7 ms·

> 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

> 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.
  - jacksmith21006 8y ago
    Looks like a pretty strong exit from GitHub to GitLab. Just hope most go to a common place which appears it will be GitLab.
    - gaius 8y ago
      Just hope most go to a common place which appears it will be GitLab You know that Gitlab is also VC backed, right? They have to exit in the same way as Github did. It’s baked into their DNA. The only question now is who buys them. What will you do if that’s Oracle?
      - jacksmith21006 8y ago
        But GitLab has an open core and GitHub is closed source.
        stefs 8y ago
        that doesn't matter much, as the platform is only one side, while the hosting/service angle is the other. ultimately, hosting your code yourself is the only safe option, but of course it comes with its own downsides.
ysavir 8y ago
I think GP's point is that the nature of MicroSoft, as a platform, isn't lined up with your interests. They aren't looking to be developer friendly--that is, present you, as a developer more and better options. Since MicroSoft is a _platform_, their interest is to _limit_ your options to MicroSoft so that you aren't developing and enriching competing platforms. GP, if I am understanding correctly, is implying that their purchase of Github will either go to waste (Github can continue, but with no new resources from MS, and will slowly dry out) or MS will leverage it to push their own tools while limiting how developers can interact with it for non-MS code bases. Trusting self interest is fine, but trust doesn't always mean _trust in the good_. Trust means we can visibly see what their intentions are. The butcher depends on our money, therefor we can trust that they will provide us with a good service so that we return. MS depends on us using their platform, therefor we can trust that they will limit our options of which platforms we develop for.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  This is getting tinfoil hattery. Microsoft sells a platform. The success of that platform is based on convincing users and their agents to buy the platform. The platform is appealing because developers make money by creating apps or it. Has Microsoft done awful and possibly illegal things to competitors? Of course. But they've been the best for developers. Best dev tools, most powerful and widely deployed OS, at least in the PC era that made them famous and infamot.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    Historically, Microsoft made a good platform. People wanted to use it. Then Microsoft consistently, over a period of years, in several different directions, tried to use the fact that people used Microsoft's platform to make it harder for people to use other platforms or products. That's not tinfoil hat stuff. It's historical fact, and I was around when it happened. They tried to, in their term, "leverage" their OS dominance. But on the receiving end of that leverage, it feels like being forced.
  - pritambaral 8y ago
    > But they've been the best for developers. Microsoft has screwed developers on their own platforms too, when they didn't fall 100% in lockstep with Microsoft's whimsical decisions and about-turns. > Best dev tools, most powerful and widely deployed OS I strongly disagree they built the best dev tools or the "most powerful and widely deployed OS", but I'm going to talk about a more important point here. There's a difference between making a product that is better that everything else, and preventing others from making a product better than yours. When you let one maker — irrespective of whether they make the best product or not — bully and cheat their way into preventing other makers from competing, you are and shall be left with a sub-par product. One example: Microsoft single-handedly held back the web for close to a decade, all so it could continue to sell Windows licenses. As a result, the world suffered. There's a lot of progress that was stifled and/or killed off — some of which we may never get again — by Microsoft, just to protect its OS, by abusing its position on the market. It wasn't their dev tools or their "most powerful and widely deployed OS" that made them infamous, it was their own actions.
dbingham 8y ago
I don't trust self interest. Especially not in my butcher, brewer, or baker. Pure self interest gets you McDonalds, Bud Light, and Debi cakes. I consume exactly none of those things and have no desire to consume any of those things. They taste terrible, are bad for me, and the companies themselves are generally bad for their communities and the world. A good butcher, brewer, or baker is driven by craft first - care for their product, care for their customers, and care for the environment. They devote themselves to their craft. Not out of self interest ("I'll make more money if I do it this way.") but out of sheer joy of craftsmanship and doing good. I have known few producers who's products I would rate trust worthy who weren't driven first by craftsmanship, care for their customers, and care for doing good in the world. Self interest (of the "I need to make a living" form, not the "I want to be rich" form) in these situations is consistently a secondary interest. For these crafts people, if they can't meet their self interest, they simply stop crafting rather than pollute their product. That's who I trust. Never the behemoth driven by fiduciary duty and self interest. Adam Smith's philosophy is nearly 250 years old and predates the modern industrial revolution. It's time we stop putting it on a pedestal. We've learned so much about the way people, markets, society and people in markets and society function that he simply had no way to know.
- dumbneurologist 8y ago
  People who care about their craft are still driven by self interest: it's just that their internal value/utility puts a higher weight on the craft itself: since they get more out of the process of creating things that have craftsmanship, they are not distracted by the opportunity to make 5 cents more per loaf (or whatever). > That's who I trust. Never the behemoth driven by fiduciary duty and self interest. Trust is orthogonal to craftsmanship. > Adam Smith's philosophy is nearly 250 years old and predates the modern industrial revolution. It's time we stop putting it on a pedestal. It's less a philosophy than an understanding/insight regarding human behavior. You might as well say "it's time we stop putting newtonian physics on a pedestal", to the extent that both are reasonable models of human behavior, and are helpful in many, many real-world situations. Arguing that people "shouldn't" behave according to Smith's expectations is going to be about as successful as arguing they shouldn't fall when they jump off a ladder. > I consume exactly none of those things and have no desire to consume any of those things. Nor do I, but many people do, and that decision makes them different than me, not less than me.
sergiosgc 8y ago
> 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. Sound logic, were it not for the fact that you may be trapped by the time you dislike Microsoft. Given Microsoft's history, it's a risk I will never take. I don't trust them, never will. We nearly avoided a monolithic web in the browser wars. Microsoft pushed, successfully, Internet Explorer to be the only game in town. You didn't write websites against the standard. You wrote them to run on MSIE. Mozilla, Google, the iphone and MS's hubris made IE 6 so noncompetitive that the web evolved past that blockage. It was luck, and we must recognize the near miss. The open Internet could have ended up closed and a lot worse. We almost ended up writing webapps in Activex.
- sbhn 8y ago
  Microsoft successfully pushed internet explorer to the front by making it cheaper and more accessible than Netscape. If they didn’t, the internet may have still lacked competition today and you’d still be paying money for Netscape. The foresight and competition that Microsoft brang to the browser market was probably the most significant factor for the adoption of the internet by the whole world back in those days.
  - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
    I never, ever paid for a version of Netscape. Hardly anyone did. I - like everyone - paid a huge cost in wasted time and non-existent security when I tried to use IE or develop a site compatible with it.
    - sbhn 8y ago
      If you never paid, well that’s because you entered the scene after Microsoft’s commoditising effect of the browser market had taken effect. You now had a choice.
      - sergiosgc 8y ago
cabalamat 8y ago
The butcher, the brewer and the baker have no ability to alter my biochemistry so I can't consumer other people's meat, beer and bread. So I am unafraid that they will harm me with vendor lock-in. Microsoft, on the other hand...
- rkeene2 8y ago
  > The butcher, the brewer and the baker have no ability to alter my biochemistry so I can't consumer other people's meat, beer and bread. Yet. :-)
kevin_b_er 8y ago
I trust those who exhibit exclusive self-interest to throw me under the bus the moment it is good for them. The term for it is selfishness. And you can usually count on a large corporation to be selfish sociopath. It is the job of society and the public to constrain the selfish they do not harm others through their greed.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
You don't trust the creators of Python or Linux then, eh?

