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Microsoft is really the best at the slow strategic burn. * You host your project in github * You fund your project using github sponsors * You develop your p

Microsoft is really the best at the slow strategic burn. * You host your project in github * You fund your project using github sponsors * You develop your project using github codespaces * You compile, test and deploy using github actions * You cloud host on azure Each individual feature is definitely great. I'm not trying to be critical of Microsoft trying to turn their investment in github into a profitable business. This is a kind of vertical integration that is guaranteed to lead to some efficiencies. One prediction based on this stack is the next piece could be some sort of subscription payment architecture. I wouldn't be surprised to see some kind of Microsoft Marketplace integration coming, but maybe branded under github. Some kind of SaaS subscription enabler.

suyash 6y ago
Yup all the free stuff is ultimately to lead us into using and paying for Azure. Need an open source alternative to GitHub.
- dkarlovi 6y ago
  GitLab has been great for a while and actually had some features before GH.
  - sytse 6y ago
    Thanks for the mention. As for how the features today map: 1. GitHub Insights => GitLab Insights https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/insights/ https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/insights/ Code Review Analytics https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/analytics/code_review_analytics.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/analytics/code_review_analyt... DevOps Score https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/instance_statistics/dev_ops_score.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/instance_statistics/dev_ops_... and Value Stream analytics https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/analytics/value_stream_analytics.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/analytics/value_stream_analy... 2. GitHub CodeScanning => GitLab SAST https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/application_security/sast/ https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/application_security/sast/ and Secret Detection https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/application_security/sast/#secret-detection https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/application_security/sast/#s... 3. GitHub Codespaces => GitLab Live Preview with client side evaluation https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/web_ide/index.html#client-side-evaluation https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/web_ide/index.html#c... and upcoming server side evaluation https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/167 https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/167 which would work both with on-premises Kubernetes clusters and in any cloud.
    - misterhtmlcss 6y ago
      Simple but big issue I have is getting solutions that suit the platform. Often when I'm looking for help on something it gives me the on-prem solution. Docs on your website are confusing for this reason and that's why I stopped using. Takes me 30 seconds to solve a problem on GH and 5min to solve the same problem on GL. Clean that up so when devs try out the platform it's slick and easy to buy into not annoying and difficult.
- mbreese 6y ago
  Sourcehut would like to have a word... https://sr.ht/ https://sr.ht/
  - brightball 6y ago
    I had not seen that...interesting.
    - SkyMarshal 6y ago
      Source hut is cool. Among things, it prioritizes exposing and leveraging Git's existing functionality wherever possible, like email patches, rather than building new proprietary functionality on top of Git like Github and others do.
      - AgentME 6y ago
        Everything about Github's PR workflow is killer to me, so to me personally the message I take away from this is that Source Hut isn't even competing with Github in the parts I care about.
        SkyMarshal 6y ago
        If the one particular aspect I mentioned isn't for you then why even bother wasting your valuable time responding? Just go read their website instead and see if there is something for you. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't, but at least then you'd know definitively. Much better use of your time and effort. I'll even save you a few clicks: https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-availability.html https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-availabilit... https://sourcehut.org/ https://sourcehut.org/
        AgentME 6y ago
