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Microsoft's Interest In Buying GitHub Draws Backlash From Developers
The supposed acquisition of popular code repository GitHub by Microsoft has drawn an unprecedented backlash from the developer community. Over the weekend, after Bloomberg reported that the two companies could make the announcement as soon as Monday, hundreds of developers took to forums and social media to express their disappointment, with many saying that they would be leaving the platform if the deal goes through.
So why so much outrage? In a conversation with Slashdot, software developer and student Sean said that he believes a deal of such capacity would be bad for the open source community. "They've shown time and time again that they can't be trusted," he said. Sean and many other believe that Microsoft would eventually start telemetry program on the code repository. "Aside from Microsoft not being trustworthy to the open source community, I'm sure they'll add tracking and possibly even ads to all the sites within GitHub. As well as possibly use it to push LinkedIn (which they own)," he said. Ryan Hoover, the founder of ProductHunt, wrote on Sunday, "Anecdotally, the developer community is very unapproving of this move. I'm curious how Microsoft manages this and how GitHub changes (or doesn't change)." Even as Microsoft has "embraced" the open source community in the recent years (under the leadership of Mr. Nadella), for many developers, it will take time -- if at all -- to forget the company's past closed-ecosystem approach. Just this weekend, a developer accused Microsoft of stealing his code.
A petition that seeks to "stop Microsoft from buying Github" had garnered support from more than 400 developers. Prominent developer Andre Staltz said, "If you're still optimistic about the Microsoft-GitHub acquisition, consider this: They didn't ask your opinion not even a single bit, even though it was primarily your commits, stars, and repositories which made GH become a valuable platform." More importantly, if the comments left on Slashdot, Reddit, and HackerNews, places that overwhelmingly count developers and other IT industry experts among their audience, are anything to go by, Microsoft better has a good plan on how it intends to operate GitHub after the buyout. Security reporter Catalin Cimpanu said, "LinkedIn has turned into a slow-loading junk after the Microsoft acquisition. I can only imagine what awaits GitHub." On his part, Mat Velloso, who is technical advisor to CTO at Microsoft, said, "I don't think people understand how many of us at Microsoft love GitHub to the bottom of our hearts. If anybody decided to mess with that community, there would be a riot to say the least."
Jacques Mattheij: Companies that are too big to fail and that lose money are a dangerous combination, people have warned about GitHub becoming as large as it did as problematic because it concentrates too much of the power to make or break the open source world in a single entity, moreso because there were valid questions about GitHubs financial viability. The model that GitHub has -- sell their services to closed source companies but provide the service for free for open source groups -- is only a good one if the closed source companies bring in enough funds to sustain the model. Some sort of solution should have been found -- preferably in collaboration with the community -- not an 'exit' to one of the biggest sharks in the tank. So, here is what is wrong with this deal and why anybody active in the open source community should be upset that Microsoft is going to be the steward of this large body of code. For starters, Microsoft has a very long history of abusing its position vis-a-vis open source and other companies. I'm sure you'll be able to tell I'm a cranky old guy by looking up the dates to some of these references, but 'new boss, same as the old boss' applies as far as I'm concerned. Yes, the new boss is a nicer guy but it's the same corporate entity. Update: It's official. Microsoft has acquired GitHub for a whopping sum of $7.5B.
So why so much outrage? In a conversation with Slashdot, software developer and student Sean said that he believes a deal of such capacity would be bad for the open source community. "They've shown time and time again that they can't be trusted," he said. Sean and many other believe that Microsoft would eventually start telemetry program on the code repository. "Aside from Microsoft not being trustworthy to the open source community, I'm sure they'll add tracking and possibly even ads to all the sites within GitHub. As well as possibly use it to push LinkedIn (which they own)," he said. Ryan Hoover, the founder of ProductHunt, wrote on Sunday, "Anecdotally, the developer community is very unapproving of this move. I'm curious how Microsoft manages this and how GitHub changes (or doesn't change)." Even as Microsoft has "embraced" the open source community in the recent years (under the leadership of Mr. Nadella), for many developers, it will take time -- if at all -- to forget the company's past closed-ecosystem approach. Just this weekend, a developer accused Microsoft of stealing his code.
