23 ms·

I’m going to be a bit contrarian to “the sky is falling” posts on HN and say: I think Microsoft is handling this really well. 1) They’ve acknowledged the skept

I’m going to be a bit contrarian to “the sky is falling” posts on HN and say: I think Microsoft is handling this really well. 1) They’ve acknowledged the skepticism around the acquisition. 2) They’ve expressed their commitment to keep GitHub an independent platform (like they did with LinkedIn.) 3) Nat Friedman, although I was not familiar with him prior to this, seems like an ideal candidate to run GitHub. This, overall, is giving me a more positive impression of Microsoft. Now what remains to be seen: Will they follow through on these commitments? Will they continue to listen to the community?

giancarlostoro 8y ago
I'm glad they're doing this. If anything the only ones misbehaving are the skeptics making claims they'll likely be disproved over. Also has been noted if they had issues with this happening they should of never used GitHub to begin with. I guess devs are religious about git hosting platforms aside from text editors and programming languages.
- fundamental 8y ago
  > if they had issues with this happening they should of never used GitHub to begin with. I think it's reasonable to say that people understood that there were tradeoffs in hosting code on a site like github. Since it had become a popular site, the gains from the network effect outweighed the more theoretical risks, at least for the short term...
  - tjoff 8y ago
    Then they should own up to that decision and realize that what they did not only helped github to be so dominant but it also actively worked against viable alternatives. Choose more carefully next time? Maybe firefox instead of chrome? etc.
- craftyguy 8y ago
  > If anything the only ones misbehaving are the skeptics Well, it's not like the skeptics' skepticism is not unfounded. Microsoft has a long, bloody history when it comes to open source software and this "don't worry about the past, trust us, we'll be different this time" position by Microsoft isn't enough to convince us. I could be convinced, but it will take a LOT of time and good behavior by microsoft. Action speak louder than words. There has been nothing but words up to this point.
  - michielr 8y ago
    > There has been nothing but words up to this point. I get your point, but come on, there have been a lot of 'actions' over the last couple of years. This only detracts from your argument. We've had .NET Core, visual studio code, the improvements on Git, WSL and more.
    - craftyguy 8y ago
      None of those are meaningful contributions to existing platforms/projects that MS does not own outright. They're throwing code of the wall. MS's contributions to git are very light. Edit: clarify my point.
      - RussianCow 8y ago
        > But one could argue that those contributions to git are just to further MS's interests. Of course they are! Everything a corporation does is to further its own interests. Most (large) companies don't contribute to open source out of the goodness of their hearts.
        wpietri 8y ago
        > Everything a corporation does is to further its own interests. This is a common misconception. It's a close cousin of the "increase shareholder value" school of thought, which has widely (and correctly) been called "the world's dumbest idea": https://www.google.com/search?q=the+world's+dumbest+idea https://www.google.com/search?q=the+world's+dumbest+idea We exist in a complex society. It is everybody's job to maintain that society. We do that through things like voting and paying taxes. But also through making the world better directly. Companies that only do things they perceive to be in their immediate pecuniary interest are essentially parasitic. And, at least sometimes, are rightly shunned for their self-centered behavior. If Microsoft is trying to grow up and be a good corporate citizen, I applaud them. But if they are, as you say, only putting on a mask of neighborliness because that's their plan of the moment to fill their pockets, then there's no reason to welcome or trust them.
- irrational 8y ago
  This is a serious question. How old are you? I'm wondering if you were a developer during the 1990s when MS was at its worst. I was and I still harbor deep hatred for all things MS. I wonder if the rest of the "skeptics" are coming from the same time period and those of you who are saying our concerns are unfounded are from a younger generation.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - andyburke 8y ago
    I'm not the person you're responding to, but I am turning 40 this year. I was also around for the terror that was Microsoft in the 90s when they were competing with Oracle for "company most desperately trying to kill open source". I had a similar deep hatred for MS. In the 00s I spent time as a video game developer and I was forced to use MS tools. And honestly, their developer tools were pretty good. Although I still didn't trust them, I respected them (or at least certain divisions within MS). In the 10s, I've been mostly doing web stuff. Over the last couple of years I've started using VS Code, and it's actually a great editor and MS seems committed to it and to contributing to some other open source projects. MS does not strike me as anywhere near the same company they were in the 90s as Gates transitioned out and Ballmer took over. Nadella seems to have a vision for MS that's much more in line with what developers actually want. (The irony of Ballmer's "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!" is palpable.) I wouldn't consider myself an MS fan, but I also don't view them as the devil they were then. I'm not totally sure what this means for github yet, but I am willing to wait and see before I grab my pitchfork.
    - shakibalawouz 8y ago
      >The irony of Ballmer's "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!" is palpable. Well guess what? They just bought exactly that.
  - sha90 8y ago
    Development on the MS side was just fine in the 90s for many people. If you were an open source developer in the 90s, maybe not, but then again, OSS in the 90s was pretty broken for _everyone_.
- matheusmoreira 8y ago
  Not blindly trusting Microsoft is "misbehaving" now? Were the cryptographers who refused to trust the NSA "misbehaving" too?
- mkirklions 8y ago
  >likely be disproved over I wouldnt say 'likely' this is M$ we are talking about. And I used to be a Microsoft fanboy.
save_ferris 8y ago
Agreed, it's way too early to pull out the pitchforks until they've had time to demonstrate their sincerity on tackling these issues (and failed).
- mkirklions 8y ago
  By that time you will have a microsoft login to access github and that after 15 downloads you pay 9.99 for premium. Its time to get everything off Github right away.
  - deadbunny 8y ago
    The irony of the FUD spreading in comments like this is hilarious.
  - ben509 8y ago
    It's always good to think about how to mitigate vendor lock-in, no matter who the vendor is.
snowwolf 8y ago
I’ve seen many acquisitions commit to 2) only to slowly walk back from that “in the interests of operational efficiencies”. And next thing you know you have to change over to using a Microsoft account to log in...
- baldfat 8y ago
  What would be wrong having a Microsoft account to log in exactly? They aren't getting any more information from you then they have currently purchased. I remember when I had a YouTube account, a blogger account and a Google account and I am glad I just use one google account myself.
  - snowwolf 8y ago
    Because it’s an indicator of a loss of independence. And if you went through the Skype changeover you’ll know exactly what a fiasco that change to a Microsoft account was.
    - baldfat 8y ago
      You mean from 2011 when Microsoft had totally different management and business model? I don't see the Steve Ballmer Microsoft has much bearing on today's Microsoft. Also it wasn't the Microsoft Account change as much as the they had the weird MS Store or Local account sign in options. I removed the Store sign in and only used local and had no issues. Am I missing something?
      - zeth___ 8y ago
        Jesus Christ. Is everyone here a teenager? Microsoft in the 80s might bot be a valid comparison today, but something that happened 6 years ago is barely yesterday. Institutions do not change that much that quickly. Microsoft 15 minutes ago isn't the Microsoft of today is just as true a statement and one just as vacuous.
        8y ago
baldfat 8y ago
I really can't think of a better large tech company to buy GitHub (Which has been closed sourced since creation and I don't know why people are so scared). Now Oracle would make me put on my tin foil hat on immediately and deleting of my account.
- dorfsmay 8y ago
  Because people with closed source, the paying customers, now have to trust their potential biggest competitor with their source code ‽
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - zulrah 8y ago
    So you tell that people trust private company which was loosing money since the creation better than Microsoft with all of its reputation at stake?
    - phamilton 8y ago
      It would seem Github had $7.5B at stake.
    - TuringNYC 8y ago
      Is it unfair that I keep thinking of the SCO–Linux dispute at the moment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes#Microsoft_funding_of_SCO_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes#Mic...
      - CodeCube 8y ago
        yes :)
      - gardnr 8y ago
        That's the overarching style of business that I associate with the Microsoft brand
IncRnd 8y ago
4) Will they break the trust model of enterprise and private repositories, similar to how they broke the security model of connections in Skype after they purchased it? 5) Will they merge multiple accounts into one account, even though the user wants them separate, similar to how that was done with Skype and other services?
- HelloWorldInWS 8y ago
