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The directly affected people (people who have spent a significant portion of their working lives building open source software) won't forget. The general devel

The directly affected people (people who have spent a significant portion of their working lives building open source software) won't forget. The general developer population (people who use but don't necessarily contribute to open source) sees a payment in support of open source and moves on. It's a PR campaign aimed at copilot users who aren't directly affected but found the whole episode discomforting.

rglullis 4y ago
> The general developer population (people who use but don't necessarily contribute to open source) sees a payment in support of open source and moves on. That cuts both ways. One could just as easily make the case that this PR move can lead to other companies interested in supporting FOSS. My point is: instead of judging the merit of "they are doing this for PR", why don't you judge the merit of the action, and simply ignore the meta-opinion about how they are spinning the story?
- TAForObvReasons 4y ago
  If this were part of an effort that started last year, or if GitHub had a serious history in donating to maintainers of open source software (either in the 10 years as a private company or 4 years as part of Microsoft), then this would be judged on the merits of donating to open source. But they don't have that sort of history, so "why are they starting now as opposed to years ago?" is a natural question to ask.
  - rglullis 4y ago
    You can (and should) ask as many meta-questions as you want. But what I am seeing is that people are trying to judge the main topic based on these meta-questions, and that is... I don't know, kind of stupid? Again: you are fully entitled to like or dislike Microsoft. But if you hear "BigCorp gave $500k to FOSS" and your opinion of this depends on "which BigCorp did it?", I'll take it as a sign that your opinion is biased and should be completely ignored.

rglullis 4y ago

> The general developer population (people who use but don't necessarily contribute to open source) sees a payment in support of open source and moves on. That cuts both ways. One could just as easily make the case that this PR move can lead to other companies interested in supporting FOSS. My point is: instead of judging the merit of "they are doing this for PR", why don't you judge the merit of the action, and simply ignore the meta-opinion about how they are spinning the story?

TAForObvReasons 4y ago
If this were part of an effort that started last year, or if GitHub had a serious history in donating to maintainers of open source software (either in the 10 years as a private company or 4 years as part of Microsoft), then this would be judged on the merits of donating to open source. But they don't have that sort of history, so "why are they starting now as opposed to years ago?" is a natural question to ask.
- rglullis 4y ago
  You can (and should) ask as many meta-questions as you want. But what I am seeing is that people are trying to judge the main topic based on these meta-questions, and that is... I don't know, kind of stupid? Again: you are fully entitled to like or dislike Microsoft. But if you hear "BigCorp gave $500k to FOSS" and your opinion of this depends on "which BigCorp did it?", I'll take it as a sign that your opinion is biased and should be completely ignored.