4 ms·

Honest question; how does Microsoft's ownership of those stifle competition? How is it anti-competitive? Just because they're popular doesn't mean they are some

Honest question; how does Microsoft's ownership of those stifle competition? How is it anti-competitive? Just because they're popular doesn't mean they are somehow stifling competion. Again, honest question, obviously IANAL.

donmcronald 6y ago
> The idea of the integration is to make it easier, faster and more efficient to include Docker containers when developing applications with the Microsoft tool set. Docker CEO Scott Johnston says it’s a matter of giving developers a better experience. What they actually mean is the opposite. They want to make Azure the easy choice when developing with Docker. They go on to say it can take hours or days to get the integration set up manually. If Azure “just works” and the other clouds take days to get integrated, owning Docker would let them make Azure integration a priority while neglecting or sabotaging integration to other clouds. The gap gets bigger and Azure feels even more like the obvious choice if you want to get anything done. IMO one of the major cloud vendors will buy Docker this year. Microsoft seems like the obvious choice right now.
- cosmie 6y ago
  > If Azure “just works” and the other clouds take days to get integrated, owning Docker would let them make Azure integration a priority while neglecting or sabotaging integration to other clouds. The gap gets bigger and Azure feels even more like the obvious choice if you want to get anything done. Which is a playbook they've demonstrated as recently as last October, on Mover[1]. It used to allow you to migrate data between a whole host of sources and destinations, and the guides/help docs even still reference those capabilities. Microsoft acquired it and made it free, but have turned it into a one-way tool: the only supported destinations are now Azure, Sharepoint, and OneDrive. [1] https://mover.io/ https://mover.io/
- revel 6y ago
  Totally agree with you. This is an attempt to make heroku for enterprise-scale systems. The risk, as a user, is that you end up locked into a ton of automatically configured, Azure-specific costs. It's a recipe for an anti-trust suit based on bundling (ie. the same situation that MS lost with IE many years ago).
mrkurt 6y ago
Well, they did just make a bunch of previously paid GitHub stuff free. That's something only a company the size of Microsoft can do.
- noisem4ker 6y ago
  According to GitHub's CEO posting here [1], the costs are sustained by the paying GitHub Enterprise user base. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867808
  - mrkurt 6y ago
    Sure. Large companies make things free because they can subsidize them with other products. The question is: did they do this to win market share? I think it makes _total_ sense for MS to make a bunch of GitHub services free. I also think it's harmful to competition. One of the worst policy choices the US has made in the last 30 years is judging antitrust almost _entirely_ through the lens of "monetary cost to end users".
    - johannes1234321 6y ago
      I would argue they made this due to competition with GitLab, backed by their working business model. The less reasons there are for using GitLab (private repos was one thing which got me initially, using GitLab over my self administered servers to move code around and share with friends) the better for keeping their quasi-monopoly.
- ensignavenger 6y ago
  Gitlab has always had many of those same features- and more- for free- and they aren't as large as Github alone was.

donmcronald 6y ago

> The idea of the integration is to make it easier, faster and more efficient to include Docker containers when developing applications with the Microsoft tool set. Docker CEO Scott Johnston says it’s a matter of giving developers a better experience. What they actually mean is the opposite. They want to make Azure the easy choice when developing with Docker. They go on to say it can take hours or days to get the integration set up manually. If Azure “just works” and the other clouds take days to get integrated, owning Docker would let them make Azure integration a priority while neglecting or sabotaging integration to other clouds. The gap gets bigger and Azure feels even more like the obvious choice if you want to get anything done. IMO one of the major cloud vendors will buy Docker this year. Microsoft seems like the obvious choice right now.

cosmie 6y ago
> If Azure “just works” and the other clouds take days to get integrated, owning Docker would let them make Azure integration a priority while neglecting or sabotaging integration to other clouds. The gap gets bigger and Azure feels even more like the obvious choice if you want to get anything done. Which is a playbook they've demonstrated as recently as last October, on Mover[1]. It used to allow you to migrate data between a whole host of sources and destinations, and the guides/help docs even still reference those capabilities. Microsoft acquired it and made it free, but have turned it into a one-way tool: the only supported destinations are now Azure, Sharepoint, and OneDrive. [1] https://mover.io/ https://mover.io/
revel 6y ago
Totally agree with you. This is an attempt to make heroku for enterprise-scale systems. The risk, as a user, is that you end up locked into a ton of automatically configured, Azure-specific costs. It's a recipe for an anti-trust suit based on bundling (ie. the same situation that MS lost with IE many years ago).

mrkurt 6y ago

Well, they did just make a bunch of previously paid GitHub stuff free. That's something only a company the size of Microsoft can do.

noisem4ker 6y ago
According to GitHub's CEO posting here [1], the costs are sustained by the paying GitHub Enterprise user base. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22867808
- mrkurt 6y ago
  Sure. Large companies make things free because they can subsidize them with other products. The question is: did they do this to win market share? I think it makes _total_ sense for MS to make a bunch of GitHub services free. I also think it's harmful to competition. One of the worst policy choices the US has made in the last 30 years is judging antitrust almost _entirely_ through the lens of "monetary cost to end users".
  - johannes1234321 6y ago
    I would argue they made this due to competition with GitLab, backed by their working business model. The less reasons there are for using GitLab (private repos was one thing which got me initially, using GitLab over my self administered servers to move code around and share with friends) the better for keeping their quasi-monopoly.
ensignavenger 6y ago
Gitlab has always had many of those same features- and more- for free- and they aren't as large as Github alone was.