Microsoft purchased Github?

#1

To me it is really disturbing that Microsoft have purchased Github for some petty stocks. 13.000 projects all ready moved over to Gitlab. I went for these DIY/community platform exactly to get away from being a slave of big companies, like Microsoft. And now it seems like this is where its going anyway, which is imo really really bad.

What do you guys think about this?

What does it mean? Do Microsoft then own the rights to use everything thats on Github? Any legal experts in this group? :=) This is pretty essential.

@johannes, have you thought about using something else than Github, Gitlab for example? Or any other platform that would be free of any corporate influence?

If anyone have some thoughts about this, doesnt matter how mad complicated or whatever, just post them so we can get to the bottom of this and what it actually means for a platform like Axoloti.

Thanks!

#2

Github does not own the code hosted there, so Microsoft has not purchased it either. People can and will walk out. Nonetheless, I dislike the sale, Microsoft's past purchases either got absorbed into Windows or developed into something ugly and useless. But even if Github goes the way of Sourceforge, there will be something to replace it...

#3

Good to know.

Yeah 13000 changed all ready and they have a lot more traffic than usual.

Yeah that is kind of my worry too, that it will become something that you dont want to be part of. And the fact that microsoft have bought it makes me want to migrate. But I guess all that stuff is up to Johannes. Regarding the axoloti stuff atleast.

Yeah, Git lab might be it. Allthough I dont really know what it is, so need to do a bit of research on that side.

#4

this of course needs to be 'monitored' , but generally I disagree,

its not necessarily a bad thing.

Ive had my issues (mainly to do with not adopting standards) with Microsoft in the past, and generally have moved away to linux/macos.

but in fairness to Microsoft,
they have always been great to developers, and actually pushed things forward by leaps and bounds at times for developers. Microsoft VC++ (and its predecessors) were, when released, well ahead of anything else at the time (as was their developer network)

also Microsoft is a very different company these days, a little less dominant, than it was, so its a little more 'thoughtful' i think.

so Im actually hopeful, they will provide a stable management/investment source for a vital service - by a company thats knows a great deal about fostering development communities.

remember Github has always been a private company, so thats not really changed.
id have been more concerned by facebook or google buying GitHub, as then we could guarantee it would need to be funded by advertising revenue!

furthermore,
- Microsoft does not own the code it hosts, all projects have their own licenses which determines ownership. (every project there should be explicit about this)
- git is independent from GitHub, everyone who clones has a copy of the full repo history, which they could upload with a simple command to any git server anywhere. so unlike many things GitHub has no data that you don't!

(gitlab by the way, does not have a good reputation for reliability...)

so honestly i think a lot of the initial reaction, is just the typical 'Microsoft backlash' reaction(which we also see with Apple), without much thought about if there are any real implications.

the worst that can happen, is Microsoft make GitHub unattractive, so people move their repos elsewhere ... but that would be stupid of them, to killing their own goose.
(Microsoft also use GitHub a lot already, so this is counterproductive for them)

whats more likely is Microsoft will just improve their own products support of it, and perhaps add a few 'extensions' to make that easier/more seamless.

if they do that then hopefully we will all seem improvements.
(I for one would like to see a bit of a boost on the performance as it can be a bit slow at times.)

of course this is just my opinion, others will have different ones.

but the bottom line, is its trivial for axoloti to move its source code and factory/contrib repos to another host if it becomes necessary.

#5

Thank you for the detailed input @thetechnobear, I appreciate it :slight_smile:

I started with all these open source projects to avoid being a slave of the corporate world. I have no interest in supporting corporate world(Like Microsoft) at all, but lets not get too much into politics and why, those debates seems to explode, hehe :wink: .... And now Microsoft have bought one of the greatest resources for these kind of projects and that is to be a bit of a concern, I just dont want to support them or use their services, if I can avoid them.

I read some more info about it and one concern is, that since its now a Microsoft product, it could eventually be implemented into Windows and only be available for Windows....... I think that have happened before with other apps, that once Microsoft took it over, the app as suddenly implemented into Windows and only Windows. Argh I dont remember the name.

Anyway, we will see. I am just throwing the ball in the air, as I think its nice to at least talk about it and find out what consequences it might have.

