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Nat Friedman has cofounded Xamarin, he understands Open Source and I'm sure he'll do well as CEO of GitHub. I'm cautiously optimistic about it. Microsoft could

Nat Friedman has cofounded Xamarin, he understands Open Source and I'm sure he'll do well as CEO of GitHub. I'm cautiously optimistic about it. Microsoft could pull a Skype of course, but on the upside this might turn out to be a good thing, as in this climate many businesses, operating at scale and giving away so many freebies, are struggling and GitHub could have been the next SourceForge. Who knows, maybe they'll even open source it. Fingers crossed.

cheez 8y ago
Microsoft is deliberately trying to be the biggest open source company in the world so I think Skype may not be the best example, maybe .NET core.
- bad_user 8y ago
  Lets get one thing clear ... this company never gained anything from developing and pushing .NET and they haven't acquired a company for it either. So no, that's not a good example. A better example would be Nokia.
  - cabaalis 8y ago
    Do you mean .Net in general or .Net core? In my industry, Microsoft stacks are extremely common. The talent pool for C# in this area is tremendous, which has absolutely gained the company much synergy in the form of OS and MSSQL licensing. So the development of .Net in my opinion has made the company much more sticky. I can't help but believe they're making a mistake (even though I want it!) in pushing .Net to open source.
    - metildaa 8y ago
      If Microsoft doesn't ccontinue to open up parts of the .Net stack, the OS and MSSQL licensing revenue is going to taper off more rapidly. Microsoft sees the writing on the wall, their software is focused on a stable, but not significantly expanding platform, and Chromebooks are eating the lower quartile of it. If Microsoft can't retain developer mindshare, they are sunk.
      - spork12 8y ago
        I've actually seen the opposite happening. Organizations tend to favor MSSQL even though other free options like Postgres could do the job just fine. Large enterprises I've worked with such as hospitals, auto mobile companies and pro sports teams overwhelmingly prefer their web and mobile apps to be written in .NET over java/python/js. Azure is a huge step forward in bringing many of these traditionally in house technologies like SQL Server, SSIS, SSAS, Reporting Services, and .NET Web Apps affordably into the cloud as well as newer technologies that fit comfortably into companies' existing infrastructure (Data Factory, Azure Functions, HDInsight etc.) They are grabbing a huge amount of developer mindshare at the enterprise level, and by opening up their tools are allowing the younger crowd a free alternative to going with OSS. I'm definitely not a MSFT zealot. I have been a "linux guy" since I was 14 yrs old, but after working almost exclusively with the MSFT stack for the last 2.5 yrs I am very impressed with their offerings and the level of integration and cohesiveness around those offerings.
  - spork12 8y ago
    "this company never gained anything from developing and pushing .NET" I would have to disagree. .NET has become the backbone of the MSFT developer experience and has gone far beyond being just an alternative to java. It's heavily used in Azure, SQL Server, Web Applications, Desktop, Mobile etc.
  - the_trapper 8y ago
    They bought Xamarin. I'm also pretty sure they do make money from their Enterprise versions of their .NET developer tools.
  - hnbroseph 8y ago
    > this company never gained anything from developing and pushing .NET eh? the whole reason they make tools is to lure developers.
  - tracker1 8y ago
    Xamarin?
rdl 8y ago
Nat Friedman running this is one of the reasons I don't worry much. Plus, Microsoft buying GitHub meant...Oracle, IBM, etc. couldn't buy it, which removes a lot of risk.
- josteink 8y ago
  “Oracle Github is used by millions of developers” Yup. Very glad that can never happen now.
  - halfjoking 8y ago
    Oracle Github is the only Github that Github their repos on Oracle, the most trusted name when it comes to Github.
- bad_user 8y ago
  Oracle is exactly what I had in mind or Google, and I don’t know which is worse, because projects at Google don’t have a high survival rate.
gear54rus 8y ago
Was cautiously pessimistic until I understood that Skype won't happen again because we have alternative: gitlab (and others). So it will either get better (good) or everyone will move to gitlab (good, more likely, ms hater here). So here goes.
- lucb1e 8y ago
  Well as for Skype, there are a dozen alternatives out there (such as Wire). Much as I'd like to see an influx of users from Skype, very few people have it. The only group that's on there is colleagues and friends of colleagues, after the company did a pentest on Wire (see Wire's website for the reports).