  > ... even though the user wants them separate ... Which "the user" is this? The same user that uses GitHub's OAuth as single-sign-on credentials for other partnering sites like TravisCI, etc? If I was in the MS ecosystem and already had an identity that I could re-use (and didn't already have a GH account), I'd probably use that, just like those who login to various websites with their Google, Facebook, Amazon, or even Twitter SSO identities. I don't see how expanding SSO to Microsoft accounts would hurt anyone.
  - IncRnd 8y ago
    You may not see why people would want separate accounts, but many people do. Sometimes the accounts are for different legal entities, such as work, personal, and for helping a charity. It is not correct to arbitrarily merge those. Also, there may be different pay structures and packages used to pay for the services for each of those accounts. Hopefully, you can see how merging these can create far more work for the user, even when there are many cases that have negative benefit.
notatoad 8y ago
>2) They’ve expressed their commitment to keep GitHub an independent platform (like they did with LinkedIn.) >3) Nat Friedman, although I was not familiar with him prior to this, seems like an ideal candidate to run GitHub. Nat seems like a decent candidate for GitHub CEO, but i'm having trouble reconciling Microsoft's commitment to keeping GitHub an independent platform with their installing a new CEO. that's not really how "independent" works.
- dreamcompiler 8y ago
  Github was actively looking for a new CEO. It's not like MS executed a coup here.
  - notatoad 8y ago
    I'm not saying it was a coup, but it's definitely not just a coincidence either that the new CEO who takes over at the same time as the Microsoft acquisition is a Microsoft employee. If Microsoft weren't acquiring GitHub, would they still pick Nat to be their new CEO?
    - jexah 8y ago
      I'm trying, but I can't see your point. Company A doesn't have CEO. Company A gets acquired by Company B. Company B thinks it's a good idea for a company to have a CEO, and so provides an employee to take that role in Company A. It's not complex, not a coincidence, and absolutely not something that we should be worried about. It's striking that out of all of this, the new CEO is what you're worried about.
      - notatoad 8y ago
        it's not a problem, it's fully what i would expect to happen in an acquisition. and like i said, Nat seems like probably a good choice for CEO. but it doesn't square with a commitment to keep GitHub independent from microsoft. if microsoft is appointing a CEO for GitHub, that's not independence by any normal or sane definition of the word "independent". "Microsoft made a good decision when they appointed a new CEO for GitHub" and "microsoft is keeping GitHub independent" are not compatible statements.
ggregoire 8y ago
Yes same here. I’m really surprised by all the Microsoft hate as if we were still in the 80-90’s. MS is one of the biggest open source contributors nowadays. It's also really weird how people idealize GitHub. Did they forget GitHub was not a non-profit association, they were losing money, they deleted users repositories on their own, they had management issues, and people have been waiting some features for very long, specially open source maintainers? Also GitHub "forced" a lot of organizations to migrate somewhere else when they changed their pricing model[1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673103
- aldanor 8y ago
  Remember Skype? That wasn’t in 80-90s...
  - fosco 8y ago
    personally, I really like the performance of 'skype for business' but maybe I am in the minority there. all of the tools and integration with outlook is pretty smooth...
    - debaserab2 8y ago
      Skype and performance are two words that don't ever belong in the same sentence.
      - dest 8y ago
        You just gave a counter example ;)
      - 72deluxe 8y ago
        "Skype has performance issues" "Skype has abysmal performance" "Performance in not Skype's priority" I thought I would give some excellent examples of how to use "performance" with "Skype" - all of which are true!
      - 8y ago
BigChiefSmokem 8y ago
People should get to know who Microsoft Cloud + AI Group Executive Vice President [Scott Guthrie] is. GitHub will be under his watch and all these years he has done nothing but wonders for the developers and the brand.
- teh_klev 8y ago
  Folks tend to forget about Scott Guthrie (and Scott Hanselman, Rob Conery, Scott Galloway and a few other unsung heros) and the change he seeded within MS's DevDiv about moving to a more open culture back around 2005/6.
  - oaiey 8y ago
    I cannot agree more. Scott Guthrie was the key decision maker regards the Apache license for asp.net MVC and the whole open sourcing of .NET Core. He runs Azure and is therefore interested in the GitHub community.
  - marssaxman 8y ago
    Don't know about that; I worked for DevDiv in 2008-2009 and it was the most spectacularly dysfunctional island of not-invented-here inefficiency I have ever seen at any point in my career. They imagined the tech world to consist of Microsoft at the center, where all the smart people were, surrounded by an ecosystem of ISVs, all of whom wished they could work for Microsoft instead if only they were a little bit smarter, and then, out on the fringes, the barbarian wastelands of pain and misery, where incompetent nobodies struggled with trivial legacy projects involving esolangs like COBOL or Python or Ruby. A more self-absorbed computing culture I have never seen, utterly incapable of recognizing, much less learning from, any "innovation" generated outside its own walls. Perhaps they've improved since I left, but the number of dev-hours I saw being squandered on a daily basis just fighting with utterly stupid limitations which only existed inside DevDiv's idiosyncratic tooling would have funded a good hundred startups full-time if they could have been put to some practical use.
    - teh_klev 8y ago
ausjke 8y ago
this is a normal practice/statement, no meat at all.
Klathmon 8y ago
I agree, my biggest concerns are: 1. What is happening to Atom? I have tried VS code and don't really like it due to the difference in how the 2 systems are designed to work (Atom being more "plugins are king", VSCode being more "kitchen sink included by first-party"). I'd hate to see my favorite editor lose it's major backing. If MS makes a commitment to continue to develop Atom, or they work with someone else to "transfer" development over to them in a way that's not half-assed, it would go a LONG way toward solidifying the trust they are trying to build (at least to me). 2. How will other companies who are hosting on GitHub react to this? Will Facebook/Google/Apple start pulling their code from GitHub? Will we go back to having to learn how to contribute to each project individually? There's definitely major benefits for diversity in this area (meaning not having the vast majority of projects on one platform), but I'm hoping we (as developers in whole) don't throw the baby out with the bathwater here. GitHub has by most accounts helped bring in a renaissance of open source software. It's never been easier to contribute to FOSS at any level, and I'm hoping we don't lose that as everyone diversifies where they host their source code...
- johannes1234321 8y ago
  > Will Facebook/Google/Apple start pulling their code from GitHub? For these companies who owned GitHub hardly plays a role. They want to attract developers and go wherever the crowds go. If there is mass migration to mercurial-superhost.com they will follow. It's just an outlet. The question is more relevant for companies and communities who built their infrastructure on it and might worry for good or not so good reasons.
  - superflyguy 8y ago
    "For these companies who owned GitHub hardly plays a role. They want to attract developers and go wherever the crowds go. If there is mass migration to mercurial-superhost.com they will follow. It's just an outlet. No-one's going to join a company because of which front end to git they use. It's more a question "do Apple/facebook etc want Microsoft to have all of their private source code to look for exploits/rip off/hand over the government etc etc"?
aphextron 8y ago
It doesnt matter how well Microsoft does anything. The damage is already done. I highly doubt there will ever again be a major international project started on GitHub.
nodesocket 8y ago
Agree. I for one am excited about the future of GitHub under Microsoft. Happy for Tom Preston-Werner, Chris Wanstrath, Mark Otto and all the early employees. It is sad that Hacker News, once a community for hungry entrepreneurs has digressed into a hipster, anti-corporate, anti-capitalism community.
foobaw 8y ago
Google and Facebook have tons of private repositories hosted on GitHub. I'd imagine it would be illegal for Microsoft to look into them but Microsoft being such a huge company, this acquisition could easily make Google and Facebook nervous.
- kaplun 8y ago
  They likely have only the open source repos, not the private ones.
- themusicgod1 8y ago
  ...look into / lock / delete them. This gives microsoft the ability to all but stop work at companies who use private repos who compete with them, and/or delete critical repositories. Hope those companies have backups.
  - to_bpr 8y ago
    Microsoft was described by people who claimed to have seen it as having a terrifying and frightful appearance, with diabolical physiognomy, clawed hands, and eyes that "resembled red balls of fire". One report claimed that, beneath a black cloak, it wore a helmet and a tight-fitting white garment like an oilskin. Many stories also mention a "Devil-like" aspect. Others said it was tall and thin, with the appearance of an agilist. Several reports mention that it could breathe out blue and white flames and that it wore sharp metallic claws at his fingertips. At least two people claimed that it was able to speak comprehensible English Microsoft, the boogeyman, coming to delete your repos.
  - JetSpiegel 8y ago
    Yes, Microsoft will use their new power to block Go development by deleting their repo, or grind the thousands of Facebook employees to a halt by blocking the React repository. Maybe replace the go repo to a redirect to .NET Core.
  - aembleton 8y ago
    Surely, every developer will have a backup because it is Git. Unless they're only cloning part of the history.
some_account 8y ago