#6

Sure these things can explode, and when we see moves like this, it doesn't take a genius to understand why people like me try to warn others against these corporate monsters, and do so with such fury :wink:

I like your response to this, it's good to see, and IMHO (a very well educated one), every open source developer needs to move their open source projects away from a corporation which now has the ability to maliciously replace code and files at will. There is no way, for example, that something like a Linux-based OS should ever be hosted by them. Microsoft work closely with the NSA, and one of the biggest problems the NSA face, is Linux, because they have no control over the code.

The NSA now have the ability to work directly with their friends at Microsoft who are responsible for hosting that code.

Open source repositories have no place in a commercially owned environment, whatsoever, and every developer who fails to move their open source project to a suitable alternative, will eventually suffer for not doing so. It is also an injustice to users of an open source project to expect them to access servers owned and run by Microsoft. A huge chunk of the open source community use a Linux-based OS, and they do so to avoid Microsoft and corporate monsters like them, at all costs.

I for one will not be dowloading any open source project hosted on GitHub since the aquisition. There are alternatives, so we will just have to wait for the developers out there to get their act together, and join the thousands of other developers who have already moved their open source project away from Microsoft since the aquisition.

On the plus side (for me anyway), I knew this would happen due to GitHub being privately owned. It often happens to private companies, they abuse the open source community in an attempt to grow, with the sole intention of selling-up to greedy corporations when their private company becomes attractive to the abusive tech giants wanting to aquire private data and more manipulation power. For that reason, I refused to ever sign up to GitHub, and I'm glad I never did, because Microsoft did not aquire my details as a result of this aquisition.

The problem here, again, is lack of education. Most people simply do not understand that you cannot put trust in anything that is privately owned, no more than you can put trust in anything that is closed source.

Wherever the open source developers choose to move their code to as a result of this, it must not be privately owned, because if it is, then it is almost guaranteed that the same thing will happen again, further down the line, if another aquisition was to take place.

#7

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#8

@axoman

Even though we have had our fights, hehe :wink: we are not that different. I guess opinions clash at times :wink: But we have a common "enemy", hehe, corporate world!

yeah I'll try to avoid too much details on my stand, but its just the idea about very few companies have too much control over, basically, anything in this world. And I just dont want to be a slave of that, I am a free person, with a free mind and a free choice and I want to keep it like that :=)

I agree on most of the stuff you say here @axoman, my concerns are about the same.

But I would like to add that I do believe that privately owned servers could be an okay solution, based on what I think at the moment. I might change stand since I am still learning about this. Private could be okay, but ONLY if its community owned.

I mean a community where all have a stake in it and there is not only a single owner. If thousands of people have to agree on selling something, it going to be very hard to do so then people can just leave if they dont like it, but selling is not an options as you have to agree with many other people. So I am thinking community owned could be a solution, but I dont know if there are any pitfalls going down that road, I dont have too much experience with that.

But to be honest, I would much rather pay a small fee to a community where everyone has a stake in it, than I would get it for free from Microsoft.

I am thinking that the running costs are split annually between the members. If the running costs are 1000$ and there are 2000 members, everyone pays half a dollar. So the payment only covers the cost of running and nothing else. Dunno if this could work.

Its just a matter of principle.... And lots of other stuff, haha :slight_smile:

#9

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#10

@chaocrator Sorry I dont know what you are trying to say with the last screenshot? Could you explain it? :slight_smile:

#11

it's not a screenshot, it's a mock-up ) how github interface might look microsoft style )

#12

Haha :slight_smile:

20 characters

#13

Hey, no worries, Jaffa :sunglasses:

Yeah, they're an enemy alright, but I'm pleased to say I just heared about a survey which resulted in almost 70% of developers stating they are moving their code away from GitHub, haha!

If everyone was to refuse to install Windows10 with such enthusiasm, that would be quite something :grin:

#14

You have a link? trying to follow up on it.

Yep I knew it was a lot, but didn't know it was 70%

I have been following the development over at Pure Data land, some are migrating right away, and some are watching what other does, so its a bit mixed.

Anyway, I just don't like sheep mentality in general "we wait and see what the others do and then we do the same"... That makes me extremely uncomfortable.

I prefer to do my own research > conclude/rationalise what I want to do > do it :slight_smile:

#15

Oh there'll be plenty of sheep mentality involved for a lot of people, absolutely, but at least this time, it's the sheep mentality that Microsoft have bred into people for their own gain, that will bite back at them :wink:

I never saw the survey in progress, it was just a survey someone posted on a social media site, but the fact it was some random guy who started the survey, gives me confidence the percentage would be accurate.

Anyway, here's the video where the survey results were shown (suggesting almost 70% will leave GitHub):