A petition that seeks to "stop Microsoft from buying Github" had garnered support from more than 400 developers. Prominent developer Andre Staltz said, "If you're still optimistic about the Microsoft-GitHub acquisition, consider this: They didn't ask your opinion not even a single bit, even though it was primarily your commits, stars, and repositories which made GH become a valuable platform." More importantly, if the comments left on Slashdot, Reddit, and HackerNews, places that overwhelmingly count developers and other IT industry experts among their audience, are anything to go by, Microsoft better has a good plan on how it intends to operate GitHub after the buyout. Security reporter Catalin Cimpanu said, "LinkedIn has turned into a slow-loading junk after the Microsoft acquisition. I can only imagine what awaits GitHub." On his part, Mat Velloso, who is technical advisor to CTO at Microsoft, said, "I don't think people understand how many of us at Microsoft love GitHub to the bottom of our hearts. If anybody decided to mess with that community, there would be a riot to say the least."
Jacques Mattheij: Companies that are too big to fail and that lose money are a dangerous combination, people have warned about GitHub becoming as large as it did as problematic because it concentrates too much of the power to make or break the open source world in a single entity, moreso because there were valid questions about GitHubs financial viability. The model that GitHub has -- sell their services to closed source companies but provide the service for free for open source groups -- is only a good one if the closed source companies bring in enough funds to sustain the model. Some sort of solution should have been found -- preferably in collaboration with the community -- not an 'exit' to one of the biggest sharks in the tank. So, here is what is wrong with this deal and why anybody active in the open source community should be upset that Microsoft is going to be the steward of this large body of code. For starters, Microsoft has a very long history of abusing its position vis-a-vis open source and other companies. I'm sure you'll be able to tell I'm a cranky old guy by looking up the dates to some of these references, but 'new boss, same as the old boss' applies as far as I'm concerned. Yes, the new boss is a nicer guy but it's the same corporate entity. Update: It's official. Microsoft has acquired GitHub for a whopping sum of $7.5B.
If we are going back to the 90s, let's do it properly.. :P
MS are completely and utterly untrustworthy.
There's no way I would do anything to support them, or have anything to do with them.
MS buy GitHub, my repo leaves GitHub : I've been on GitHub for about ten years now.
I used to be a paying GitHub customer, but I just deleted my account. I was disappointed they didn't have a box on the account deletion page to tell them why.
git really doesn't need a hub. So sure, it's convenient, and it became the FOSS-hipster thing to do. Now big bad redmond comes along and buys it all up. Just like they bought up linkedin. Now all your employment history is theirs to do with as they please. Now all your code is theirs to do with as they please, too.
Why did you give it to some 'merkin company in the first place? Just for the convenience? Riddle me this, please.
Yes, I know "embrace, extend, exquingish" is their track-record. But google (eg. deja news) is no longer even pretending to "don't be evil", and yet all y'all are still clinging to their products and services. Why not big bad and wrong, evil redmond?
I know why I avoid redmond whenever and wherever I can. I never had a linkedin account nor a github account. But why the indignation now? Do explain please. Anybody? What makes this one evil company so special that you won't trust them with your code, but you certainly would some random other company? What if google had bought up github? SAP? IBM? Yahoo? Sony?
Just fire up a new site.
How does github make money anyway? How do they keep the lights on?
If you require trust, you shouldn't have used GitHub in the first place.
"I don't think people understand how many of us at Microsoft love GitHub to the bottom of our hearts"
The love that suffocates. Just fuck off and die.
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
All web-sites are broken.
That petition site - you fill in your name and email addy, and turn off the opted-in offer of spam.
There's then a button "sign and post comment".
You click it, then there's a bunch of spam for other petitions.
You bail out after a few of them, as there's a big message saying you're done at the bottom.
You never entered a comment, and there is nowhere to enter a comment.
In fact, looking at it now, I can't even see how I can see that I signed.