They will do what they say until they don't have to anymore,l. Until they have killed the alternatives and there is only their choice left. This is Microsoft. I cannot understand why people trust this company. Actually trust their PR messages. It's amazing.
- exelius 8y ago
  All it took was a few companies LESS trustworthy (Google, Facebook, Uber, et al) to come into the public conversation. Microsoft has been downright benevolent in comparison to some of these companies.
fishywang 8y ago
I agree that people are overreacting, but I think the overreacting is good for git in general. It helps smaller players (Gitlab, etc.) to break the monopoly of Github, and reverse the wrong conception a lot of new developers have that git == github. Remember git is supposed to be decentralized? In reality it's actually centralized on github, and github is becoming the single point of failure on the developer world, which is not great. (Google actually has an internal mirror of github[1] for that reason) [1] It's only for public projects with a license that doesn't prohibit Google from mirroring it, and only for projects Google depends on.
- sdesol 8y ago
  > It helps smaller players (Gitlab, etc.) to break the monopoly of Github Or do the opposite. If Microsoft decides to make private repos on GitHub free, I can see VERY big issues for other players. I suspect more people use GitHub alternatives for cost reasons, rather than ideological ones.
  - jenscow 8y ago
    The 3rd E.
  - scarface74 8y ago
    Microsoft already offers free private git hosting, project management, build servers, etc through VSTS for up to five users.
    - sdesol 8y ago
      Microsoft currently offering free private repos and them acquiring GitHub may be quite telling. I don't think people fully realize what kind name recognition GitHub has, on the Git hosting space. When Microsoft shutdown their competing product to GitHub, I think they had like 200 active users. Compare that to GitHub, which had millions of active users. Maybe this is the same with private repos. That is, the number of paying GitHub customers is an order of a magnitude more than free VSTS customers. I really think Microsoft wants what Amazon has and if they can funnel GitHub users to their cloud service, this acquisition will become a no brainer. Plus, the data that GitHub is able to gather from issue conversations, code reviews, etc. may well prove critical for ML/AI research, that can help Microsoft develop intelligent software tools.
Applejinx 8y ago
I think the whole situation of consolidation into titanic unanswerable powers is horrible, but I can say this for Microsoft and its intentions: If the situation was that GitHub would inevitably be devoured and consolidated into something, I can think of worse devourers (by at least a small margin). Amazon. Facebook. Bayer ;D I preferred Github to be an independent thing, and I wonder if the world's changed to where you can't have independent things, you can only choose your master, and you can't actually choose that either. If it's that, could be worse.
ljm 8y ago
I've felt similar. There's been some impressive innovation from MS in the dev space recently: VS Code is a pleasure to use, Azure wasn't quite as intimidating as AWS can be (but who can blame them, AWS has a lot more legacy). Windows 10 was pleasant to work with, telemetry issues aside. Things are shifting. In fact, I think there's a strong 'once a criminal, always a criminal' mentality that takes a healthy skepticism to an unreasonable level. At least with the benefit of the doubt you can be wary of what Microsoft's intentions really are, but I don't think it's productive to go 20 years into the past and pretend that absolutely nothing has changed since, and rehashing everything from that time as if it only happened yesterday. It's an unreasonable standard and if nothing else, it presents the self-fulfilling prophecy where you're only satisfied once you've found proof that Microsoft today hasn't changed at all. So you've practically doomed GitHub to fail post-acquisition because you've already decided it _will_. I'm not sure why you'd want that. So on that level I hope that Microsoft doesn't betray the gigantic community that has built around GitHub, which itself has taken open source to a whole new level. It's an appeal to emotion, I know, but I just don't see the value in being straight up negative in the light of recent evidence that suggests the contrary. You would never hold yourself to such an unforgiving standard (unless you wanted to sacrifice yourself on the altar), so it's better to give it a chance instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. (Secretly, I'd love it if they, for example, rethought the pricing strategy and offered free private repos the same as every competitor does.) That said, it's a little worrying that tech is continuing to consolidate around the giants.
- ben509 8y ago
  > It's an unreasonable standard and if nothing else, it presents the self-fulfilling prophecy where you're only satisfied once you've found proof that Microsoft today hasn't changed at all. That's a good general point; if you find you dislike someone's POV or behavior, and you're not simply being tribalistic, you should be thinking along the lines of, "what do I want this person / group to do differently?"
  - ljm 8y ago
    It's the negative winning out over the positive. If you genuinely want things to get better you have to stop thinking about how they won't. If you can't, you're part of the reason why things won't improve. You want your negativity (or your ego) to be proven right.
hawski 8y ago
I don't fully understand point 2. Is just making GitHub better worth $7.5 billion dollars for Microsoft? It will stay independent for this pile of cash? Why they bought it? For prestige? For me the answer is that it can't be independent for long as it was (with VCs on its back was it ever?). It will gain Live login, maybe they will integrate it so you could login with your GitHub credentials to your computer if you so desire. But that's hardly worth billions. Maybe the better thing would be what others suggested - setup a non-profit that would run GitHub and all those big companies could put something in the jar. Certainly less than what was paid. But I know it can't work, VCs want their exit. For me it's a same game for GitLab. Current situation probably will accelerate GitLab's burn rate so prepare for the next acquisition.
- mandeepj 8y ago
  Answers are here for you - https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/06/04/microsoft-github-empowering-developers/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/06/04/microsoft-github... I'm posting them here for easy ref - 1. "Second, we will accelerate enterprise developers’ use of GitHub, with our direct sales and partner channels and access to Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure and services. " Above means - More revenue for MS. 2. "Finally, we will bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services to new audiences." This also means - more revenue for MS More answers here - https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://c.s-microsoft.com/en-us/CMSFiles/calldeck.pptx?version=f3eef72b-35d3-95b2-4fda-73a47f805c7f https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://c.... Briefing above ppt here - MS will report Github revenues as some part of Azure. They are looking for growth and diversification of income sources. Linkedin and this acquisition are steps in that direction.
  - hawski 8y ago
    Thank you for information. So integrating tools and services means dependence. Disclaimer: I don't have a strong reaction against this acquisition. I always felt that one day I will migrate somewhere, but I'm not in a hurry.
    - 8y ago
chme 8y ago
The first two points are pretty mucht after the textbook of 'dealing with bad publicity and lost trust'. We will see what Nat Friedman does but Miguel de Icaza did have a bit of a falling out with the gnome community and started Xamarin where the developed a closed source IDE that didn't run on Linux. So a bit of a 180 he did there.
Fnoord 8y ago
> Nat Friedman, although I was not familiar with him prior to this, seems like an ideal candidate to run GitHub. Nat Friedman is a legend in the open source community. He founded Ximian in '99 with Miguel de Icaza, who both meant a lot for the Gnome community (e.g. via products such as Ximian Evolution) and Mono (FOSS .NET for *NIX). They got bought by Novell where he also got a top position. Nat has been busy with FOSS for a long time, and he _believes_ in it. Some verification on the above plus other details can be found here on Wikipedia [1] As a final note, "I’m not asking for your trust, but I’m committed to earning it." is very humble, professional, and clever. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Friedman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Friedman
- Stranger43 8y ago
  He is the perfect transition guy, who is likely going to be replaced in a few years time when MS decide they want to capitalize on the money they spend on a un-profitable but popular service. Which is a pattern we have seen from their takeover of hotmail and more recently with skype, where they also waited a few years before starting the transition from independent brand to a sub brand under one of Microsoft estates. What you are going to see when MS is done integrating the leadership of github into MSFT and Nat have been replaced by a next phase CEO, is that githubs CI hooks will become more and more symbiotic with azure, and the a lot of the documentation tools offered will hook directly into office365 tools, which will require a synchronization of accounts with MS other SaaS offerings.
  - HelloWorldInWS 8y ago
    I think everyone can agree that Microsoft is going to push Azure very hard once they start sinking their teeth into GitHub-- that's not surprising. However, I'm very skeptical about the idea that GitHub is going to somehow become an Azure-only walled garden. It makes little sense business-wise. The entire point of buying GitHub was to acquire an audience that they are aware is not necessarily interested in Azure or their stack. Forcing it on them will only cause them to leave (there is plenty of competition in the code hosting space now), which will in turn reduce revenue. I give MS enough credit to know that the only way they succeed in this space is to provide value, not vendor lock-in. This is true now, and it will be even more true in 5 years when other big companies inevitably start following Microsoft into this space and competing for market share. If they wanted to just sell services to people already using MS products, they already had VSTS for that.
