5 ms·

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that come Monday morning all the reasonable critiques are buried at the bottom of the page and all the GitHub + MS love is upvo

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that come Monday morning all the reasonable critiques are buried at the bottom of the page and all the GitHub + MS love is upvoted to the top, hyping up all the "amazing business synergies". Multibillion dollar mergers like this are huge things, especially for with a big player acquiring a smaller beloved brand like GitHub. Makes one wonder how many of those leaks over the past week were planned to get the hate out and pave the way for a "cleaner" coming out like what we're seeing here. An independent player just got gobbled up by a major one, once again the tech world consolidates... --- EDIT: Perhaps HN is just having issues, but right after I made this comment and checked the thread ALL I saw were critiques. HN must be quite happening this morning... anyways, in response to /u/mcknz, some critiques: Centralization vs Decentralization https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17221933 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17221933 Has MS really changed? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17227370 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17227370 GH was aa neutral 3rd party https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17221640 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17221640 Wake up call, MS ties to NSA https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17228593 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17228593 Open source community Doesn’t have a say https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17229241 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17229241 ---- EDIT 2 - I'm probably wrong here, I see the comment now I claimed was deleted, I most likely just misplaced my reply. ~~I actually made this as a reply to the most upvoted MS + GitHub love posts and it looks like that comment was removed and I was placed onto the main thread. The title of this story also changed a couple times too. The current neutral one "Microsoft acquires Github" is the original I think, but for a bit it was changed to something a bit more pro MS.~~ ~~I wonder if we'll get a story in a couple days about what was happening in this thread...~~

