10 ms·

Nothing where they are going to gas all the developers or something. Nope. It's more about priorities and intentions. Microsoft doesn't care about the develope

Nothing where they are going to gas all the developers or something. Nope. It's more about priorities and intentions. Microsoft doesn't care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. It recognizes that its image makes that difficult. The GitHub acquisition: Microsoft didn't suddenly get more beautiful. It put on a mask. It will kill GitHub - or at least let it flounder - if that's what's best for its business. It will push Microsoft technology into the GitHub user base if necessary. Developer relationships aren't an end in themselves - something Microsoft wants because its good. Developers are a means to an end, and its Machiavellian in its application of corporate strategy to achieve this end. Microsoft would happily buy Ubuntu Canonical if they thought it would win them either a market advantage or a way to push Microsoft stack into the Linux userbase. Some people probably don't have a problem with that. I do. But maybe I've got a chip on my shoulder from seeing this go badly so many times.

djsumdog 8y ago
Feels like a page out of The Dictators Handbook: > First, politics is about getting and keeping political power. It is not about the general welfare of "We, the people." Or I guess here, 'we the developers.' I don't think Microsoft is at all alone in this spot. Github got a huge payout from this. It benefited them. We don't think of them as a Microsoft style company, but they made the same decision we might have seen in reverse. They didn't sell out before, but now the payout was significantly high enough. It's the old "You'd be stupid to turn down that much money" line from Thank You for Smoking. But keep in mind, Adobe, Oracle, Intel, Amazon .. they'd probably all do something like this if some essential backers on the board thought it was in their best interest, with the goals always being around maximizing profit (so you can pay all those CFOs, CTOs, board members and controlling stock members). The people who make these decisions care about staying in power .. and are most likely very far removed from actual development .. or their userbase (in this case the same thing). Just look at what happened with a userbase of gamers and the Facebook purchase of Oculus.
- megaman22 8y ago
  Oculus is vaporware, right? I don't see anything that encourages me that whatever thing they were aiming at will be a thing?
  - megaman22 8y ago
    If I'm wrong, I'd like an example of something that justifies the hype
    - alexc05 8y ago
      What have you tried so far? Doom VFR Edition? Skyrim VR? VR porn? VR’s hype is easily justified.
  - zyx321 8y ago
    It's not vaporware. It's available for purchase, and it fulfills its advertised purpose as a video game peripheral. The ecosystem of available games could be better, but it's far from stillborn.
  - joefourier 8y ago
    Vaporware is software/hardware that is never actually manufactured or released to the public. Oculus has released the Rift, the Go and (with Samsung) the Gear VR, which are all available in stores now. All are successful, if relatively niche, products performing as intended, which is the opposite of vaporware.
nradov 8y ago
As someone with no real stake in this deal, why should anyone care whether Microsoft kills Github or not? There are multiple alternative Git hosting competitors and switching costs are low.
- daveFNbuck 8y ago
  The cost to copy a repo over is low, but you lose all the social aspects. You don't copy over forks or stars. People who want to fork your repo and make pull requests need to sign up for a new service. Old links to your repo on GitHub won't work anymore. I copied my personal projects to GitLab today and that was very easy to do but I'm not sure what to do about the GitHub version for the one that had a little popularity.
  - Pywarrior 8y ago
    You could pull in all forks also.
    - daveFNbuck 8y ago
      I don't have control over forks people make of my projects. Luckily, this concern is more of a hypothetical for me, as only one person has forked one of my personal projects on GitHub. I'm much more concerned about stars and hyperlinks no longer leading to the real repo when people follow them.
  - pmontra 8y ago
    I did the same. I'm replacing the README on GitHub with "Moved to https://gitlab.com/.. https://gitlab.com/... and a description of what the software does. If people finds it interesting they will follow the link. A fork between services becomes more complicate but not so much: git pull from GitLab and git push to GitHub or whatever. Everybody knows how to do it. Right, one loses the "fork" link between the two repositories but really, who cares? We're writing software for work or for a cause, we shouldn't be playing a game of collecting stars and forks.
    - 8y ago
mdpopescu 8y ago
> Microsoft doesn't care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." (Adam Smith.) I don't trust benevolent people. I trust self-interest. I don't need to offer my undying allegiance to Microsoft - I can like them as long as they do things that benefit me, and dislike them when they don't.
- stefs 8y ago
  the problem here is that the self-interests of github and microsoft might differ fundamentally. github wanted to make money from their paid services to create a profit. microsoft couldn't care less about the money paid github accounts make (as long as it's not hemorrhaging too much), it's unlikely they'll get a ROI from paid accounts in anyones lifetime. they need github to increase their earnings elsewhere, e.g. by getting developers to develop for the microsoft store or for their cloud services. so my guess is they'll at least start advertising their tech heavily on github and add features integrating their own tech while omitting the same for rivaling corporations. the old github didn't have an interest in limiting integration with other platform providers, as this would decrease their usefulness for potentially paying developers.
  - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
    FOSS will interpret Microsoft as damage and route around it. GitHub is going to turn into the FOSS version of the MySpace wasteland. I'm sure GitLab and other alternatives are seeing a stampede of new sign-ups right now. The question isn't really what MS will do, because - as is often the case - it won't matter. MS bought Nokia Phone, trashed the company, flailed around dramatically for a while, and in the end nothing much changed in the phone space - except that WinPhone hung on for a year or two longer than it would have otherwise. MS bought Skype, trashed the product, bolted it awkwardly onto Office, and in the end nothing much changed, because anyone with any sense moved to an alternative. It's going to be the same with GitHub. There will be drama in the short term, but in the longer term MS will receive little or no benefit, except for maybe some closer integration with VS. The money will simply be wasted. The real winners will be the investors and owners of GH, who have walked off with a big pile of MS stock they can convert to money and use to buy nice things.
chrisweekly 8y ago
> "its Machiavellian in its application of corporate strategy" I'd say, rather, simply, "it's corporate in its application of strategy". Which is to say, Microsoft is a business.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
scarface74 8y ago
Do you think the founders of GitHub, who after the sell to Microsoft will be the 2nd largest owner's of Microsoft stock, started GitHub because they "cared about developers"?[1] It's always about the money. No one "cares" about developers not even your own employer. They only care about making money and we are all just a cog in the machine. [1] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/github-billionaires-will-own-more-microsoft-stock-than-ceo/articleshow/64471582.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-b...
handbanana 8y ago
> Microsoft doesn't care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. It'll need to start caring to a degree, and catering to them, in order to achieve this