robinhood 8y ago
I agree that Nat Friedman seems to be the right CEO for GitHub. I've observed him on Twitter in the past few months and his behaviour has been top notch. Words are worthless and what only matters is action. In the last weeks, he actually took the time to reach out to actual project maintainers and contributors to listen to what they want. Microsoft won't ruin GitHub. Windows's ecosystem need developers more than ever. Developers are on GitHub. They simply can't screw it up.
- Jaruzel 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure Steve Ballmer said... something... about developers once...
  - usr1106 8y ago
    Yes, but at least at the moment Microsoft leadership doesn't have the highest opinions on Ballmers merits regarding developers https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SNOHJf97uQU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SNOHJf97uQU
    - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
      It's a pity the Linux Foundation chose one-way communication and disabled the comments (not just for this video).
  - seabrookmx 8y ago
    You can have the right goal in mind and execute terribly on it. I think Microsoft has done this a lot in the past. Mobile is the standout example, but even the Skype debacle had some good intentions. Microsoft had a super fragmented ecosystem of "Windows Live", Office, MSN, Skype.. I think it was noble to try and unify everything under one login. But they tried to push said login down the throats of unsuspecting Windows users (that more often that not didn't use that MS ecosystem but instead used Google's), and (IMO) ruined Skype's usability in the process. I don't know what the _right_ way of doing it was, but this certainly wasn't it.
- deleted 8y ago
rajacombinator 8y ago
What does “pulling a Skype” mean in this context? I remember when they bought Skype it was “bad.” But do people really use Skype any less now than before?
- ddorian43 8y ago
  Since skype was bought my account (and many others) simply do not work on non-windows.
  - usr1106 8y ago
    On Linux they have had a client "forever". I don't use it frequently, but I have no reason to believe that it work significantly worse than on Windows. (Some usecases were not supported IIRC, something with groupcalls maybe? Screensharing was dropped at some phase, but can be achieved by some v4l2 trickery to have the screen contents appear as a camera. No idea whther it is back, I have little reason to use skype these days.)
- thrower123 8y ago
  Heh, one of the awful things they did when they acquired Skype was rebrand a bunch of pre-existing products in the same general space with the Skype name, causing a huge amount of confusion. Hopefully they don't slap the GitHub name on everything under the sun; I'm optimistic, right now it seems like Azure and Office365 are the two catchall branding efforts.
- behringer 8y ago
  Skype is a shell of its former self, everybody has moved over to facebook or discord. The few friends I have who did still use Skype as of a few months ago have migrated to Wire. I only know one person that uses it now and they only use it because they still have a real phone number attached to it.
  - partiallypro 8y ago
    I've hardly ever known a single person that has ever used Skype. I actually used to really like Lync when I worked for a company that used Office 365...but hated when they Skypified it. Microsoft Teams seems pretty awesome, but I haven't had the chance to use it. Skype does have a lot of business uses that it doesn't face any competition with...but they are features most people don't use.
behringer 8y ago
This is only a good thing for GitHub's competitors. MS will ruin Github, so I would recommend just not getting attached to it and change over to somewhere else now, while it's easy.
fpgaminer 8y ago
> as in this climate many businesses, operating at scale and giving away so many freebies, are struggling and GitHub could have been the next SourceForge. What kind of world do we live in when a service which is so ubiquitous and depended upon in our community is at risk of struggling? (Side note: I haven't been following this acquisition in detail; was GH struggling? Or was the acquisition just their exit?)
- lawnchair_larry 8y ago
  The kind where VC subsidizes everything and people start to expect it for free, but when it comes time to pay, they have difficult decisions to make, and VCs require growth of their investments, so management also has difficult decisions to make. Github would be unknown today if it wasn’t free for personal use.
  - antaviana 8y ago
    It's not free for personal use. It is free for publicly available projects.

