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Comment by tombert | Hacker News Reader

Not the OP, speaking for myself.

I guess the thing that concerns me (not speaking for anyone else) has largely been the (admittedly late) realization that Github can be bought.

I had, for some indiscernible reason, thought of Github as this near-benevolent entity that existed exclusively to facilitate open-source and distribute Octocat stickers. When they were purchased by one of the largest megacorporations on the planet, it pulled-back the curtain, and showed that, no, they are a for-profit business, not a charity.

I shouldn't have thought that way, but I did, and as a result the MS-buying-Github thing has not sat well with me.

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a16z invested $100MM in Github (when they did not need the money) to help Github become the dominant "OSS Social Network". a16z was always going to want a return on that investment. Prior to their acquisition, Github was pursuing the enterprise market.

Yeah, I'll admit that my mentality was flawed and short-sighted. Developer-time isn't free, of course they need a way of making money. I don't even blame the investors or Github for the acquisition; if I were in their shoes of course I would do the same thing.

Fair enough; I understand that point of view, and even had it myself, to some degree. But I also think that has little to do with MSFT. The same would be said if SF, or Amazon, or (insert any other large corp) would have bought them.

I also think GitHub, essentially, positioned themselves that way. However, that, if viewed a bit cynically, could easily be seen as just marketing or PR.

Oh, I don't know that I made this entirely clear, but I'm not saying that this is MS's FAULT necessarily. I agree, if Amazon or Google had purchased Github, it would have been the same thing.

I think the slight difference is that MS does have a history of shitting all over open-source software (Ballmer famously said Linux was cancer years ago). While I'm aware that companies change people all the time, it's unsurprising that some people get a little bit uneasy about them owning the largest distributor of open-source.

Yup, I definitely agree. And rereading your original comment I think it’s fairly clear and I probably just misconstrued your intent: /any/ large corp buying GitHub would’ve resulted in a similar reaction and it’s just a bit stronger given some of MSFT’s history.

I mean, it’s not that difficult to make the case that their support of OSS over the last decade was specifically to buy developers’ goodwill, though I don’t think that’s the case and think GitHub was headed this way anyhow.

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