mcknz 8y ago
Since you're up here, maybe link to what you see as reasonable critiques?
- dorkusmcgavin 8y ago
  I'll just dump my own here. This is mostly anti-corporate, anti-monopolistic, anti-cloud, and anti-surveillance ideas. Windows, the development environments, etc is a monolithic platform that has very little in terms of customization due to it's structure and prevents competitive integrations. Think of all of the WMs for Linux, or any other modular component in Linux. Linux provides extensive competition, and Microsoft is seemingly attempting to drag people into an all inclusive "developer" network that prevents anyone from doing anything outside the walled garden of their systems in a meaningful way. LinkedIn accounts are going to become Office365 accounts by their own admission when it was acquired. Governments, small businesses, etc are moving to Office365. Between LinkedIn, GitHub, Skype, and Xbox, their focus on developers is increasingly looking more like a "we want to see what developers do, how they spend their time, and data-mine them so we can tailor our experience better towards them, and assimilate them into our Borg hivemind". If you're fine with data-mining for these purposes, we're going to have to agree to disagree. WSL is mostly just a means of getting more Linux users to convert to the Big Brother Borg by providing them useful tools so they don't have to install Cygwin. For those asking why it's bad for a company to make money, you are missing the point. You can monetize GitHub (and it is), without selling over to another company. Even if GitHub is not profitable, that's just bad business management and pricing that needs to be fixed. You can monetize software while making a competitive platform. This goes to the MBAs approach of "blue ocean strategy" over a "red ocean strategy". People are afraid of competition, and want the comfort of knowing someone else has made those decisions for them. I do not, I want competition in technology otherwise we'll get to a stagnant technology development system. It's already theorized by WSJ analysts and defectors from Google, etc, that Silicon Valley is devoid of all ability to innovate, and they are investing and going elsewhere. Microsoft went from selling a product (Windows), to selling a product (Windows 10) that serves mountains of advertisements. Xbox is guilty of this as well. Telemetry, despite people's claims of the privacy screen, has an upper bound on the amount you can opt-out of (some telemetry, even in Windows 10 Enterprise, is not opt-out). From a security perspective, even if the data is silo'd off, this also provides many issues as individuals who are highly skilled in cybersecurity will end up needing access across services (especially incident responders), and they become targets for massive troves of data access and breaches. Microsoft is still attacking Android device handset manufacturers with lawsuits (but not Google), for Android's uses of FAT file systems, etc. Microsoft is inherently still acting as patent troll against open source. There are accusations of open source plagiarism (not certain the credibility): https://twitter.com/jamiebuilds/status/1002696931527700481 https://twitter.com/jamiebuilds/status/1002696931527700481 GitHub already has issues with pseudo-accounts. You can create a profile that showcases forked repositories that you have not contributed anything to and throw up a neat avatar and it looks like you are a coding god. Not to a skilled developer who understands Git, but to an HR recruiting representative who knows very little in a small business it takes about 5 minutes to create the equivalent of an Instagram fake coding lifestyle. And I'm really getting sick of the "Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook are just as bad, get over it" whataboutisms. Yes they are. It's possible to oppose all of the above.
  - KillcodeX 8y ago
    To be honest, they are many types of devs (Hardcore cyberpunk = Hate corporations and true devs only use Linux and build cyber weapon systems to destroy evil corporations ) and Slaves devs (Slaves to corporations or materials etc...and write codes to destroy their own citizens ). Many slave devs are programmed via advanced algorithms warfare systems, so the corporation figured out the weaknesses of this type of Slaves devs (Microsoft devs etc....). I believe that they try to track/steal code project without being noticed from the owners of the project. Then, they will create the same project (Products), and they will sue right away if you try to compete. By the way, they will upload malicious code in your computer via github or they will get easy access to your computer or startup from this software. In short, Microsoft is a spy agency made by the NSA...... Solution :Gitlab(open source) with your own VPS
aphextron 8y ago
It's like that super rich kid who really wants to hang out with you and your friends so bad and he's kind of nice, but just a total dork. So then he has his dad buy the abandoned lot everyone plays wiffle ball in and forces you to let him join your team. And it's like "Oh yeah sure Microsoft....come on and play... yeah sure we were just about to invite you..."
- jehlakj 8y ago
  Or that time when they bought Skype.
  - aphextron 8y ago
    >Or that time when they bought Skype. To be fair, those were the Ballmer days. I'm not really worried about GitHub becoming malware or falling into disrepair; that's beside the point. GitHub was the Romulan neutral zone of the internet, and now we've lost that.
ryanisnan 8y ago
It's interesting strategy. Even in their corporate merger photos, I can't help but sense how deliberate Satya's and Nat's clothing choices were. Regardless of the intent, we are being told a story.
- tmaly 8y ago
  I see it as a play for information. They have LinkedIn, now add the technical information from github and you gain some insights into potential people to hire.
  - qaq 8y ago
    7 billion is a bit much for that
ransom1538 8y ago
Do people realize the massive national security risk private github repros are? Who gets the keys now at MS?
- bonzini 8y ago
  How is that different from skydrive or live.com email?
  - SXX 8y ago
    It is different because there is plenty of popular options and you can as well encrypt your data here on any cloud hosting. And for email better example would be GMail due to market share. And GitHub is obviously biggest player on market.
    - bonzini 8y ago
      Yes, but I would sure hope that (except for national security letters...) the access control measures for skydrive are very strict! File-level encryption is still not for the masses.
himom 8y ago
Synergy... the cornerstone of businessese
matheusmoreira 8y ago
> Wake up call, MS ties to NSA Sure is nice knowing the NSA will have easy access to all the private source code hosted on GitHub. I bet they will find so many new vulnerabilities.
- PeCaN 8y ago
  Frankly, I'd be surprised if they didn't already have that access.
- majewsky 8y ago
  Github has always been an American company. What makes you think they didn't have access before today?

mcknz 8y ago

Since you're up here, maybe link to what you see as reasonable critiques?