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.
- jacksmith21006 8y ago
  Looks like a pretty strong exit from GitHub to GitLab. Just hope most go to a common place which appears it will be GitLab.
  - gaius 8y ago
    Just hope most go to a common place which appears it will be GitLab You know that Gitlab is also VC backed, right? They have to exit in the same way as Github did. It’s baked into their DNA. The only question now is who buys them. What will you do if that’s Oracle?
    - jacksmith21006 8y ago
      But GitLab has an open core and GitHub is closed source.
      - stefs 8y ago
        that doesn't matter much, as the platform is only one side, while the hosting/service angle is the other. ultimately, hosting your code yourself is the only safe option, but of course it comes with its own downsides.

ysavir 8y ago

I think GP's point is that the nature of MicroSoft, as a platform, isn't lined up with your interests. They aren't looking to be developer friendly--that is, present you, as a developer more and better options. Since MicroSoft is a _platform_, their interest is to _limit_ your options to MicroSoft so that you aren't developing and enriching competing platforms. GP, if I am understanding correctly, is implying that their purchase of Github will either go to waste (Github can continue, but with no new resources from MS, and will slowly dry out) or MS will leverage it to push their own tools while limiting how developers can interact with it for non-MS code bases. Trusting self interest is fine, but trust doesn't always mean _trust in the good_. Trust means we can visibly see what their intentions are. The butcher depends on our money, therefor we can trust that they will provide us with a good service so that we return. MS depends on us using their platform, therefor we can trust that they will limit our options of which platforms we develop for.

fjsolwmv 8y ago
This is getting tinfoil hattery. Microsoft sells a platform. The success of that platform is based on convincing users and their agents to buy the platform. The platform is appealing because developers make money by creating apps or it. Has Microsoft done awful and possibly illegal things to competitors? Of course. But they've been the best for developers. Best dev tools, most powerful and widely deployed OS, at least in the PC era that made them famous and infamot.
- AnimalMuppet 8y ago
  Historically, Microsoft made a good platform. People wanted to use it. Then Microsoft consistently, over a period of years, in several different directions, tried to use the fact that people used Microsoft's platform to make it harder for people to use other platforms or products. That's not tinfoil hat stuff. It's historical fact, and I was around when it happened. They tried to, in their term, "leverage" their OS dominance. But on the receiving end of that leverage, it feels like being forced.
- pritambaral 8y ago
  > But they've been the best for developers. Microsoft has screwed developers on their own platforms too, when they didn't fall 100% in lockstep with Microsoft's whimsical decisions and about-turns. > Best dev tools, most powerful and widely deployed OS I strongly disagree they built the best dev tools or the "most powerful and widely deployed OS", but I'm going to talk about a more important point here. There's a difference between making a product that is better that everything else, and preventing others from making a product better than yours. When you let one maker — irrespective of whether they make the best product or not — bully and cheat their way into preventing other makers from competing, you are and shall be left with a sub-par product. One example: Microsoft single-handedly held back the web for close to a decade, all so it could continue to sell Windows licenses. As a result, the world suffered. There's a lot of progress that was stifled and/or killed off — some of which we may never get again — by Microsoft, just to protect its OS, by abusing its position on the market. It wasn't their dev tools or their "most powerful and widely deployed OS" that made them infamous, it was their own actions.