sdesol 8y ago
> I think Microsoft is handling this really well. What is baffling for me, is how worried some people seem to be. If you understand the Git hosting space, you would know Microsoft tried to compete with GitHub and failed miserably. It is quite clear the value that GitHub provides is data and there is ABSOLUTELY no way Microsoft would want to disturb this. In fact, Bitbucket, GitLab and others should be concerned that Microsoft might treat GitHub as a loss leader and provide private repos for free.
- surye 8y ago
  If you look at how the Xamarin acquisition went, this seems like a likely outcome.
  - sdesol 8y ago
    I think Microsoft can really help GitHub in the Enterprise space. Imagine GitHub being able to offer GitHub Enterprise for free for the first 10 users. Imagine being able to discount GitHub Enterprise heavily.
    - Merad 8y ago
      I'm really curious what will happen with GitHub Enterprise. Doesn't it compete in the same space as VSTS/TFS?
      - sdesol 8y ago
        I guess the question is who will hurt the most. Will this hurt non microsoft products more or less. Microsoft might want to funnel people to their cloud and sacrificing tfs might make sense.
- marssaxman 8y ago
  I'm looking into Bitbucket right now, actually, and "unlimited private repos" is the first selling point listed on their pricing page (https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing). What I haven't been able to discover yet is what they charge for public repos, which are all I care about.
OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago
This feels very scripted.
himom 8y ago
1) That’s called “PR.” 2) They can express whatever they like but keeping their word is optional. 3) How do you know? Have you met him?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
softwaredoug 8y ago
They could be angels, this can still be harmful to devs. We could still be concerned about all of tech consolidating under 4-5 anticompetitive companies On that basis alone, not sure how anyone can cheer this acquisition
- markmark 8y ago
  GitHub wasn't making anywhere near enough money to account for all the investment they took on, so they had to sell to _someone_. Better MS than Oracle.
harry8 8y ago
Ask some of the Gnome developers who were around when Nat and Miguel did mono as the open source C# vm and tightly integrated it into gnome over a lot of disquiet what happened next. Nat is a great PR guy, no doubt about that. You may have no issue with his previous behaviour at Gnome when founding Ximian with respect to open source commitments etc. - but you should know about it and decide for yourself.
- ternaryoperator 8y ago
  One of the things I like about HN is that we don't traffic in innuendo. And I don't think this is the right time to begin. If there is something you want to say b/c it's relevant, then say it; if you are afraid to, then share links to the controversy. But to say we should know about something that you can only allude to is not the right way to do this.
  - harry8 8y ago
    I think to describe this as innuendo is not entirely fair. It's all there in public, easy to track down if you want to. I /really/ don't want to summarise it because without a complete understanding of it I will be unfair to someone. It was big and controversial and resulted in serious schisms in the Gnome dev community. Nat and Miguel's company Ximian was bought by Novell who had a software patent deal with microsoft. There was a lot of trepidation over mono because of microsoft's software patents. Miguel de Icaza founded gnome and had those halos. Ximian employed many prominent gnome developers. My understanding is that mono is now not a dependency of Gnome and there was a reasonable amount of rancour about it. If I post links I'm tacitly endorsing their analysis - which I don't want to do. With the knowledge that Nat and Miguel essentially spoke as one from being joint founders of Ximian and there wasn't any dissent from other Ximian/Novell employees, useful search strings might something like: "gnome mono controversy" "gnome mono patents" "redhat gnome mono" I'd also suggest looking for prominent gnome developers from those days and see what they wrote about it in blogs and mailing lists and so on. I think it's entirely reasonable to check someone's reputation, especially when they advance it. The fact that you can and it might well check out as honest, solid, trustworthy and that they are a person of integrity is really, positive. Please note how careful I am being to refrain from besmirching anyone's reputation here.
Iv 8y ago
People who have known Microsoft and struggle with their tech and unfair practices in the 90s are skeptic because we have seen this movie already. How many "new Microsoft" have we seen already? "Will they follow through on these commitments? Will they continue to listen to the community?" No and no. Microsoft is not in the business of making good software, it is a PR firm, an awesome marketing department with tons of experience in shady practices, and the bare minimum dev team to make Windows somewhat competitive. Microsoft is a big company with a big NIH syndrome. Github is antinomic with their culture.
- raesene9 8y ago
  I too was around in IT in the 90's, but I have a different take. To me Microsoft under Nadella have changed substantially. they're more open and more collaborative. Sure they want to make money, but that's a given for a corporation. As to NIH, well I was at KubeConEU and the Microsoft engineers on the Microsoft stand were running Macbooks, and the Microsoft Keynote speaker was running an Ubuntu desktop, so it maybe isn't quite as cast-iron as it used to be.
rendaw 8y ago
Contrarily, all I've seen is people making quantified statements of support. What I haven't seen is a moralistic rejection. Microsoft tried to kill Windows gaming, they tried to kill Linux, they tried to kill Firefox, and countless other things. Their operating system design is nearly abusive and even their open source development (tracking, licensing) has been lined with traps. I want nothing more than for them to disappear, and if them buying a $7B company which ends up with 0 users is one step on that path then I absolutely support it. It has nothing to do with whether they promise they won't do bad things _this_ time, or whether they claim they'll be independent (they're clearly not independent - Microsoft now owns Github).
- HelloWorldInWS 8y ago
  > Microsoft tried to kill Windows gaming Huh? If you mean "gaming on Windows", I can't imagine how that could possibly be true, and if they tried, either nobody got the memo or they did a really bad job at trying. PC gaming has always been defacto Windows gaming. If you mean "Windows Games", that's still a thing, they're just integrating closer with their XBox platform, which makes perfect sense given that XBox is integrating closer with Windows 10 from the other side. > they tried to kill Firefox So did Google (they're still trying). So did Apple. Are you holding grudges against either of them? > Their operating system design is nearly abusive Heavily subjective. Windows has had its regressive moments, but overall it's consistently been more usable than anything on the market. 95 was a joy, 98 was a joy, XP was a joy, Vista was bad, 7 was a joy, 8 was bad, 10 is amazing. Compare that to MacOS* which only started competing with OSX and peaked at 10.5 (Leopard) and has been basically going slowly downhill since, with regressive behaviors, hostility to anyone that doesn't want to live in their walled garden, hostility to legacy software (many Windows XP programs still run perfectly with explicit compatibility settings, meanwhile OSX barely supports apps that are built for 3 major releases back-- that's only 3 years of support) and deprecation/removal of core OS APIs with zero intention to replace them. You want abusive? Try developing on a platform that competes against its own developer community and keeps APIs private for competitive advantage. Try developing on a platform that strong-arms you into paying yearly fees just so you can deploy applications that work out of the box on client machines. Comparatively, Apple has been much more hostile to developer communities than Microsoft ever has. > I want nothing more than for them to disappear Clear indication of an unhealthy long-kept grudge. Even if Microsoft has done all the things you claim, you don't really have a moral high ground if you're sitting there rooting for their failure. You can feel free to not use their products, but to want them and all of their customers to fail because you don't like what they've done in the past isn't really a "moralistic" viewpoint, it's just brooding. ...and you're going to have to move past the brooding if you want to make it to Acceptance.
LukaD 8y ago
How is Nat Friedman an ideal candidate to run GitHub? Have you seen pre MS Xamarin?
recharged96 8y ago
Skype had the same situation/skepticism. And MS basically engineered it to be irrelevant. Linkedin? It maybe ok now, but to see who in the network clicks on you and more recruiters... at a prime membership of $30/mo? With the same opptys as Indeed? And with more spam and solicitations? Aside from Linkedin being on the edge of being another FB+Tinder.... Well, I think we see where it's going by year end of 2019. Wouldn't be surprised if it gets engineered into irrelevance too. As for these new managers like Friedman: they'll will hold the FOSS torch for a year, get frustrated by internal politics and leave likely. MS will likely listen to the community, but it's to exploit them into MS products, mainly Azure. And of course the community will be smaller than today. No way MS would abandon MSVS/TS--much like Oracle: too much invested and a good size community.