When I participate in developer forums, I find they tend to become better when the emotional, irrational, outraged developers leave. I remember when there was a "boycott slashdot" week over beta. When those people left, it was like a breath of fresh air. The average quality of comment went up (and I say that as someone who disliked beta). Having an emotional attachment to a platform, company, or website is irrational by definition.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
'Even as Microsoft has "embraced" the open source community in the recent years...'
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
I don't like MS, but it's impossible not to see the difference between how MS is regarded and how Google, Facebook and Amazon are regarded. I'm pretty sure none of the backlash would have happened with the others. MS is hated because they pulled anti-competitive shenanigans in the 90s-00s, but Google and co. are screwing us directly now by selling our personal information. I wonder why the others are not so hated. Inertia? Preventing Linux from conquering the desktop? Google paying off lots of open source projects, nevermind what they do with it?
Ms will ruin it guaranteed. Right now the site is clean and simple and just works. Ms will bloat it up and make it unusable I donâ(TM)t even run Skype anymore. I am a paying member of github and I will leave.
Thanks to europe, you can GDPR that suckers
Higuita
+_+
"Even as Microsoft has "embraced" the open source community in the recent years (under the leadership of Mr. Nadella) [...]"
Don't you remember? Embrace is *that* first step in... well, you know now [1]. It has always been and won't change. Consider that Microsoft hasn't much more room for growth, given its sheer size -- but its shareholders expect it to grow and grow. It can only behave as a predator or shrink.
But hey, letting an eminently decentral tool like git degenerate into a centralized service, like Github does take a gajillion of idiots anyway. I never understood that part. They'll swallow Microsoft's bait, whatever that will be.
[1] In case you don't: "Embrace, extend and extinguish". This phrase *was used internally at Microsoft*. There's a Wikipedia page on it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Of course, in the "embrace" phase they have to be soft-spoken. I don't trust Nadella a bit (nothing personal, just in his corporate "role", mind you)
Ermagerd, dey gonna integrate soshul netwerkz...
Give me a fucking break, Sean. Unless you're in your 30s or older, you probably have no idea how much Microsoft has gone from being the fighting dog pitbull of the industry to being a friendly and loyal black lab between 1998 and 2018. If you told us in 1998 that...
1. Microsoft would open source its Java competitor under better terms than Java...
2. Would fully adopt (as much as anyone other than Mozilla is) open web standards from the browser to all corporate products...
3. Add a Linux compatibility layer...
4. Port Office to a platform like Android...
5. Be the 5th largest contributor to the Linux kernel...
6. Enthusiastically sell cloud services based on Linux...
7. Microsoft would offer more innovative desktops than Apple...
8. Microsoft would compete for OEM licenses on price and merits, not contractual extortion...
We'd have called you a crackhead. Not a dreamer, but a crackhead because only a crackhead would think up a future like that as being plausible. Yet... that's where we're at in 2018
You come here as a messenger, bearing the severed heads of Kings, Netscape, Wordperfect, Linkden, Skype....
"THIS IS SPARTA!!!!"
"On his part, Mat Velloso, who is technical advisor to CTO at Microsoft, said, "I don't think people understand how many of us at Microsoft love GitHub to the bottom of our hearts. If anybody decided to mess with that community, there would be a riot to say the least."
Well, that is what you are getting from people you can't control.
Any riot from within Microsoft would be irrelevant to Microsoft - other than performing more layoffs...
Microsoft is a big contributor to GitHub as most say Microsoft buying it would save it and preserve its ability to offer its services. Open source whiners have to get over treating Microsoft as the anti Christ and start living in the here and now. Some of the best help to open source community comes from Microsoft and Google, as well as Apple so get over it.
Yeah, Microsoft is destined to frak up Github like they frakked up Linked-In, which is now a five-alarm dumpster fire.
However, it is so trivial to move a github repo from one host to another, that it's not even worth pointing out how to do that. Or, even mirror the same git repo on multiple host. For a couple of public projects where I'm the sole developer, one of them is mirrored on github and sourceforge, and the other one is mirrored on github and pagure. I suppose that when there's a group development effort this approach might require some adjustment, but I think it's still doable. Have one of the mirrors be the authoritative master, with daily pushes to the other mirror, something like that.
