacks of being over produced to try to fit in.
> I’m not asking for your trust, but I’m committed to earning it. I can’t wait to help make the GitHub platform and community that’s special to all of us even greater.
Im not calling you a liar but I already don't believe you.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9966118
and also issues of people being removed from projects _by GitHub Management_ because of political or personal opinions expressed in other forums that were unrelated to the open source project?
This is why I don't use GitHub
OrgName: Microsoft Corporation
Oh come on give me a break
(...a string of wooden blocks I teethed on.)
explain yourself
That's just one example, but I'm honestly most curious if any ideas will go from GitHub to other products.
It's a bit of shame that that's the location of choice for hosting an AMA. The AMA subreddit is good, but it's trapped in the toxic cesspool that is Reddit overall.
I hope that things don't change. I have come to rely on GitHub and I don't want to go investing in another solution.
I also rely a lot on Github and don't want to move, but I'm going to bite the bullet if they don't open up. I don't like the hypocrisy, and I don't want to be an enabler anymore.
Well developers aren't skype's users.
"SCM/CM is not free as in beer"
Really want git? Hire a CM mgr/team to manage your code. Been that way before 2010 (yes, it did suck). Doesn't matter if it's done in-house or out-house.
I’ve heard it all after this acquisition was announced. Microsoft is evil, Microsoft will never change, Microsoft is that and this, Microsoft will destroy GitHub.
There are people who see a monster when they hear Microsoft but I bet ask them how they’ve been hurt by Microsoft and nothing will come up.
Is our bias towards Microsoft stoping us from seeing the great work they’ve done in embracing Linux and open source software. Tell me it’s not a big change, and departure from the old Microsoft.
One of the neat things about Github is that a ton of open-source projects can be found there. Regardless of how Github operates going forward for individual users, I would be surprised if projects like Facebook's React or Google's Angular remained on a platform controlled by Microsoft.
Those are only two examples in a sea of OSS projects, so maybe the impact will be smaller than I think.
Why didn't I see that coming? Brilliant.
That is not a great place to be in.
Personally, I think everyone should just move their projects somewhere else before Microsoft starts forcibly herding developers their way.
Not that I deny it, because can you point me to some examples of this?
Abuse their market position, yes, abuse TOS to screw companies out of money, yes, but abuse privacy, unsure that's fair.
"Please remove all data you have on me. I do not consent with your privacy policy. I don't give permission for your organization to use any kind of information you have about me."
Perhaps now all the companies in the MS silo are going to learn how OSS is something that can be taken seriously.
I've worked in enterprise where using open source tends to be frowned upon. This was mostly due to the FUD from Microsoft.
For them it just does not need to lose too much money.
From a regular ($DAYJOB) GitLab.com user: this is hyperbole. GitLab.com is slower than GitHub.com, in general, but not "very, oh very" slow.
I wanted to move my public / open source repos for a long time. Now I finally I have the opportunity to do so without getting into discussions at an interview on why am I not using github.
For people such as myself, I don't know what Microsoft / Github can do or say to convince otherwise.
$7/month is a burden? What's it competing with except a fancy coffee or two?
But it really depends on how you view it. I felt I got better value by supporting an open source project I like on patreon (Godot) than spending my money on this subscription.
A choice line. Let’s see if he means it.
This doesn't: https://natfriedman.github.io/
Might be worth redirecting...
Wait, is that a one-off custom landing page? Something that normal users can't do?
I don't see a "hello" repo in his list of repositories: https://natfriedman.github.io/hello/
Can private repos have publicly accessible pages?
That’s some badass line.
They can burn in hell.
How does this giant pile of money serve the users of github?
(2) MS brings a huge team of lawyers that will exploit the licensing of FOSS (all favors), that will enable #1
Give MS credit, they are one of the smart guys in the room, and I see the tcpip stack fiasco all over again.
Github was about meritocracy? Right. It was just social coding, merits got pushed to the wayside when the VCs came in.
I guess nothing, it brings nothing to the table.
When they do that in an ill-defined way, they are done.
And with "done" I mean the whole company. The financial lose would be dramatic.
He is developer since six - since 1983. This means his family was wealthy one. He also survived two years of Microsoft.
Now even sceptical and lazy me thinks I have to move out of github. ;)
What are you even trying to say?
This means Github will be handled by non-developer who tries to pretend to be a developer. This means he lies, conspicuously or not. In both cases I cannot see him as smart enough and self-aware enough.
Given that, I think github will be mishandled and I also think I would be better off somewhere else.
Many of us were given a choice to join MS but didn't.
I was there too, but the war is over. Come in from the cold.