giancarlostoro 8y ago

I'm glad they're doing this. If anything the only ones misbehaving are the skeptics making claims they'll likely be disproved over. Also has been noted if they had issues with this happening they should of never used GitHub to begin with. I guess devs are religious about git hosting platforms aside from text editors and programming languages.

fundamental 8y ago
> if they had issues with this happening they should of never used GitHub to begin with. I think it's reasonable to say that people understood that there were tradeoffs in hosting code on a site like github. Since it had become a popular site, the gains from the network effect outweighed the more theoretical risks, at least for the short term...
- tjoff 8y ago
  Then they should own up to that decision and realize that what they did not only helped github to be so dominant but it also actively worked against viable alternatives. Choose more carefully next time? Maybe firefox instead of chrome? etc.
craftyguy 8y ago
> If anything the only ones misbehaving are the skeptics Well, it's not like the skeptics' skepticism is not unfounded. Microsoft has a long, bloody history when it comes to open source software and this "don't worry about the past, trust us, we'll be different this time" position by Microsoft isn't enough to convince us. I could be convinced, but it will take a LOT of time and good behavior by microsoft. Action speak louder than words. There has been nothing but words up to this point.
- michielr 8y ago
  > There has been nothing but words up to this point. I get your point, but come on, there have been a lot of 'actions' over the last couple of years. This only detracts from your argument. We've had .NET Core, visual studio code, the improvements on Git, WSL and more.
  - craftyguy 8y ago
    None of those are meaningful contributions to existing platforms/projects that MS does not own outright. They're throwing code of the wall. MS's contributions to git are very light. Edit: clarify my point.
    - RussianCow 8y ago
      > But one could argue that those contributions to git are just to further MS's interests. Of course they are! Everything a corporation does is to further its own interests. Most (large) companies don't contribute to open source out of the goodness of their hearts.
      - wpietri 8y ago
        > Everything a corporation does is to further its own interests. This is a common misconception. It's a close cousin of the "increase shareholder value" school of thought, which has widely (and correctly) been called "the world's dumbest idea": https://www.google.com/search?q=the+world's+dumbest+idea https://www.google.com/search?q=the+world's+dumbest+idea We exist in a complex society. It is everybody's job to maintain that society. We do that through things like voting and paying taxes. But also through making the world better directly. Companies that only do things they perceive to be in their immediate pecuniary interest are essentially parasitic. And, at least sometimes, are rightly shunned for their self-centered behavior. If Microsoft is trying to grow up and be a good corporate citizen, I applaud them. But if they are, as you say, only putting on a mask of neighborliness because that's their plan of the moment to fill their pockets, then there's no reason to welcome or trust them.
irrational 8y ago
This is a serious question. How old are you? I'm wondering if you were a developer during the 1990s when MS was at its worst. I was and I still harbor deep hatred for all things MS. I wonder if the rest of the "skeptics" are coming from the same time period and those of you who are saying our concerns are unfounded are from a younger generation.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- andyburke 8y ago
  I'm not the person you're responding to, but I am turning 40 this year. I was also around for the terror that was Microsoft in the 90s when they were competing with Oracle for "company most desperately trying to kill open source". I had a similar deep hatred for MS. In the 00s I spent time as a video game developer and I was forced to use MS tools. And honestly, their developer tools were pretty good. Although I still didn't trust them, I respected them (or at least certain divisions within MS). In the 10s, I've been mostly doing web stuff. Over the last couple of years I've started using VS Code, and it's actually a great editor and MS seems committed to it and to contributing to some other open source projects. MS does not strike me as anywhere near the same company they were in the 90s as Gates transitioned out and Ballmer took over. Nadella seems to have a vision for MS that's much more in line with what developers actually want. (The irony of Ballmer's "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!" is palpable.) I wouldn't consider myself an MS fan, but I also don't view them as the devil they were then. I'm not totally sure what this means for github yet, but I am willing to wait and see before I grab my pitchfork.
  - shakibalawouz 8y ago
    >The irony of Ballmer's "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!" is palpable. Well guess what? They just bought exactly that.
- sha90 8y ago
  Development on the MS side was just fine in the 90s for many people. If you were an open source developer in the 90s, maybe not, but then again, OSS in the 90s was pretty broken for _everyone_.
matheusmoreira 8y ago
Not blindly trusting Microsoft is "misbehaving" now? Were the cryptographers who refused to trust the NSA "misbehaving" too?
mkirklions 8y ago
>likely be disproved over I wouldnt say 'likely' this is M$ we are talking about. And I used to be a Microsoft fanboy.

save_ferris 8y ago

Agreed, it's way too early to pull out the pitchforks until they've had time to demonstrate their sincerity on tackling these issues (and failed).

mkirklions 8y ago
By that time you will have a microsoft login to access github and that after 15 downloads you pay 9.99 for premium. Its time to get everything off Github right away.
- deadbunny 8y ago
  The irony of the FUD spreading in comments like this is hilarious.
- ben509 8y ago
  It's always good to think about how to mitigate vendor lock-in, no matter who the vendor is.

snowwolf 8y ago

I’ve seen many acquisitions commit to 2) only to slowly walk back from that “in the interests of operational efficiencies”. And next thing you know you have to change over to using a Microsoft account to log in...

baldfat 8y ago
What would be wrong having a Microsoft account to log in exactly? They aren't getting any more information from you then they have currently purchased. I remember when I had a YouTube account, a blogger account and a Google account and I am glad I just use one google account myself.
- snowwolf 8y ago
  Because it’s an indicator of a loss of independence. And if you went through the Skype changeover you’ll know exactly what a fiasco that change to a Microsoft account was.
  - baldfat 8y ago
    You mean from 2011 when Microsoft had totally different management and business model? I don't see the Steve Ballmer Microsoft has much bearing on today's Microsoft. Also it wasn't the Microsoft Account change as much as the they had the weird MS Store or Local account sign in options. I removed the Store sign in and only used local and had no issues. Am I missing something?
    - zeth___ 8y ago
      Jesus Christ. Is everyone here a teenager? Microsoft in the 80s might bot be a valid comparison today, but something that happened 6 years ago is barely yesterday. Institutions do not change that much that quickly. Microsoft 15 minutes ago isn't the Microsoft of today is just as true a statement and one just as vacuous.
      - 8y ago

baldfat 8y ago

I really can't think of a better large tech company to buy GitHub (Which has been closed sourced since creation and I don't know why people are so scared). Now Oracle would make me put on my tin foil hat on immediately and deleting of my account.

dorfsmay 8y ago
Because people with closed source, the paying customers, now have to trust their potential biggest competitor with their source code ‽
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- zulrah 8y ago
  So you tell that people trust private company which was loosing money since the creation better than Microsoft with all of its reputation at stake?
  - phamilton 8y ago
    It would seem Github had $7.5B at stake.
  - TuringNYC 8y ago
    Is it unfair that I keep thinking of the SCO–Linux dispute at the moment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes#Microsoft_funding_of_SCO_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes#Mic...
    - CodeCube 8y ago
      yes :)
    - gardnr 8y ago
      That's the overarching style of business that I associate with the Microsoft brand

IncRnd 8y ago

4) Will they break the trust model of enterprise and private repositories, similar to how they broke the security model of connections in Skype after they purchased it? 5) Will they merge multiple accounts into one account, even though the user wants them separate, similar to how that was done with Skype and other services?