The only thing I can think of that Github provides in value-added is their issue tracking and integration with some CI tools. I guess the millenials will be the hardest hit, here, if they have to learn how to use mailing lists, and write some scripts. But it's not going to be the end of the world.
Github is far too dominant in the online source code repository market. If this causes some people to leave and join other repositories or set up new competitors, that is a good thing.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
The developers weren't consulted?
What a childish, idiotic, egocentric attitude. This is business. Github is not a nonprofit.
From the beginning, Git support of MS has been poor. I'd say this is well deserved.
Yes MS from 2018 is not MS from 1998, but mostly due to competition, not on their own accord. Proof of that is the shenanigan they still do in the amrket they are more or less de facto monopolist : the OS. Furthermore point 1 cn be painted in a dimmer light as "embrace and extend then extinguish" which has always been their toolbox, as for point 8 i am sorry, what OEM license competition ?
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
RIP github.
Actually, I think it only became decent after Microsoft bought it.
It's also not under U.S. jurisdiction, being based in Europe. These days that's something you need to consider.
See subject. I am a fucking genius because I can run ping on linux not as root
Crazy right, but here I am able to do the impossiable
All you fags can't which is why you should run my incredible APK hosts file engine version 77.839#^#W*+++ now for linux
If you don't or disagree with me you are a fucking ne'er-do-well and I will fucking fuck your fucking face up
Sure some people have an issue with Microsoft, but MS couldn't buy GitHub if GitHub hadn't put itself up for sale.
I'd bet that the anger would also flow if it was Yahoo, Oracle or Alphabet that wanted to buy GitHub. None of whom are MS.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
If M$ does end up buying github, the first thing to do is to fork the software used into branches on another, similar repository. (gitlab?) Anyone developing the necessary software for github to work, start working on the new fork instead. (unless they're directly employed by github itself.) Remove all software repos from github, and move them elsewhere.. even if creating a new, similar, hosting site is necessary. This would leave M$ with an empty shell that nobody uses but them, a lot less developers, and a big pile of cash out of their pocket... all things M$ deserves in large quantity. It'll also prevent M$ from making the software suck donkey balls like all their software does. If the sale goes through, I hope everything above happens.
Windows 10 turned Windows into spyware, telemetry, unwanted features (go ahead and try to permanently disable Cortana) and otherwise revert your settings.
While you dwell on some 1990s web browser thing, in the real world Microsoft, just Windows 10 alone is an example of why to not trust Microsoft.
And that's recent.
Today's Microsoft views you as the product to exploit you and take advantage of you.
And they will with github too.
What does the RMS think about that?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
Dear 40 year old, when you copy a talking point from a word document to a Slashdot post, be sure to replace Word's smartquotes with regular quotes and apostrophe's.
Otherwise people will instantly notice you've just cut and pasted that, and wonder why you didn't write it.
..."shithub" was born
I dislike many things done by Microsoft, but like others. I don't like big companies getting everywhere, but don't have any strong feelings about the current GitHub owners either. I like the attitudes in some of the repositories hosted by GitHub or other sites and dislike quite a few others. Despite having tried different alternatives (+ knew about others in the previous article about this still-rumour, perhaps also in this one and in some of the 2-3 upcoming ones), I am reasonably happy with GitHub. My opinion about them might change at any point and I might start using other alternative right away.
I understand that there are lots of hard feelings against Microsoft, big companies, monopolies, etc. I even share most of them. But I also see lots of egoist interests trying to take advantage from all this to their own gain. I also understand that objective quality isn't the only factor to become the number 1 in this sub-world, that you need to attract users no matter what. I am not censoring anyone's behaviour, just that I am not feeling like being a pawn in what looks like a popularity contest only meant to benefit unrelated-to-me companies. If GitHub continues working as so far, I would continue using it. If things change, I would look for alternatives. If monopoly, arbitrary, Windows-10-like "issues" start happening, my opinion about Microsoft as a whole would get even worse.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
They will use deep learning to find patent infringement. Just wait til your project is found to violate some obscure and meaningless patent.