djsumdog 8y ago

Feels like a page out of The Dictators Handbook: > First, politics is about getting and keeping political power. It is not about the general welfare of "We, the people." Or I guess here, 'we the developers.' I don't think Microsoft is at all alone in this spot. Github got a huge payout from this. It benefited them. We don't think of them as a Microsoft style company, but they made the same decision we might have seen in reverse. They didn't sell out before, but now the payout was significantly high enough. It's the old "You'd be stupid to turn down that much money" line from Thank You for Smoking. But keep in mind, Adobe, Oracle, Intel, Amazon .. they'd probably all do something like this if some essential backers on the board thought it was in their best interest, with the goals always being around maximizing profit (so you can pay all those CFOs, CTOs, board members and controlling stock members). The people who make these decisions care about staying in power .. and are most likely very far removed from actual development .. or their userbase (in this case the same thing). Just look at what happened with a userbase of gamers and the Facebook purchase of Oculus.

megaman22 8y ago
Oculus is vaporware, right? I don't see anything that encourages me that whatever thing they were aiming at will be a thing?
- megaman22 8y ago
  If I'm wrong, I'd like an example of something that justifies the hype
  - alexc05 8y ago
    What have you tried so far? Doom VFR Edition? Skyrim VR? VR porn? VR’s hype is easily justified.
- zyx321 8y ago
  It's not vaporware. It's available for purchase, and it fulfills its advertised purpose as a video game peripheral. The ecosystem of available games could be better, but it's far from stillborn.
- joefourier 8y ago
  Vaporware is software/hardware that is never actually manufactured or released to the public. Oculus has released the Rift, the Go and (with Samsung) the Gear VR, which are all available in stores now. All are successful, if relatively niche, products performing as intended, which is the opposite of vaporware.