HelloWorldInWS 8y ago
> ... even though the user wants them separate ... Which "the user" is this? The same user that uses GitHub's OAuth as single-sign-on credentials for other partnering sites like TravisCI, etc? If I was in the MS ecosystem and already had an identity that I could re-use (and didn't already have a GH account), I'd probably use that, just like those who login to various websites with their Google, Facebook, Amazon, or even Twitter SSO identities. I don't see how expanding SSO to Microsoft accounts would hurt anyone.
- IncRnd 8y ago
  You may not see why people would want separate accounts, but many people do. Sometimes the accounts are for different legal entities, such as work, personal, and for helping a charity. It is not correct to arbitrarily merge those. Also, there may be different pay structures and packages used to pay for the services for each of those accounts. Hopefully, you can see how merging these can create far more work for the user, even when there are many cases that have negative benefit.

notatoad 8y ago

>2) They’ve expressed their commitment to keep GitHub an independent platform (like they did with LinkedIn.) >3) Nat Friedman, although I was not familiar with him prior to this, seems like an ideal candidate to run GitHub. Nat seems like a decent candidate for GitHub CEO, but i'm having trouble reconciling Microsoft's commitment to keeping GitHub an independent platform with their installing a new CEO. that's not really how "independent" works.

dreamcompiler 8y ago
Github was actively looking for a new CEO. It's not like MS executed a coup here.
- notatoad 8y ago
  I'm not saying it was a coup, but it's definitely not just a coincidence either that the new CEO who takes over at the same time as the Microsoft acquisition is a Microsoft employee. If Microsoft weren't acquiring GitHub, would they still pick Nat to be their new CEO?
  - jexah 8y ago
    I'm trying, but I can't see your point. Company A doesn't have CEO. Company A gets acquired by Company B. Company B thinks it's a good idea for a company to have a CEO, and so provides an employee to take that role in Company A. It's not complex, not a coincidence, and absolutely not something that we should be worried about. It's striking that out of all of this, the new CEO is what you're worried about.
    - notatoad 8y ago
      it's not a problem, it's fully what i would expect to happen in an acquisition. and like i said, Nat seems like probably a good choice for CEO. but it doesn't square with a commitment to keep GitHub independent from microsoft. if microsoft is appointing a CEO for GitHub, that's not independence by any normal or sane definition of the word "independent". "Microsoft made a good decision when they appointed a new CEO for GitHub" and "microsoft is keeping GitHub independent" are not compatible statements.

ggregoire 8y ago

Yes same here. I’m really surprised by all the Microsoft hate as if we were still in the 80-90’s. MS is one of the biggest open source contributors nowadays. It's also really weird how people idealize GitHub. Did they forget GitHub was not a non-profit association, they were losing money, they deleted users repositories on their own, they had management issues, and people have been waiting some features for very long, specially open source maintainers? Also GitHub "forced" a lot of organizations to migrate somewhere else when they changed their pricing model[1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11673103

aldanor 8y ago
Remember Skype? That wasn’t in 80-90s...
- fosco 8y ago
  personally, I really like the performance of 'skype for business' but maybe I am in the minority there. all of the tools and integration with outlook is pretty smooth...
  - debaserab2 8y ago
    Skype and performance are two words that don't ever belong in the same sentence.
    - dest 8y ago
      You just gave a counter example ;)
    - 72deluxe 8y ago
      "Skype has performance issues" "Skype has abysmal performance" "Performance in not Skype's priority" I thought I would give some excellent examples of how to use "performance" with "Skype" - all of which are true!
    - 8y ago

BigChiefSmokem 8y ago

People should get to know who Microsoft Cloud + AI Group Executive Vice President [Scott Guthrie] is. GitHub will be under his watch and all these years he has done nothing but wonders for the developers and the brand.

teh_klev 8y ago
Folks tend to forget about Scott Guthrie (and Scott Hanselman, Rob Conery, Scott Galloway and a few other unsung heros) and the change he seeded within MS's DevDiv about moving to a more open culture back around 2005/6.
- oaiey 8y ago
  I cannot agree more. Scott Guthrie was the key decision maker regards the Apache license for asp.net MVC and the whole open sourcing of .NET Core. He runs Azure and is therefore interested in the GitHub community.
- marssaxman 8y ago
  Don't know about that; I worked for DevDiv in 2008-2009 and it was the most spectacularly dysfunctional island of not-invented-here inefficiency I have ever seen at any point in my career. They imagined the tech world to consist of Microsoft at the center, where all the smart people were, surrounded by an ecosystem of ISVs, all of whom wished they could work for Microsoft instead if only they were a little bit smarter, and then, out on the fringes, the barbarian wastelands of pain and misery, where incompetent nobodies struggled with trivial legacy projects involving esolangs like COBOL or Python or Ruby. A more self-absorbed computing culture I have never seen, utterly incapable of recognizing, much less learning from, any "innovation" generated outside its own walls. Perhaps they've improved since I left, but the number of dev-hours I saw being squandered on a daily basis just fighting with utterly stupid limitations which only existed inside DevDiv's idiosyncratic tooling would have funded a good hundred startups full-time if they could have been put to some practical use.
  - teh_klev 8y ago

ausjke 8y ago

this is a normal practice/statement, no meat at all.

Klathmon 8y ago

I agree, my biggest concerns are: 1. What is happening to Atom? I have tried VS code and don't really like it due to the difference in how the 2 systems are designed to work (Atom being more "plugins are king", VSCode being more "kitchen sink included by first-party"). I'd hate to see my favorite editor lose it's major backing. If MS makes a commitment to continue to develop Atom, or they work with someone else to "transfer" development over to them in a way that's not half-assed, it would go a LONG way toward solidifying the trust they are trying to build (at least to me). 2. How will other companies who are hosting on GitHub react to this? Will Facebook/Google/Apple start pulling their code from GitHub? Will we go back to having to learn how to contribute to each project individually? There's definitely major benefits for diversity in this area (meaning not having the vast majority of projects on one platform), but I'm hoping we (as developers in whole) don't throw the baby out with the bathwater here. GitHub has by most accounts helped bring in a renaissance of open source software. It's never been easier to contribute to FOSS at any level, and I'm hoping we don't lose that as everyone diversifies where they host their source code...

johannes1234321 8y ago
> Will Facebook/Google/Apple start pulling their code from GitHub? For these companies who owned GitHub hardly plays a role. They want to attract developers and go wherever the crowds go. If there is mass migration to mercurial-superhost.com they will follow. It's just an outlet. The question is more relevant for companies and communities who built their infrastructure on it and might worry for good or not so good reasons.
- superflyguy 8y ago
  "For these companies who owned GitHub hardly plays a role. They want to attract developers and go wherever the crowds go. If there is mass migration to mercurial-superhost.com they will follow. It's just an outlet. No-one's going to join a company because of which front end to git they use. It's more a question "do Apple/facebook etc want Microsoft to have all of their private source code to look for exploits/rip off/hand over the government etc etc"?

aphextron 8y ago

It doesnt matter how well Microsoft does anything. The damage is already done. I highly doubt there will ever again be a major international project started on GitHub.

nodesocket 8y ago

Agree. I for one am excited about the future of GitHub under Microsoft. Happy for Tom Preston-Werner, Chris Wanstrath, Mark Otto and all the early employees. It is sad that Hacker News, once a community for hungry entrepreneurs has digressed into a hipster, anti-corporate, anti-capitalism community.

foobaw 8y ago

Google and Facebook have tons of private repositories hosted on GitHub. I'd imagine it would be illegal for Microsoft to look into them but Microsoft being such a huge company, this acquisition could easily make Google and Facebook nervous.

kaplun 8y ago
They likely have only the open source repos, not the private ones.
themusicgod1 8y ago
...look into / lock / delete them. This gives microsoft the ability to all but stop work at companies who use private repos who compete with them, and/or delete critical repositories. Hope those companies have backups.
- to_bpr 8y ago
  Microsoft was described by people who claimed to have seen it as having a terrifying and frightful appearance, with diabolical physiognomy, clawed hands, and eyes that "resembled red balls of fire". One report claimed that, beneath a black cloak, it wore a helmet and a tight-fitting white garment like an oilskin. Many stories also mention a "Devil-like" aspect. Others said it was tall and thin, with the appearance of an agilist. Several reports mention that it could breathe out blue and white flames and that it wore sharp metallic claws at his fingertips. At least two people claimed that it was able to speak comprehensible English Microsoft, the boogeyman, coming to delete your repos.
- JetSpiegel 8y ago
  Yes, Microsoft will use their new power to block Go development by deleting their repo, or grind the thousands of Facebook employees to a halt by blocking the React repository. Maybe replace the go repo to a redirect to .NET Core.
- aembleton 8y ago
  Surely, every developer will have a backup because it is Git. Unless they're only cloning part of the history.