        I posted because I think my post would be useful to other people who are considering alternatives to GitHub but also like rich PR workflows like GitHub has, and because I think it's good to encourage would-be GitHub alternatives to invest in that area. I've actually been following Sourcehut's mailing list and updates since forever because I find their philosophies interesting, but not right or practical for my own workflow.
- KukicAdnan 6y ago
  Why is that a bad thing? If you found value in Azure and it solved your problem, why is that a negative?
  - yarrel 6y ago
    The trap is comfy and warm. Why ask what the springs are connected to?
  - SamBam 6y ago
    Switching costs. If the things are offered free, and you build a lot of it into your system, and now it costs money, you have to choose between paying that money, or paying a potentially high switching cost to move to a different system. If you had known you were going to be faced with those costs, you may never have bought into the system in the first place.
- Kipters 6y ago
  Why? It's not like you MUST deploy on Azure
  - donmcronald 6y ago
    I think it's more about all of the integration leading to efficiencies that are hard to ignore while they're being subsidized / promoted. It'll start out as something where the value proposition is too good to ignore, but, as time goes on, they'll tier off features and charge a premium as you scale up. There was a time when I was hopeful and though Microsoft would take a developer first approach with the end goal being making it easy to deploy to Azure. After seeing the VSO (the old name for Codespaces) pricing I'm a lot more cynical. Microsoft's going to be altruistic until they're not. Go look at the pricing for VSO. They have a full time dev (100 hours a month - lol) estimated at a cost of $23 USD per month. Just wait until there's some type of marketplace for extension developers. The local version of VSCode will disappear overnight and (IMO) we'll be paying $50+ / month for the same thing that's free right now. Get ready to pay for everything per user per month for the rest of your life.
    - nicoburns 6y ago
      > The local version of VSCode will disappear overnight That's the beauty of open source though. VSCode is prominent enough that someone will fork it and maintain it if Microsoft pulls the plug.
      - donmcronald 6y ago
        My fear is that an officially supported marketplace for selling extensions would be appealing enough that important extensions would put all future development effort into their marketplace versions and cease development of local versions.
    - nikmd23 6y ago
      Hi! PM on the Codespaces team here. I wanted to quickly help calm any potential concerns about changes to VS Code or its model. Codespaces is a separate, additional service from VS Code, very much focused on providing compute catered to developers and their workflows. We hope you'll use and love it, but we're also very happy if you'd prefer to continue to use VS Code in the ways that you may have previously done. Either way, we will continue to invest heavily in VS Code as you know it. Codespaces will not change that. Hopefully that helps clarify any concerns!
- evilduck 6y ago
  Gitlab CE, Gitea, Gogs
  - jannes 6y ago
    Some background on these: Gitea is a fork of Gogs. Both are written in Go and are pretty light on resources (they support SQLite as database backend). Gitlab is heavier on resources and requires at least Postgresql and Redis.
    - ckok 6y ago
      Gitlab looks nicer and has a lot more features even in the open source edition. (Though some paid features seem to be arbitrary paid vs free, like scoped tags, a feature everyone could use is paid, while a really Enterprise feature like kubernetes support is free)
- aprdm 6y ago
  Doesn't gitlab fit the bill here?
mritchie712 6y ago
I see a Marketplace, but not their own payments architecture. I think what would be more likely is better project management built into Github.
nogabebop23 6y ago
As someone how really like github and really dislikes azure devops - and a corporate direction pushing us from the former to the later - any idea what their endgame is as these two converge?
- lstamour 6y ago
  Edit: I misunderstood your comment as about Azure generally and not Azure DevOps specifically. I see Azure DevOps as the “full service” version of GitHub’s slightly more “DIY” approach. DevOps can also be customized and sold by partners, consultants, I think. GitHub if anything, might move more to a “consultant network” approach. I think Microsoft is maintaining two district brands for developers, for the time being. I originally wrote: I think there’s a clear benefit to Microsoft for GitHub to internally use Azure, but I think there’s a clear benefit to Microsoft’s developer community, GitHub and the Microsoft Partner ecosystem for GitHub to support AWS and GCP via open source, AWS Marketplace, Docker and anything else that helps ensure GitHub is useful independent of the rest of Microsoft’s services — GitHub being impartial is more important to Microsoft than the extra market share they might — might — get.