dbingham 8y ago

I don't trust self interest. Especially not in my butcher, brewer, or baker. Pure self interest gets you McDonalds, Bud Light, and Debi cakes. I consume exactly none of those things and have no desire to consume any of those things. They taste terrible, are bad for me, and the companies themselves are generally bad for their communities and the world. A good butcher, brewer, or baker is driven by craft first - care for their product, care for their customers, and care for the environment. They devote themselves to their craft. Not out of self interest ("I'll make more money if I do it this way.") but out of sheer joy of craftsmanship and doing good. I have known few producers who's products I would rate trust worthy who weren't driven first by craftsmanship, care for their customers, and care for doing good in the world. Self interest (of the "I need to make a living" form, not the "I want to be rich" form) in these situations is consistently a secondary interest. For these crafts people, if they can't meet their self interest, they simply stop crafting rather than pollute their product. That's who I trust. Never the behemoth driven by fiduciary duty and self interest. Adam Smith's philosophy is nearly 250 years old and predates the modern industrial revolution. It's time we stop putting it on a pedestal. We've learned so much about the way people, markets, society and people in markets and society function that he simply had no way to know.

dumbneurologist 8y ago
People who care about their craft are still driven by self interest: it's just that their internal value/utility puts a higher weight on the craft itself: since they get more out of the process of creating things that have craftsmanship, they are not distracted by the opportunity to make 5 cents more per loaf (or whatever). > That's who I trust. Never the behemoth driven by fiduciary duty and self interest. Trust is orthogonal to craftsmanship. > Adam Smith's philosophy is nearly 250 years old and predates the modern industrial revolution. It's time we stop putting it on a pedestal. It's less a philosophy than an understanding/insight regarding human behavior. You might as well say "it's time we stop putting newtonian physics on a pedestal", to the extent that both are reasonable models of human behavior, and are helpful in many, many real-world situations. Arguing that people "shouldn't" behave according to Smith's expectations is going to be about as successful as arguing they shouldn't fall when they jump off a ladder. > I consume exactly none of those things and have no desire to consume any of those things. Nor do I, but many people do, and that decision makes them different than me, not less than me.

sergiosgc 8y ago

> 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. Sound logic, were it not for the fact that you may be trapped by the time you dislike Microsoft. Given Microsoft's history, it's a risk I will never take. I don't trust them, never will. We nearly avoided a monolithic web in the browser wars. Microsoft pushed, successfully, Internet Explorer to be the only game in town. You didn't write websites against the standard. You wrote them to run on MSIE. Mozilla, Google, the iphone and MS's hubris made IE 6 so noncompetitive that the web evolved past that blockage. It was luck, and we must recognize the near miss. The open Internet could have ended up closed and a lot worse. We almost ended up writing webapps in Activex.

sbhn 8y ago
Microsoft successfully pushed internet explorer to the front by making it cheaper and more accessible than Netscape. If they didn’t, the internet may have still lacked competition today and you’d still be paying money for Netscape. The foresight and competition that Microsoft brang to the browser market was probably the most significant factor for the adoption of the internet by the whole world back in those days.
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
  I never, ever paid for a version of Netscape. Hardly anyone did. I - like everyone - paid a huge cost in wasted time and non-existent security when I tried to use IE or develop a site compatible with it.
  - sbhn 8y ago
    If you never paid, well that’s because you entered the scene after Microsoft’s commoditising effect of the browser market had taken effect. You now had a choice.
    - sergiosgc 8y ago

cabalamat 8y ago

The butcher, the brewer and the baker have no ability to alter my biochemistry so I can't consumer other people's meat, beer and bread. So I am unafraid that they will harm me with vendor lock-in. Microsoft, on the other hand...

rkeene2 8y ago
> The butcher, the brewer and the baker have no ability to alter my biochemistry so I can't consumer other people's meat, beer and bread. Yet. :-)

kevin_b_er 8y ago

I trust those who exhibit exclusive self-interest to throw me under the bus the moment it is good for them. The term for it is selfishness. And you can usually count on a large corporation to be selfish sociopath. It is the job of society and the public to constrain the selfish they do not harm others through their greed.

fjsolwmv 8y ago

You don't trust the creators of Python or Linux then, eh?