If it is to screw things over, look no further than the decline of SourceForge. At one point, their position of 'go-to place for open source projects' seemed unassailable. Then they died off and github became the new hotness in *very* short order. The kicker is that sourceforge technically gave a lot more services than github ever did, so projects were willing to give up having integrated hosting, powerful download management, and many other things. Also, a lot of projects were still using svn, so they had to go the extra mile to migrate to git.
Now look at github. By and large, projects use them for *a* git clone. Yes, the pull requests are useful in the context of the networking effect of the community, but generally speaking, a project could migrate to another similar service like gitlab or bitbucket without so much as even logging into their github account ever again. There is very very little 'stickiness' for github from a technical standpoint.
As far as Microsoft's track record for acquisitions, it's mixed. Skype clearly came out worse for the wear, unable to match competition and screwed up by MS' ambitions for it. On the other hand, LinkedIn still seems to be doing ok, and MS has seemingly not done too much to it yet.
I personally prefer gitlab anyway (I can actually self-host gitlab if I want to, unlike github), so I'm hoping this move makes gitlab more popular.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
You left out all the hostile takeovers and bullshit Microsoft did in the 80's. They cannot be trusted.
Don't use one web site to do anything, in this case Github for a code repository.
We need open standards spread across the internet and many different sites which cannot be bought and commercialised.
Decentralise, don't concentrate.
Go well
How does Microsoft owning GitHub "break the open source world"? Even if Microsoft were to do something nefarious (like make unacceptable changes to the TOS), there are dozens of similar services around, or you can simply run GitLab as a hosted or containerized application.
One, most people don't think too much on Netscape, that was one of the *least* insidious ways they attacked the market. Of course the more insidious technical examples are even older (intentionally making popular microsoft software fail to work correctly with competing DOS implementations). Business wise it has been consistent and pervasive throughout. They have recently been better for those who care about the technology and espouse open source values, but business wise they continue to do things that aren't the healthiest for the industry.
Note that MS is not alone here, all the big tech companies with billions in profits didn't get there by being nice and doing the right thing by the industry.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Now we're getting lumped in with Reddit? What Hell?
Right, I don't see how MS is a bad guy in the sense that Comcast is a bad guy. Maybe that's just me, I realize it's an unpopular opinion around here. And FTR I use Linux and OSX about as much as I use Windows these days. I just don't see the great villainy that everyone else does.
Those who forget their history are doomed to repeat it. Trust MS at your own peril.
The more ruckus is raised around this, and the more developers credibly threaten to leave, then, if the haggling is still in progress, the less Microsoft has to pay to acquire GitHub. In negotiations, it can basically claim, "If we buy you guys, half your users are going to leave because they hate us. So we can't really justify paying you more than X."
If you get "X" so low that it's no longer an appealing price to GitHub then you've "won" in the sense that you've torpedoed the deal. If you don't get "X" low enough to torpedo the deal then you've just saved Microsoft some cash and put less in the pockets of the GitHub guys.
Maybe they want to do with github what they did with Nokia.
Using a trojan horse destroy github and thousands of FOSS projects with it.
/. reports, "On his part, Mat Velloso, who is technical advisor to CTO at Microsoft, said, "I don't think people understand how many of us at Microsoft love GitHub to the bottom of our hearts. If anybody decided to mess with that community, there would be a riot to say the least."
i worked at Microsoft management for years and unfortunately an acquisition and the aftermath is not up to technical advisors and a CTO. it's a business finance decision, and they will monetize it immediately or trash it, either way - its all about the eye balls and way to add a subscription recurring revenue stream ; their ivy league way of saying they are adding value; wish M$ would buy Craigslist and see what would happen there too..
I never understood the appeal of GIT. Overly complex crap. Give me SVN any day.
Microsoft already has Team Foundation Server, no need to destroy another product,
These takeovers always fails. ALWAYS.
5 years, and github is a bare shadow of its current self.
This is just a comment about where you "put your eggs." If you put them all in one basket and something happens to that basket, all of your eggs can break.