some_account 8y ago

They will do what they say until they don't have to anymore,l. Until they have killed the alternatives and there is only their choice left. This is Microsoft. I cannot understand why people trust this company. Actually trust their PR messages. It's amazing.

exelius 8y ago
All it took was a few companies LESS trustworthy (Google, Facebook, Uber, et al) to come into the public conversation. Microsoft has been downright benevolent in comparison to some of these companies.

fishywang 8y ago

I agree that people are overreacting, but I think the overreacting is good for git in general. It helps smaller players (Gitlab, etc.) to break the monopoly of Github, and reverse the wrong conception a lot of new developers have that git == github. Remember git is supposed to be decentralized? In reality it's actually centralized on github, and github is becoming the single point of failure on the developer world, which is not great. (Google actually has an internal mirror of github[1] for that reason) [1] It's only for public projects with a license that doesn't prohibit Google from mirroring it, and only for projects Google depends on.

sdesol 8y ago
> It helps smaller players (Gitlab, etc.) to break the monopoly of Github Or do the opposite. If Microsoft decides to make private repos on GitHub free, I can see VERY big issues for other players. I suspect more people use GitHub alternatives for cost reasons, rather than ideological ones.
- jenscow 8y ago
  The 3rd E.
- scarface74 8y ago
  Microsoft already offers free private git hosting, project management, build servers, etc through VSTS for up to five users.
  - sdesol 8y ago
    Microsoft currently offering free private repos and them acquiring GitHub may be quite telling. I don't think people fully realize what kind name recognition GitHub has, on the Git hosting space. When Microsoft shutdown their competing product to GitHub, I think they had like 200 active users. Compare that to GitHub, which had millions of active users. Maybe this is the same with private repos. That is, the number of paying GitHub customers is an order of a magnitude more than free VSTS customers. I really think Microsoft wants what Amazon has and if they can funnel GitHub users to their cloud service, this acquisition will become a no brainer. Plus, the data that GitHub is able to gather from issue conversations, code reviews, etc. may well prove critical for ML/AI research, that can help Microsoft develop intelligent software tools.

Applejinx 8y ago

I think the whole situation of consolidation into titanic unanswerable powers is horrible, but I can say this for Microsoft and its intentions: If the situation was that GitHub would inevitably be devoured and consolidated into something, I can think of worse devourers (by at least a small margin). Amazon. Facebook. Bayer ;D I preferred Github to be an independent thing, and I wonder if the world's changed to where you can't have independent things, you can only choose your master, and you can't actually choose that either. If it's that, could be worse.

ljm 8y ago

I've felt similar. There's been some impressive innovation from MS in the dev space recently: VS Code is a pleasure to use, Azure wasn't quite as intimidating as AWS can be (but who can blame them, AWS has a lot more legacy). Windows 10 was pleasant to work with, telemetry issues aside. Things are shifting. In fact, I think there's a strong 'once a criminal, always a criminal' mentality that takes a healthy skepticism to an unreasonable level. At least with the benefit of the doubt you can be wary of what Microsoft's intentions really are, but I don't think it's productive to go 20 years into the past and pretend that absolutely nothing has changed since, and rehashing everything from that time as if it only happened yesterday. It's an unreasonable standard and if nothing else, it presents the self-fulfilling prophecy where you're only satisfied once you've found proof that Microsoft today hasn't changed at all. So you've practically doomed GitHub to fail post-acquisition because you've already decided it _will_. I'm not sure why you'd want that. So on that level I hope that Microsoft doesn't betray the gigantic community that has built around GitHub, which itself has taken open source to a whole new level. It's an appeal to emotion, I know, but I just don't see the value in being straight up negative in the light of recent evidence that suggests the contrary. You would never hold yourself to such an unforgiving standard (unless you wanted to sacrifice yourself on the altar), so it's better to give it a chance instead of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. (Secretly, I'd love it if they, for example, rethought the pricing strategy and offered free private repos the same as every competitor does.) That said, it's a little worrying that tech is continuing to consolidate around the giants.

ben509 8y ago
> It's an unreasonable standard and if nothing else, it presents the self-fulfilling prophecy where you're only satisfied once you've found proof that Microsoft today hasn't changed at all. That's a good general point; if you find you dislike someone's POV or behavior, and you're not simply being tribalistic, you should be thinking along the lines of, "what do I want this person / group to do differently?"
- ljm 8y ago
  It's the negative winning out over the positive. If you genuinely want things to get better you have to stop thinking about how they won't. If you can't, you're part of the reason why things won't improve. You want your negativity (or your ego) to be proven right.

hawski 8y ago

I don't fully understand point 2. Is just making GitHub better worth $7.5 billion dollars for Microsoft? It will stay independent for this pile of cash? Why they bought it? For prestige? For me the answer is that it can't be independent for long as it was (with VCs on its back was it ever?). It will gain Live login, maybe they will integrate it so you could login with your GitHub credentials to your computer if you so desire. But that's hardly worth billions. Maybe the better thing would be what others suggested - setup a non-profit that would run GitHub and all those big companies could put something in the jar. Certainly less than what was paid. But I know it can't work, VCs want their exit. For me it's a same game for GitLab. Current situation probably will accelerate GitLab's burn rate so prepare for the next acquisition.

mandeepj 8y ago
Answers are here for you - https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/06/04/microsoft-github-empowering-developers/ https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/06/04/microsoft-github... I'm posting them here for easy ref - 1. "Second, we will accelerate enterprise developers’ use of GitHub, with our direct sales and partner channels and access to Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure and services. " Above means - More revenue for MS. 2. "Finally, we will bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services to new audiences." This also means - more revenue for MS More answers here - https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://c.s-microsoft.com/en-us/CMSFiles/calldeck.pptx?version=f3eef72b-35d3-95b2-4fda-73a47f805c7f https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://c.... Briefing above ppt here - MS will report Github revenues as some part of Azure. They are looking for growth and diversification of income sources. Linkedin and this acquisition are steps in that direction.
- hawski 8y ago
  Thank you for information. So integrating tools and services means dependence. Disclaimer: I don't have a strong reaction against this acquisition. I always felt that one day I will migrate somewhere, but I'm not in a hurry.
  - 8y ago

chme 8y ago

The first two points are pretty mucht after the textbook of 'dealing with bad publicity and lost trust'. We will see what Nat Friedman does but Miguel de Icaza did have a bit of a falling out with the gnome community and started Xamarin where the developed a closed source IDE that didn't run on Linux. So a bit of a 180 he did there.

Fnoord 8y ago

> Nat Friedman, although I was not familiar with him prior to this, seems like an ideal candidate to run GitHub. Nat Friedman is a legend in the open source community. He founded Ximian in '99 with Miguel de Icaza, who both meant a lot for the Gnome community (e.g. via products such as Ximian Evolution) and Mono (FOSS .NET for *NIX). They got bought by Novell where he also got a top position. Nat has been busy with FOSS for a long time, and he _believes_ in it. Some verification on the above plus other details can be found here on Wikipedia [1] As a final note, "I’m not asking for your trust, but I’m committed to earning it." is very humble, professional, and clever. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Friedman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nat_Friedman

Stranger43 8y ago
He is the perfect transition guy, who is likely going to be replaced in a few years time when MS decide they want to capitalize on the money they spend on a un-profitable but popular service. Which is a pattern we have seen from their takeover of hotmail and more recently with skype, where they also waited a few years before starting the transition from independent brand to a sub brand under one of Microsoft estates. What you are going to see when MS is done integrating the leadership of github into MSFT and Nat have been replaced by a next phase CEO, is that githubs CI hooks will become more and more symbiotic with azure, and the a lot of the documentation tools offered will hook directly into office365 tools, which will require a synchronization of accounts with MS other SaaS offerings.
- HelloWorldInWS 8y ago
  I think everyone can agree that Microsoft is going to push Azure very hard once they start sinking their teeth into GitHub-- that's not surprising. However, I'm very skeptical about the idea that GitHub is going to somehow become an Azure-only walled garden. It makes little sense business-wise. The entire point of buying GitHub was to acquire an audience that they are aware is not necessarily interested in Azure or their stack. Forcing it on them will only cause them to leave (there is plenty of competition in the code hosting space now), which will in turn reduce revenue. I give MS enough credit to know that the only way they succeed in this space is to provide value, not vendor lock-in. This is true now, and it will be even more true in 5 years when other big companies inevitably start following Microsoft into this space and competing for market share. If they wanted to just sell services to people already using MS products, they already had VSTS for that.