nradov 8y ago

As someone with no real stake in this deal, why should anyone care whether Microsoft kills Github or not? There are multiple alternative Git hosting competitors and switching costs are low.

daveFNbuck 8y ago
The cost to copy a repo over is low, but you lose all the social aspects. You don't copy over forks or stars. People who want to fork your repo and make pull requests need to sign up for a new service. Old links to your repo on GitHub won't work anymore. I copied my personal projects to GitLab today and that was very easy to do but I'm not sure what to do about the GitHub version for the one that had a little popularity.
- Pywarrior 8y ago
  You could pull in all forks also.
  - daveFNbuck 8y ago
    I don't have control over forks people make of my projects. Luckily, this concern is more of a hypothetical for me, as only one person has forked one of my personal projects on GitHub. I'm much more concerned about stars and hyperlinks no longer leading to the real repo when people follow them.
- pmontra 8y ago
  I did the same. I'm replacing the README on GitHub with "Moved to https://gitlab.com/.. https://gitlab.com/... and a description of what the software does. If people finds it interesting they will follow the link. A fork between services becomes more complicate but not so much: git pull from GitLab and git push to GitHub or whatever. Everybody knows how to do it. Right, one loses the "fork" link between the two repositories but really, who cares? We're writing software for work or for a cause, we shouldn't be playing a game of collecting stars and forks.
  - 8y ago

mdpopescu 8y ago

> Microsoft doesn't care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." (Adam Smith.) I don't trust benevolent people. I trust self-interest. I don't need to offer my undying allegiance to Microsoft - I can like them as long as they do things that benefit me, and dislike them when they don't.

stefs 8y ago
the problem here is that the self-interests of github and microsoft might differ fundamentally. github wanted to make money from their paid services to create a profit. microsoft couldn't care less about the money paid github accounts make (as long as it's not hemorrhaging too much), it's unlikely they'll get a ROI from paid accounts in anyones lifetime. they need github to increase their earnings elsewhere, e.g. by getting developers to develop for the microsoft store or for their cloud services. so my guess is they'll at least start advertising their tech heavily on github and add features integrating their own tech while omitting the same for rivaling corporations. the old github didn't have an interest in limiting integration with other platform providers, as this would decrease their usefulness for potentially paying developers.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  FOSS will interpret Microsoft as damage and route around it. GitHub is going to turn into the FOSS version of the MySpace wasteland. I'm sure GitLab and other alternatives are seeing a stampede of new sign-ups right now. The question isn't really what MS will do, because - as is often the case - it won't matter. MS bought Nokia Phone, trashed the company, flailed around dramatically for a while, and in the end nothing much changed in the phone space - except that WinPhone hung on for a year or two longer than it would have otherwise. MS bought Skype, trashed the product, bolted it awkwardly onto Office, and in the end nothing much changed, because anyone with any sense moved to an alternative. It's going to be the same with GitHub. There will be drama in the short term, but in the longer term MS will receive little or no benefit, except for maybe some closer integration with VS. The money will simply be wasted. The real winners will be the investors and owners of GH, who have walked off with a big pile of MS stock they can convert to money and use to buy nice things.

chrisweekly 8y ago

> "its Machiavellian in its application of corporate strategy" I'd say, rather, simply, "it's corporate in its application of strategy". Which is to say, Microsoft is a business.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

scarface74 8y ago

Do you think the founders of GitHub, who after the sell to Microsoft will be the 2nd largest owner's of Microsoft stock, started GitHub because they "cared about developers"?[1] It's always about the money. No one "cares" about developers not even your own employer. They only care about making money and we are all just a cog in the machine. [1] https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-business/github-billionaires-will-own-more-microsoft-stock-than-ceo/articleshow/64471582.cms https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/international-b...

handbanana 8y ago

> Microsoft doesn't care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. It'll need to start caring to a degree, and catering to them, in order to achieve this