dorkusmcgavin 8y ago
I'll just dump my own here. This is mostly anti-corporate, anti-monopolistic, anti-cloud, and anti-surveillance ideas. Windows, the development environments, etc is a monolithic platform that has very little in terms of customization due to it's structure and prevents competitive integrations. Think of all of the WMs for Linux, or any other modular component in Linux. Linux provides extensive competition, and Microsoft is seemingly attempting to drag people into an all inclusive "developer" network that prevents anyone from doing anything outside the walled garden of their systems in a meaningful way. LinkedIn accounts are going to become Office365 accounts by their own admission when it was acquired. Governments, small businesses, etc are moving to Office365. Between LinkedIn, GitHub, Skype, and Xbox, their focus on developers is increasingly looking more like a "we want to see what developers do, how they spend their time, and data-mine them so we can tailor our experience better towards them, and assimilate them into our Borg hivemind". If you're fine with data-mining for these purposes, we're going to have to agree to disagree. WSL is mostly just a means of getting more Linux users to convert to the Big Brother Borg by providing them useful tools so they don't have to install Cygwin. For those asking why it's bad for a company to make money, you are missing the point. You can monetize GitHub (and it is), without selling over to another company. Even if GitHub is not profitable, that's just bad business management and pricing that needs to be fixed. You can monetize software while making a competitive platform. This goes to the MBAs approach of "blue ocean strategy" over a "red ocean strategy". People are afraid of competition, and want the comfort of knowing someone else has made those decisions for them. I do not, I want competition in technology otherwise we'll get to a stagnant technology development system. It's already theorized by WSJ analysts and defectors from Google, etc, that Silicon Valley is devoid of all ability to innovate, and they are investing and going elsewhere. Microsoft went from selling a product (Windows), to selling a product (Windows 10) that serves mountains of advertisements. Xbox is guilty of this as well. Telemetry, despite people's claims of the privacy screen, has an upper bound on the amount you can opt-out of (some telemetry, even in Windows 10 Enterprise, is not opt-out). From a security perspective, even if the data is silo'd off, this also provides many issues as individuals who are highly skilled in cybersecurity will end up needing access across services (especially incident responders), and they become targets for massive troves of data access and breaches. Microsoft is still attacking Android device handset manufacturers with lawsuits (but not Google), for Android's uses of FAT file systems, etc. Microsoft is inherently still acting as patent troll against open source. There are accusations of open source plagiarism (not certain the credibility): https://twitter.com/jamiebuilds/status/1002696931527700481 https://twitter.com/jamiebuilds/status/1002696931527700481 GitHub already has issues with pseudo-accounts. You can create a profile that showcases forked repositories that you have not contributed anything to and throw up a neat avatar and it looks like you are a coding god. Not to a skilled developer who understands Git, but to an HR recruiting representative who knows very little in a small business it takes about 5 minutes to create the equivalent of an Instagram fake coding lifestyle. And I'm really getting sick of the "Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook are just as bad, get over it" whataboutisms. Yes they are. It's possible to oppose all of the above.
- KillcodeX 8y ago
  To be honest, they are many types of devs (Hardcore cyberpunk = Hate corporations and true devs only use Linux and build cyber weapon systems to destroy evil corporations ) and Slaves devs (Slaves to corporations or materials etc...and write codes to destroy their own citizens ). Many slave devs are programmed via advanced algorithms warfare systems, so the corporation figured out the weaknesses of this type of Slaves devs (Microsoft devs etc....). I believe that they try to track/steal code project without being noticed from the owners of the project. Then, they will create the same project (Products), and they will sue right away if you try to compete. By the way, they will upload malicious code in your computer via github or they will get easy access to your computer or startup from this software. In short, Microsoft is a spy agency made by the NSA...... Solution :Gitlab(open source) with your own VPS

aphextron 8y ago

It's like that super rich kid who really wants to hang out with you and your friends so bad and he's kind of nice, but just a total dork. So then he has his dad buy the abandoned lot everyone plays wiffle ball in and forces you to let him join your team. And it's like "Oh yeah sure Microsoft....come on and play... yeah sure we were just about to invite you..."

jehlakj 8y ago
Or that time when they bought Skype.
- aphextron 8y ago
  >Or that time when they bought Skype. To be fair, those were the Ballmer days. I'm not really worried about GitHub becoming malware or falling into disrepair; that's beside the point. GitHub was the Romulan neutral zone of the internet, and now we've lost that.

ryanisnan 8y ago

It's interesting strategy. Even in their corporate merger photos, I can't help but sense how deliberate Satya's and Nat's clothing choices were. Regardless of the intent, we are being told a story.

tmaly 8y ago
I see it as a play for information. They have LinkedIn, now add the technical information from github and you gain some insights into potential people to hire.
- qaq 8y ago
  7 billion is a bit much for that

ransom1538 8y ago

Do people realize the massive national security risk private github repros are? Who gets the keys now at MS?

bonzini 8y ago
How is that different from skydrive or live.com email?
- SXX 8y ago
  It is different because there is plenty of popular options and you can as well encrypt your data here on any cloud hosting. And for email better example would be GMail due to market share. And GitHub is obviously biggest player on market.
  - bonzini 8y ago
    Yes, but I would sure hope that (except for national security letters...) the access control measures for skydrive are very strict! File-level encryption is still not for the masses.

himom 8y ago

Synergy... the cornerstone of businessese

matheusmoreira 8y ago

> Wake up call, MS ties to NSA Sure is nice knowing the NSA will have easy access to all the private source code hosted on GitHub. I bet they will find so many new vulnerabilities.

PeCaN 8y ago
Frankly, I'd be surprised if they didn't already have that access.
majewsky 8y ago
Github has always been an American company. What makes you think they didn't have access before today?