- nickspag 6y ago
  I also use Azure DevOps for work and am a recently-former MSFT person. From what I've heard from those still there, most of the new development is going towards Github Actions, which is also reflected in their staffing movements. However with GHA running on top of ADO pipeline infrastructure (public info), Microsoft's success with the strategic slow burn as OP called it, and their super-long-term-support reputation, it's probably not in their interest to rush the move. I'd be willing to bet that in a year+ or so the writing on the public wall becomes much clearer. To that extent, we've started planning a migration at my company.
  - dathinab 6y ago
    If webhooks become increasingly less useful we will know what thinks are going.
- nicoburns 6y ago
woile 6y ago
A netlify competitor? One click deployments? create release -> deploy
ehsankia 6y ago
Don't forget about VSCode! It's very quickly becoming one of the best free editors out there, replacing Sublime, Atom and the rest. I'm actually curious, will this be using Atom, it's own thing, or VS Code as the editor backend? I have actually been running code-server [0] which finally allows me to have my powerful editor with all my settings and extensions and working with my own files on any device. [0] https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server
- apozem 6y ago
  > Don't forget about VSCode! It's very quickly becoming one of the best free editors out there I don't know if people realize just how much market share VS Code has grabbed. It went from 7% to 50% in five years, according some some surveys [1]. Microsoft is quietly dominating this part of the stack. [2] [1]: https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en/articles/vs-code-javascript https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en/articles/vs-code-javas... [2]: This is not an invitation to debate the merits of VS Code or tell me which editor you use, just an observation of growth
  - diminish 6y ago
    It's hard to make a profit from a code editor - i think. but will it allow MS to grab developer mind share to focus on C# .NET and Azure?
    - miohtama 6y ago
      I feel New Microsoft is a lot.of about TypeScript/JavaScript. TypeScript development is dominated by Visual Studio Code.
    - apozem 6y ago
      MS constructing a path between different levels of the development stack. They're integrating languages they control with their super popular IDE with their insanely popular source code repository with their cloud provider. My bet is they won't stop you from going off the path (e.g. using VS Code to push to Bitbucket and deploy to AWS), but they will make the MS path the easiest and the default. VS Code in GitHub is a perfect example of this. Every integration makes it easier and more appealing to your CTO to Just Use Microsoft TM.
desertratTX 6y ago
We're not even porting GitHub to Azure. Our tooling is completely platform agnostic, and MSFT Actions facilitating deployment to Azure are built in the same platform and open sourced the same way that AWS, GCP and everyone else are offering theirs. GitHub isn't driving anyone to Azure Devops, we'd prefer folks to migrate from AzDO to GitHub. The focus of much of our work is building out the GitHub platform to meet and fairly quickly exceed the capabilities of AzDO (or any other platform for that matter) in every respect
etepwilz 6y ago
I definitely agree - was thinking about this in 2018 when thinking about the acquisition, and it's really interesting to see how this is driving the competitive landscape between Azure and AWS: http://redgoldleader.blogspot.com/2018/07/using-continuous-deployment-to-drive.html http://redgoldleader.blogspot.com/2018/07/using-continuous-d...
ksec 6y ago
And strangely enough, Microsoft is currently the only big three Cloud Vendor which you likely wont be competing against. If you are doing anything on the Web, you are competing against Google ( and Facebook ). If you are doing Retail, e-commerce, you are competing against Amazon. Microsoft is trying to turn the Cloud into its new OS before Amazon does it. But from the way things stand this will likely never happen. So as far as I can tell I have no problem with that strategy at all.
m_ke 6y ago
Wait till they have linkedin spammers trying to recruit you directly in your IDE.

