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Comment by samim | Hacker News Reader

Github, via extension of its owner Microsoft, is owned by some of the most regressive, monopolistic, oligarchic/kleptocratic, big-finance forces on the planet - the likes of Blackrock, Berkshire, Gates, etc. It is very much in their interest to centralize and control open source/free software (free as in freedom), and they have a well established track record of doing just that, by any means necessary. To say it more poignantly: Microsoft is a direct driver of perverse wealth inequality, endless wars and centralisation of power which effectively destroys any resemblance of democracy everywhere. Behind the clean corporate facade, they are just another mafia. If you support this system - by hosting your code on Github and buying MS products - you are de-facto supporting this techno-dictatorship.

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It’s a decentralized version control system though! It seems tough to make the argument that M$ are trying to suppress free software speech through GitHub. Literally, a Git project can be redistributed immediately if it was ever taken down by GitHub so the argument that M$ is trying to control open source seems pretty soft.

It’s mostly about mindshare.

Microsoft are running Bartertown and and are doing a pretty good impression of Master Blaster. Ironically youtube-dl just got dragged into the thunder dome.

You can trade outside Bartertown but it’s going to have low visibility.

I can sort of buy that argument; but in that case it seems the problem is just that M$ is a company which many people dislike? Not that there are actual restrictiveness issues?

Rightfully dislike yes. They have a very long history of making the wrong decision almost universally, being a monopolist and abusive towards suppliers and customers.

People are afraid that they will do that again after relying on them as a foundation for their product or experience based on some trite promise of "we changed". So when something happens, the attribution and a hypothesis is already formed.

Unfortunately, based on my experiences attempting to fight their universal telemetry, the promise they made is invalid. So why should I trust any of their other promises? I think a lot of people are there too.

Git is a decentralized version control system. GitHub is a centralized source code repository. That GitHub happens to use Git is ancillary.

How is GitHub a centralized source code repository? It vends copies of DVCS files

The web is a decentralized hypertext information system. And yet, through IE and strategies leveraging their OS monopoly, Microsoft has put the web into the IE5.5/IE6 dark age. It's been a while - almost a decade. But those of us who have have witnessed Microsoft's Embrace, Extend & Extinguish strategy deployed several times (with lesser and greater success) are warey.

Specifically, the way GitHub "embraced and extended" git (even before the Microsoft acquisition) is to have quite a few things outside the repository - like issues. You can take your source anywhere you want, but a project with 30,000 issues is going to have trouble migrating those issues.

This sounds like you have a problem with capitalism in general. Not specifically with Microsoft.

Or is there something specific you are accusing Microsoft of?

The problem is with people exploiting capitalism, not capitalism itself. There are many well-known flaws with capitalism, the most obvious being lack of accountability for external costs and the formation of monopolies. This is why we have laws to "correct" that. You don't get to be as big as Microsoft without some amount of corruption and exploitation to circumvent these measures.

To give an analogy, I think the Internet is great. But I dislike the individuals who exploit it to send spam and propagate worms etc.

It boils down to a certain competitive spirit that exists to varying degrees in different people, which is what drives them to push the limits of their field. If something wasn't good enough for Steve Jobs, he didn't accept it. Michael Jordan wouldn't accept someone being considered better than him. The champion / winning attitude is what has driven a lot of folks to invent, innovate and lift the standard of everyone around them through their own excellence. We all benefit from that kind of attitude.

Capitalism offers a reward for those who are willing to put in the work.

Microsoft has helped billions of people around the world find employment, build software, use a computer, save time, money, and achieve something or another across pretty much every field in existence. For that, the capitalist system lets them dominate the market and gain all kinds of advantages. They deserve it as far as I'm concerned.

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