cheez 8y ago

Microsoft is deliberately trying to be the biggest open source company in the world so I think Skype may not be the best example, maybe .NET core.

bad_user 8y ago
Lets get one thing clear ... this company never gained anything from developing and pushing .NET and they haven't acquired a company for it either. So no, that's not a good example. A better example would be Nokia.
- cabaalis 8y ago
  Do you mean .Net in general or .Net core? In my industry, Microsoft stacks are extremely common. The talent pool for C# in this area is tremendous, which has absolutely gained the company much synergy in the form of OS and MSSQL licensing. So the development of .Net in my opinion has made the company much more sticky. I can't help but believe they're making a mistake (even though I want it!) in pushing .Net to open source.
  - metildaa 8y ago
    If Microsoft doesn't ccontinue to open up parts of the .Net stack, the OS and MSSQL licensing revenue is going to taper off more rapidly. Microsoft sees the writing on the wall, their software is focused on a stable, but not significantly expanding platform, and Chromebooks are eating the lower quartile of it. If Microsoft can't retain developer mindshare, they are sunk.
    - spork12 8y ago
      I've actually seen the opposite happening. Organizations tend to favor MSSQL even though other free options like Postgres could do the job just fine. Large enterprises I've worked with such as hospitals, auto mobile companies and pro sports teams overwhelmingly prefer their web and mobile apps to be written in .NET over java/python/js. Azure is a huge step forward in bringing many of these traditionally in house technologies like SQL Server, SSIS, SSAS, Reporting Services, and .NET Web Apps affordably into the cloud as well as newer technologies that fit comfortably into companies' existing infrastructure (Data Factory, Azure Functions, HDInsight etc.) They are grabbing a huge amount of developer mindshare at the enterprise level, and by opening up their tools are allowing the younger crowd a free alternative to going with OSS. I'm definitely not a MSFT zealot. I have been a "linux guy" since I was 14 yrs old, but after working almost exclusively with the MSFT stack for the last 2.5 yrs I am very impressed with their offerings and the level of integration and cohesiveness around those offerings.
- spork12 8y ago
  "this company never gained anything from developing and pushing .NET" I would have to disagree. .NET has become the backbone of the MSFT developer experience and has gone far beyond being just an alternative to java. It's heavily used in Azure, SQL Server, Web Applications, Desktop, Mobile etc.
- the_trapper 8y ago
  They bought Xamarin. I'm also pretty sure they do make money from their Enterprise versions of their .NET developer tools.
- hnbroseph 8y ago
  > this company never gained anything from developing and pushing .NET eh? the whole reason they make tools is to lure developers.
- tracker1 8y ago
  Xamarin?

rdl 8y ago

Nat Friedman running this is one of the reasons I don't worry much. Plus, Microsoft buying GitHub meant...Oracle, IBM, etc. couldn't buy it, which removes a lot of risk.

josteink 8y ago
“Oracle Github is used by millions of developers” Yup. Very glad that can never happen now.
- halfjoking 8y ago
  Oracle Github is the only Github that Github their repos on Oracle, the most trusted name when it comes to Github.
bad_user 8y ago
Oracle is exactly what I had in mind or Google, and I don’t know which is worse, because projects at Google don’t have a high survival rate.

gear54rus 8y ago

Was cautiously pessimistic until I understood that Skype won't happen again because we have alternative: gitlab (and others). So it will either get better (good) or everyone will move to gitlab (good, more likely, ms hater here). So here goes.

lucb1e 8y ago
Well as for Skype, there are a dozen alternatives out there (such as Wire). Much as I'd like to see an influx of users from Skype, very few people have it. The only group that's on there is colleagues and friends of colleagues, after the company did a pentest on Wire (see Wire's website for the reports).

robinhood 8y ago

I agree that Nat Friedman seems to be the right CEO for GitHub. I've observed him on Twitter in the past few months and his behaviour has been top notch. Words are worthless and what only matters is action. In the last weeks, he actually took the time to reach out to actual project maintainers and contributors to listen to what they want. Microsoft won't ruin GitHub. Windows's ecosystem need developers more than ever. Developers are on GitHub. They simply can't screw it up.