suyash 6y ago

Yup all the free stuff is ultimately to lead us into using and paying for Azure. Need an open source alternative to GitHub.

dkarlovi 6y ago
GitLab has been great for a while and actually had some features before GH.
- sytse 6y ago
  Thanks for the mention. As for how the features today map: 1. GitHub Insights => GitLab Insights https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/insights/ https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/insights/ Code Review Analytics https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/analytics/code_review_analytics.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/analytics/code_review_analyt... DevOps Score https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/instance_statistics/dev_ops_score.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/instance_statistics/dev_ops_... and Value Stream analytics https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/analytics/value_stream_analytics.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/analytics/value_stream_analy... 2. GitHub CodeScanning => GitLab SAST https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/application_security/sast/ https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/application_security/sast/ and Secret Detection https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/application_security/sast/#secret-detection https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/application_security/sast/#s... 3. GitHub Codespaces => GitLab Live Preview with client side evaluation https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/web_ide/index.html#client-side-evaluation https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/web_ide/index.html#c... and upcoming server side evaluation https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/167 https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/167 which would work both with on-premises Kubernetes clusters and in any cloud.
  - misterhtmlcss 6y ago
    Simple but big issue I have is getting solutions that suit the platform. Often when I'm looking for help on something it gives me the on-prem solution. Docs on your website are confusing for this reason and that's why I stopped using. Takes me 30 seconds to solve a problem on GH and 5min to solve the same problem on GL. Clean that up so when devs try out the platform it's slick and easy to buy into not annoying and difficult.
mbreese 6y ago
Sourcehut would like to have a word... https://sr.ht/ https://sr.ht/
- brightball 6y ago
  I had not seen that...interesting.
  - SkyMarshal 6y ago
    Source hut is cool. Among things, it prioritizes exposing and leveraging Git's existing functionality wherever possible, like email patches, rather than building new proprietary functionality on top of Git like Github and others do.
    - AgentME 6y ago
      Everything about Github's PR workflow is killer to me, so to me personally the message I take away from this is that Source Hut isn't even competing with Github in the parts I care about.
      - SkyMarshal 6y ago
        If the one particular aspect I mentioned isn't for you then why even bother wasting your valuable time responding? Just go read their website instead and see if there is something for you. Maybe there is, maybe there isn't, but at least then you'd know definitively. Much better use of your time and effort. I'll even save you a few clicks: https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-availability.html https://drewdevault.com/2018/11/15/sr.ht-general-availabilit... https://sourcehut.org/ https://sourcehut.org/
        AgentME 6y ago
        I posted because I think my post would be useful to other people who are considering alternatives to GitHub but also like rich PR workflows like GitHub has, and because I think it's good to encourage would-be GitHub alternatives to invest in that area. I've actually been following Sourcehut's mailing list and updates since forever because I find their philosophies interesting, but not right or practical for my own workflow.
KukicAdnan 6y ago
Why is that a bad thing? If you found value in Azure and it solved your problem, why is that a negative?
- yarrel 6y ago
  The trap is comfy and warm. Why ask what the springs are connected to?
- SamBam 6y ago
  Switching costs. If the things are offered free, and you build a lot of it into your system, and now it costs money, you have to choose between paying that money, or paying a potentially high switching cost to move to a different system. If you had known you were going to be faced with those costs, you may never have bought into the system in the first place.
Kipters 6y ago
Why? It's not like you MUST deploy on Azure
- donmcronald 6y ago
  I think it's more about all of the integration leading to efficiencies that are hard to ignore while they're being subsidized / promoted. It'll start out as something where the value proposition is too good to ignore, but, as time goes on, they'll tier off features and charge a premium as you scale up. There was a time when I was hopeful and though Microsoft would take a developer first approach with the end goal being making it easy to deploy to Azure. After seeing the VSO (the old name for Codespaces) pricing I'm a lot more cynical. Microsoft's going to be altruistic until they're not. Go look at the pricing for VSO. They have a full time dev (100 hours a month - lol) estimated at a cost of $23 USD per month. Just wait until there's some type of marketplace for extension developers. The local version of VSCode will disappear overnight and (IMO) we'll be paying $50+ / month for the same thing that's free right now. Get ready to pay for everything per user per month for the rest of your life.
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    > The local version of VSCode will disappear overnight That's the beauty of open source though. VSCode is prominent enough that someone will fork it and maintain it if Microsoft pulls the plug.
    - donmcronald 6y ago
      My fear is that an officially supported marketplace for selling extensions would be appealing enough that important extensions would put all future development effort into their marketplace versions and cease development of local versions.
  - nikmd23 6y ago
    Hi! PM on the Codespaces team here. I wanted to quickly help calm any potential concerns about changes to VS Code or its model. Codespaces is a separate, additional service from VS Code, very much focused on providing compute catered to developers and their workflows. We hope you'll use and love it, but we're also very happy if you'd prefer to continue to use VS Code in the ways that you may have previously done. Either way, we will continue to invest heavily in VS Code as you know it. Codespaces will not change that. Hopefully that helps clarify any concerns!
evilduck 6y ago
Gitlab CE, Gitea, Gogs
- jannes 6y ago
  Some background on these: Gitea is a fork of Gogs. Both are written in Go and are pretty light on resources (they support SQLite as database backend). Gitlab is heavier on resources and requires at least Postgresql and Redis.
  - ckok 6y ago
    Gitlab looks nicer and has a lot more features even in the open source edition. (Though some paid features seem to be arbitrary paid vs free, like scoped tags, a feature everyone could use is paid, while a really Enterprise feature like kubernetes support is free)
aprdm 6y ago
Doesn't gitlab fit the bill here?

mritchie712 6y ago

I see a Marketplace, but not their own payments architecture. I think what would be more likely is better project management built into Github.

nogabebop23 6y ago

As someone how really like github and really dislikes azure devops - and a corporate direction pushing us from the former to the later - any idea what their endgame is as these two converge?