sdesol 8y ago

> I think Microsoft is handling this really well. What is baffling for me, is how worried some people seem to be. If you understand the Git hosting space, you would know Microsoft tried to compete with GitHub and failed miserably. It is quite clear the value that GitHub provides is data and there is ABSOLUTELY no way Microsoft would want to disturb this. In fact, Bitbucket, GitLab and others should be concerned that Microsoft might treat GitHub as a loss leader and provide private repos for free.

surye 8y ago
If you look at how the Xamarin acquisition went, this seems like a likely outcome.
- sdesol 8y ago
  I think Microsoft can really help GitHub in the Enterprise space. Imagine GitHub being able to offer GitHub Enterprise for free for the first 10 users. Imagine being able to discount GitHub Enterprise heavily.
  - Merad 8y ago
    I'm really curious what will happen with GitHub Enterprise. Doesn't it compete in the same space as VSTS/TFS?
    - sdesol 8y ago
      I guess the question is who will hurt the most. Will this hurt non microsoft products more or less. Microsoft might want to funnel people to their cloud and sacrificing tfs might make sense.
marssaxman 8y ago
I'm looking into Bitbucket right now, actually, and "unlimited private repos" is the first selling point listed on their pricing page (https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing). What I haven't been able to discover yet is what they charge for public repos, which are all I care about.

OnlyRepliesToBS 8y ago

This feels very scripted.

himom 8y ago

1) That’s called “PR.” 2) They can express whatever they like but keeping their word is optional. 3) How do you know? Have you met him?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

softwaredoug 8y ago

They could be angels, this can still be harmful to devs. We could still be concerned about all of tech consolidating under 4-5 anticompetitive companies On that basis alone, not sure how anyone can cheer this acquisition

markmark 8y ago
GitHub wasn't making anywhere near enough money to account for all the investment they took on, so they had to sell to _someone_. Better MS than Oracle.

harry8 8y ago

Ask some of the Gnome developers who were around when Nat and Miguel did mono as the open source C# vm and tightly integrated it into gnome over a lot of disquiet what happened next. Nat is a great PR guy, no doubt about that. You may have no issue with his previous behaviour at Gnome when founding Ximian with respect to open source commitments etc. - but you should know about it and decide for yourself.

ternaryoperator 8y ago
One of the things I like about HN is that we don't traffic in innuendo. And I don't think this is the right time to begin. If there is something you want to say b/c it's relevant, then say it; if you are afraid to, then share links to the controversy. But to say we should know about something that you can only allude to is not the right way to do this.
- harry8 8y ago
  I think to describe this as innuendo is not entirely fair. It's all there in public, easy to track down if you want to. I /really/ don't want to summarise it because without a complete understanding of it I will be unfair to someone. It was big and controversial and resulted in serious schisms in the Gnome dev community. Nat and Miguel's company Ximian was bought by Novell who had a software patent deal with microsoft. There was a lot of trepidation over mono because of microsoft's software patents. Miguel de Icaza founded gnome and had those halos. Ximian employed many prominent gnome developers. My understanding is that mono is now not a dependency of Gnome and there was a reasonable amount of rancour about it. If I post links I'm tacitly endorsing their analysis - which I don't want to do. With the knowledge that Nat and Miguel essentially spoke as one from being joint founders of Ximian and there wasn't any dissent from other Ximian/Novell employees, useful search strings might something like: "gnome mono controversy" "gnome mono patents" "redhat gnome mono" I'd also suggest looking for prominent gnome developers from those days and see what they wrote about it in blogs and mailing lists and so on. I think it's entirely reasonable to check someone's reputation, especially when they advance it. The fact that you can and it might well check out as honest, solid, trustworthy and that they are a person of integrity is really, positive. Please note how careful I am being to refrain from besmirching anyone's reputation here.

Iv 8y ago

People who have known Microsoft and struggle with their tech and unfair practices in the 90s are skeptic because we have seen this movie already. How many "new Microsoft" have we seen already? "Will they follow through on these commitments? Will they continue to listen to the community?" No and no. Microsoft is not in the business of making good software, it is a PR firm, an awesome marketing department with tons of experience in shady practices, and the bare minimum dev team to make Windows somewhat competitive. Microsoft is a big company with a big NIH syndrome. Github is antinomic with their culture.

raesene9 8y ago
I too was around in IT in the 90's, but I have a different take. To me Microsoft under Nadella have changed substantially. they're more open and more collaborative. Sure they want to make money, but that's a given for a corporation. As to NIH, well I was at KubeConEU and the Microsoft engineers on the Microsoft stand were running Macbooks, and the Microsoft Keynote speaker was running an Ubuntu desktop, so it maybe isn't quite as cast-iron as it used to be.

rendaw 8y ago

Contrarily, all I've seen is people making quantified statements of support. What I haven't seen is a moralistic rejection. Microsoft tried to kill Windows gaming, they tried to kill Linux, they tried to kill Firefox, and countless other things. Their operating system design is nearly abusive and even their open source development (tracking, licensing) has been lined with traps. I want nothing more than for them to disappear, and if them buying a $7B company which ends up with 0 users is one step on that path then I absolutely support it. It has nothing to do with whether they promise they won't do bad things _this_ time, or whether they claim they'll be independent (they're clearly not independent - Microsoft now owns Github).

HelloWorldInWS 8y ago
> Microsoft tried to kill Windows gaming Huh? If you mean "gaming on Windows", I can't imagine how that could possibly be true, and if they tried, either nobody got the memo or they did a really bad job at trying. PC gaming has always been defacto Windows gaming. If you mean "Windows Games", that's still a thing, they're just integrating closer with their XBox platform, which makes perfect sense given that XBox is integrating closer with Windows 10 from the other side. > they tried to kill Firefox So did Google (they're still trying). So did Apple. Are you holding grudges against either of them? > Their operating system design is nearly abusive Heavily subjective. Windows has had its regressive moments, but overall it's consistently been more usable than anything on the market. 95 was a joy, 98 was a joy, XP was a joy, Vista was bad, 7 was a joy, 8 was bad, 10 is amazing. Compare that to MacOS* which only started competing with OSX and peaked at 10.5 (Leopard) and has been basically going slowly downhill since, with regressive behaviors, hostility to anyone that doesn't want to live in their walled garden, hostility to legacy software (many Windows XP programs still run perfectly with explicit compatibility settings, meanwhile OSX barely supports apps that are built for 3 major releases back-- that's only 3 years of support) and deprecation/removal of core OS APIs with zero intention to replace them. You want abusive? Try developing on a platform that competes against its own developer community and keeps APIs private for competitive advantage. Try developing on a platform that strong-arms you into paying yearly fees just so you can deploy applications that work out of the box on client machines. Comparatively, Apple has been much more hostile to developer communities than Microsoft ever has. > I want nothing more than for them to disappear Clear indication of an unhealthy long-kept grudge. Even if Microsoft has done all the things you claim, you don't really have a moral high ground if you're sitting there rooting for their failure. You can feel free to not use their products, but to want them and all of their customers to fail because you don't like what they've done in the past isn't really a "moralistic" viewpoint, it's just brooding. ...and you're going to have to move past the brooding if you want to make it to Acceptance.

LukaD 8y ago

How is Nat Friedman an ideal candidate to run GitHub? Have you seen pre MS Xamarin?

recharged96 8y ago

Skype had the same situation/skepticism. And MS basically engineered it to be irrelevant. Linkedin? It maybe ok now, but to see who in the network clicks on you and more recruiters... at a prime membership of $30/mo? With the same opptys as Indeed? And with more spam and solicitations? Aside from Linkedin being on the edge of being another FB+Tinder.... Well, I think we see where it's going by year end of 2019. Wouldn't be surprised if it gets engineered into irrelevance too. As for these new managers like Friedman: they'll will hold the FOSS torch for a year, get frustrated by internal politics and leave likely. MS will likely listen to the community, but it's to exploit them into MS products, mainly Azure. And of course the community will be smaller than today. No way MS would abandon MSVS/TS--much like Oracle: too much invested and a good size community.