Jaruzel 8y ago
I'm pretty sure Steve Ballmer said... something... about developers once...
- usr1106 8y ago
  Yes, but at least at the moment Microsoft leadership doesn't have the highest opinions on Ballmers merits regarding developers https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SNOHJf97uQU https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SNOHJf97uQU
  - dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago
    It's a pity the Linux Foundation chose one-way communication and disabled the comments (not just for this video).
- seabrookmx 8y ago
  You can have the right goal in mind and execute terribly on it. I think Microsoft has done this a lot in the past. Mobile is the standout example, but even the Skype debacle had some good intentions. Microsoft had a super fragmented ecosystem of "Windows Live", Office, MSN, Skype.. I think it was noble to try and unify everything under one login. But they tried to push said login down the throats of unsuspecting Windows users (that more often that not didn't use that MS ecosystem but instead used Google's), and (IMO) ruined Skype's usability in the process. I don't know what the _right_ way of doing it was, but this certainly wasn't it.
deleted 8y ago

rajacombinator 8y ago

What does “pulling a Skype” mean in this context? I remember when they bought Skype it was “bad.” But do people really use Skype any less now than before?

ddorian43 8y ago
Since skype was bought my account (and many others) simply do not work on non-windows.
- usr1106 8y ago
  On Linux they have had a client "forever". I don't use it frequently, but I have no reason to believe that it work significantly worse than on Windows. (Some usecases were not supported IIRC, something with groupcalls maybe? Screensharing was dropped at some phase, but can be achieved by some v4l2 trickery to have the screen contents appear as a camera. No idea whther it is back, I have little reason to use skype these days.)
thrower123 8y ago
Heh, one of the awful things they did when they acquired Skype was rebrand a bunch of pre-existing products in the same general space with the Skype name, causing a huge amount of confusion. Hopefully they don't slap the GitHub name on everything under the sun; I'm optimistic, right now it seems like Azure and Office365 are the two catchall branding efforts.
behringer 8y ago
Skype is a shell of its former self, everybody has moved over to facebook or discord. The few friends I have who did still use Skype as of a few months ago have migrated to Wire. I only know one person that uses it now and they only use it because they still have a real phone number attached to it.
- partiallypro 8y ago
  I've hardly ever known a single person that has ever used Skype. I actually used to really like Lync when I worked for a company that used Office 365...but hated when they Skypified it. Microsoft Teams seems pretty awesome, but I haven't had the chance to use it. Skype does have a lot of business uses that it doesn't face any competition with...but they are features most people don't use.

behringer 8y ago

This is only a good thing for GitHub's competitors. MS will ruin Github, so I would recommend just not getting attached to it and change over to somewhere else now, while it's easy.

fpgaminer 8y ago

> as in this climate many businesses, operating at scale and giving away so many freebies, are struggling and GitHub could have been the next SourceForge. What kind of world do we live in when a service which is so ubiquitous and depended upon in our community is at risk of struggling? (Side note: I haven't been following this acquisition in detail; was GH struggling? Or was the acquisition just their exit?)

lawnchair_larry 8y ago
The kind where VC subsidizes everything and people start to expect it for free, but when it comes time to pay, they have difficult decisions to make, and VCs require growth of their investments, so management also has difficult decisions to make. Github would be unknown today if it wasn’t free for personal use.
- antaviana 8y ago
  It's not free for personal use. It is free for publicly available projects.