lstamour 6y ago
Edit: I misunderstood your comment as about Azure generally and not Azure DevOps specifically. I see Azure DevOps as the “full service” version of GitHub’s slightly more “DIY” approach. DevOps can also be customized and sold by partners, consultants, I think. GitHub if anything, might move more to a “consultant network” approach. I think Microsoft is maintaining two district brands for developers, for the time being. I originally wrote: I think there’s a clear benefit to Microsoft for GitHub to internally use Azure, but I think there’s a clear benefit to Microsoft’s developer community, GitHub and the Microsoft Partner ecosystem for GitHub to support AWS and GCP via open source, AWS Marketplace, Docker and anything else that helps ensure GitHub is useful independent of the rest of Microsoft’s services — GitHub being impartial is more important to Microsoft than the extra market share they might — might — get.
nickspag 6y ago
I also use Azure DevOps for work and am a recently-former MSFT person. From what I've heard from those still there, most of the new development is going towards Github Actions, which is also reflected in their staffing movements. However with GHA running on top of ADO pipeline infrastructure (public info), Microsoft's success with the strategic slow burn as OP called it, and their super-long-term-support reputation, it's probably not in their interest to rush the move. I'd be willing to bet that in a year+ or so the writing on the public wall becomes much clearer. To that extent, we've started planning a migration at my company.
- dathinab 6y ago
  If webhooks become increasingly less useful we will know what thinks are going.
nicoburns 6y ago

woile 6y ago

A netlify competitor? One click deployments? create release -> deploy

ehsankia 6y ago

Don't forget about VSCode! It's very quickly becoming one of the best free editors out there, replacing Sublime, Atom and the rest. I'm actually curious, will this be using Atom, it's own thing, or VS Code as the editor backend? I have actually been running code-server [0] which finally allows me to have my powerful editor with all my settings and extensions and working with my own files on any device. [0] https://github.com/cdr/code-server https://github.com/cdr/code-server

apozem 6y ago
> Don't forget about VSCode! It's very quickly becoming one of the best free editors out there I don't know if people realize just how much market share VS Code has grabbed. It went from 7% to 50% in five years, according some some surveys [1]. Microsoft is quietly dominating this part of the stack. [2] [1]: https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en/articles/vs-code-javascript https://www.welcometothejungle.com/en/articles/vs-code-javas... [2]: This is not an invitation to debate the merits of VS Code or tell me which editor you use, just an observation of growth
- diminish 6y ago
  It's hard to make a profit from a code editor - i think. but will it allow MS to grab developer mind share to focus on C# .NET and Azure?
  - miohtama 6y ago
    I feel New Microsoft is a lot.of about TypeScript/JavaScript. TypeScript development is dominated by Visual Studio Code.
  - apozem 6y ago
    MS constructing a path between different levels of the development stack. They're integrating languages they control with their super popular IDE with their insanely popular source code repository with their cloud provider. My bet is they won't stop you from going off the path (e.g. using VS Code to push to Bitbucket and deploy to AWS), but they will make the MS path the easiest and the default. VS Code in GitHub is a perfect example of this. Every integration makes it easier and more appealing to your CTO to Just Use Microsoft TM.

desertratTX 6y ago

We're not even porting GitHub to Azure. Our tooling is completely platform agnostic, and MSFT Actions facilitating deployment to Azure are built in the same platform and open sourced the same way that AWS, GCP and everyone else are offering theirs. GitHub isn't driving anyone to Azure Devops, we'd prefer folks to migrate from AzDO to GitHub. The focus of much of our work is building out the GitHub platform to meet and fairly quickly exceed the capabilities of AzDO (or any other platform for that matter) in every respect

etepwilz 6y ago

I definitely agree - was thinking about this in 2018 when thinking about the acquisition, and it's really interesting to see how this is driving the competitive landscape between Azure and AWS: http://redgoldleader.blogspot.com/2018/07/using-continuous-deployment-to-drive.html http://redgoldleader.blogspot.com/2018/07/using-continuous-d...

ksec 6y ago

And strangely enough, Microsoft is currently the only big three Cloud Vendor which you likely wont be competing against. If you are doing anything on the Web, you are competing against Google ( and Facebook ). If you are doing Retail, e-commerce, you are competing against Amazon. Microsoft is trying to turn the Cloud into its new OS before Amazon does it. But from the way things stand this will likely never happen. So as far as I can tell I have no problem with that strategy at all.

m_ke 6y ago

Wait till they have linkedin spammers trying to recruit you directly in your IDE.