Moreover, if you put some outside resource in a position where a change there can doom your enterprise, you are at great risk. This is true regardless of the resource. In the case of code hosting, there are alternatives. There's Bitbucket, Gitlab and probably others hosted in the cloud. Or you can host Gitlab or Gitea on your own H/W or VPS.
This is not like social media where you cannot leave without losing all of your connections. Your projects can go anywhere and still work. Of course for Big Projects the move will be costly. This is a good opportunity to evaluate how expensive the next move will be and choose accordingly.
It wasn't so long ago that Microsoft tried to kill off everything that was not Microsoft. They did not succeed. Yet. Their recent (post Ballmer) actions seem to truly support open source, but recall that their earlier strategy was to "embrace, extend, extinguish." It would be wise of the open source community not to permit itself to be put in a situation where MS can "extinguish."
Trust but verify (and hold at arm's length.)
Has anyone developed a block chain version of gethub? There does not have to be a coin involved, just peer verification. Kinda like iota where you have to hash two or three transactions before your transaction gets put in the que.
The Internet Archive does.
Sean is definitely the most authoritative commentator. I'm glad he gave /. his opinion, or I wouldn't really know what to think, but now that Sean says this is probably a bad idea, I know that it is.
> Microsoft's Interest In Buying GitHub Draws Backlash From Developers
You fucking bunch of hypocrits on /. act like you didn't have anything to do with that. Just scroll down a few articles and read your own comments.
The nerd-rage is laughable. Just to invoke Godwin's law: Jews have less of a problem with Germans today than you bunch do with Microsoft.
Microsoft kept the SCO lawsuit debacle going for years by funding those vultures. That is why I do not trust them.
The intended imputation here is that if only we understood, we'd behave differently.
Not true.
Our behaviour can only be influenced by a loud, long, thorough, sensible, and credible disclosure about how a newly kinder/gentler Microsoft plans to operate, maintain, intervene and intercede with their newfound toy and it's non-trivial powers.
Leading Change — 1996
This book explains how most corporations under-communicate change by an order of magnitude.
We're not talking one soul-baring High Commission of the CTO blog post here. We're talking an entire Kotteresque full-court press, set into stone for the long haul.
What Kotter doesn't cover (time for an updated edition?) is the New World Order, where the urgency and sustained campaign lies in communicating a credible backbone of non-change.
Hah! America is such a corporate shithole! Run by CUNTS too. Enjoy your lack of cake fags (youre all fags now).
20 years is sooooo long ago when youre 24. Not so much at 47.
For so long as Microsoft leaves it in Open Source, periodically branch and park the code. When they finally do as Microsoft tends to do and makes it commercial rather than Open Source, the community pulls the last branch and moves forward with it as a competing product.
If Microsoft had been honorable for the last 10 years, I would be trusting them somewhat right now. They've actually, however, been the opposite.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Are you kidding me?
You must be 18 years old. Any person with time and energy in the tech field knows Microsoft is evil, just as evil as comcast.
... so I could close it. As with everything having to do with Microsoft... this is a trap.
Our reign has gone on long enough. Indeed. Summon the meteors.
GitLab is free. You can self-host it. There are pre-packaged appliances you can install.
Not sure what Microsoft's motive was in making the purchase. No way they couldn't have known there'd be backlash. Maybe because they are such a coding-intensive company they consider coding and infrastructure a major part of their business which is understandable to the extent they don't commercialize it or threaten OSS.
Brings to mind the movie where NURV spies on developers and can easily glean their code and interactions(github is a facebook for developers). So this can make it easier for microsoft to see what people are talking about and get a better sense of the open source developers mindsets on a whole. So know their uses for github can go deeper then simply crawling all repositories instead of asking github for permission and maybe hitting a roadblock latter.
What does the old farmer say to the 'loser' that keeps trying to score a cheap date with his daughter?
Answer: Git!
GVFS thing proved Microsoft has not changed at all in reality.
LOL, is that supposed to be a lot?
... that all of you who continue to use GitHub start to read your EULA's?
Don't want to wake up one day to find that, by virtue of checking your code in, MS and you are now co-owners of it.
Embrace. Extend. Exterminate.
Learn it. Live it. Love it.