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Comment by diggan | Hacker News Reader

I disagree. Before the acquisition, the work on GitHub was to make GitHub sustainable in it's own right.

Now, with Microsoft owning it, they have given up on that idea since Microsoft mainly get their profits elsewhere.

Instead, GitHub have now become a loss-leader for Microsoft, where every feature is meant to either lock in open developers in a closed source platform, or attract more open source developers to use their platform.

I did like the way of old GitHub more, even though they were slower at releasing stuff.

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So your argument is that because GitHub no longer has a profit motive and they're now releasing features at a much faster pace, that the acquisition has somehow gone bad?

The Argument is that it's bad for the market, as it makes it hard for competitors which aren't part of such a large company and hence need to make profit.

Isn't this also an argument against every VC-funded startup in existence?

And basically every free product released by large companies which prioritizes mass distribution and user base over direct product cost. It definitely makes it much harder for the few remaining competitors but also benefits the far greater number of users.

They definitely have a competitive advantage where they're able to build and give away features for free to attract larger mind-share, but it's also the playbook of most large companies with freemium or gateway products. Not seeing why Microsoft needs to limit themselves to the same constraints as their less resourceful competitors.

> It definitely makes it much harder for the few remaining competitors but also benefits the far greater number of users.

It only benefits users in the short term. The consequences of monopoly catch up with all of us, eventually.

Well, actually, yes.

VC funding has nothing to do with it. It’s an argument against the business practice of leveraging monopoly in one market to subsidize selling at a loss in other markets to kill off competition before it can even emerge. That is what Microsoft appears to be doing with Github, and it is overall a bad thing for everyone except Microsoft. We will get less choice in the markets poisoned by Microsoft, and in the long run we will get less value for a higher cost.

By the way, this is not just about Microsoft. Google, Amazon, and to a lesser degree Apple and Facebook are equally guilty of this.

> Now, with Microsoft owning it, they have given up on that idea since Microsoft mainly get their profits elsewhere.

Is that really an issue?

How much did has Google's non-monetization of Chrome hurt the product vs helped it?

Yes, it is an issue.

Why would Microsoft prioritize development and improvements of GitHub when they don't earn a profit from it?

When (in the future) Microsoft needs to earn more profits, they have to make a choice.

Either they improve GitHub and get more developers on board with X.

Or, they improve their Cloud Hosting service, which actually improve profits.

Since GitHub is basically just a cost (with the hopeful promise of future returns of developer mindshare) while Azure makes profit, it's much more likely Microsoft will focus on improving Azure before GitHub.

And as a GitHub user, that idea makes me worry.

It's a bit more nuanced IMO.

I would bet on there being a intense internal competition between Github and the Azure dev tool stack right now.

All the new products Github is introducing are exactly designed to increase the value proposition for paying customers and bind/lure them to the platform instead of them going with AWS/Azure/Google dev tools.

This will increase revenue for Github, and is probably in part driven by internal pressure to make Github profitable.

> Why would Microsoft prioritize development and improvements of GitHub when they don't earn a profit from it?

Because they also use it for their own works.

> when they don't earn a profit from it?

Developers, developers, developers.

The issue is not one of "monetization" vs. "non-monetization", but one of priorities being driven primarily by the interests of a corporate surveillance capitalist owner rather than what's healthy for the community.

Google's agendas (advertising, amp, etc.) are clear in the design decisions taken for Chrome, and slowly we're beginning to see analogous prioritisation come to GitHub. Expect more to come in time.

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