Microsoft, love them or hate them, appear to have been turning over a new leaf for the past while. If trends are to be used as indicators, then it seems the trend is that more and more of Microsoft's projects are becoming more and more open, while it feels like Google is becoming more closed.
Yes, Microsoft still has closed source programs (Windows), and yes, Google still has open source programs (Android, Tensorflow), but the general feeling I'm getting from Google is shrinking away from a commitment to open source on practical grounds.
I don't know if I'm ready to say that I have more respect for Microsoft than Google at this point, but I definitely have more respect for Microsoft than I ever have, and that's the direct result of their recent efforts to embrace the developer community at large.
Agreed, however, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing ms would put the wider software community’s needs before their shareholder profits.
The situation with GitHub has radically changed, it is no longer a neutral and independent project which exists solely to provide a service to entire developer community. It is now a tool to leverage more profits for one software company — a company who has proven they care much more about market dominance than the wider tech ecosystem.
I’m not trying to imply some forgone conclusion that GitHub is doomed or that ms will ruin it, but the entire purpose of the project is now completely different than when it was an independent company and we would be wise to keep this in mind.
I particularly think we should be watching and cautious to see what types of changes they try to leverage into git itself.
Yeah. That generally how you fool people you are a good person. You do stuff that appears to be good hearted. Companies do that too. Just like politicians.
I can't understand why people today lack the ability to see a scam.
> I don't know if I'm ready to say that I have more respect for Microsoft than Google at this point, but I definitely have more respect for Microsoft than I ever have
You expressed it beautifully.
While I'm not a fan yet, I think Microsoft is much more invested in its developer and cloud products than Google. After all, most of Google's revenue still comes from ads.
Google’s main products always were and will be closed source they do have a lot of open source projects but so always has Microsoft especially in the academic scene they just weren’t as prolific and thus impactful.
But essentially the entire Google suite and all their commercial apps and services are close source.
I've been really confused about the reaction around this. It feels like so many people are just waiting to find out how this is a scam, like this is still the same Microsoft. "Oooh, just you wait, they're tricking you with their PR".
There's just been too many things that I would never think would come to pass to think that opinion is fair, too many different faces. MS seems to have put more effort into going where the developers and customers are instead of trying to wrangle them in.
They make more money and business if they become developer friendly period. If they step back from that they know they will lose out for no true benefit! Microsoft knows this.
Out of the list of companies that the article says have expressed an interest in GitHub at one point or another - Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Atlassian and Tencent - I have to say that Microsoft seems the most best fit, especially given their existing work on integrating GitHub with GVFS:
sounds like MS is trying to make Git into Clearcase. Typical bunch of FUD stemming from not understanding the tool and how to work with it, and of course the monstrosity of a solution ( "Git at enterprise scale" (https://www.gvfs.io/)) to the rescue:
"Microsoft wanted to move to Git because of Git's features, like its easy branching and its popularity among developers. But the transition faced three problems. Git wasn't designed for such vast numbers of developers—more than 3,000 actively working on the codebase. Also, Git wasn't designed for a codebase that was so large, either in terms of the number of files and version history for each file, or in terms of sheer size, coming in at more than 300GB. When using standard Git, working with the source repository was unacceptably slow. Common operations (such as checking which files have been modified) would take multiple minutes.
The company's solution was to develop Git Virtual File System (GVFS). "
I think it is more that Team Foundation Server is failing to scale and MS needs [their own branded/controlled] "enterprise-scale" VC solution for themselves as
well as for their customers. GitHub with GVFS on top (ie. kind of Sharepoint for VC) fits nicely here.
I feel it has been better that the more openly "bad" one of the two has acquired Github, because Google has this "don't be evil" face which is the fake one of its two faces, though many still just fall in for it, forgetting it's just another company with commercial interests.
They also have Visual Studio Profiles/Visual Studio Team Services, which appeared to be them trying to enter the space, but, bar people being forced to have a profile to use VS I doubt many are using the team or project features of that. Then there's one of their dev cash cows: Team Foundation Server, which I assume has been dying a slow death over the past few years due to git dominance in the source control space. I moved my team away from the shit show which is TFS for git (not github) several years back now.
So, I suspect this is shoring up their position, reducing the number of man ours needed in competing, and buying the best product on the market.
I wouldn't be surprised if github got more enterprise project management features, where it's a bit light right now, and perhaps more around management of super large projects. As well as tighter integration with Visual Studio (at the project management level, rather than just the source control level) - to phase out TFS over time.
> Microsoft wanted to be in Github's space but couldn't compete
Did they though? Codeplex predated Github by 2 years and I don't recall there ever being much competition between the two. If anything I think Stackoverflow and Nuget played bigger roles in obviating Codeplex.
Codeplex was launched as a community platform for hosting Windows based opensource projects and libraries. It had forums, bug tracking, and all sorts of niceties but Stackoverflow showed up a couple years after it's launch and became the defacto destination for community support. Around the same time Nuget landed and removed the need for most consumer developers to even visit Codeplex.
GitHub showed up the same time as SO and Nuget and was largely a platform agnostic way to host opensource libraries but wasn't any more appealing than Codeplex to Windows Devs at the time. Since Nuget became the primary means for Windows Devs to consume libraries and Nuget packages could be hosted on any webserver, there was never a driving reason to use Codeplex or Github.
Microsoft launched Visual Studio Online for enterprises three years later without even farting in Codeplex's general direction. A couple years later they added support for Git to Visual Studio and have been moving people to use it for version control over their proprietary solution ever since.
I think Microsoft's purchase of Github wasn't so much to control or insert itself into Open Source, but rather to protect itself from others who might trying to push them out.
I find it strange to live in a time when tech people trust MS more than Google, it could be because we think differently about the importance of information tracking, and this is coming from someone that for the past 15 years has used only private/incognito browsers (was a lot of fun back in when Flash was popular and had to manually remove its cookies directory after every session), doesn't have a facebook account, doesn't use social media. But here's something to think about, MS is in a position where they're making a lot of money from closed source software products where a good free open source equivalent would be a direct attack on that revenue stream, which means, there can be many potential conflicts of interest with owning something like GitHub. What do you think would happen in the following scenarios:
- a researcher discovers a zero day security problem in Office/Windows/etc that affects almost all their products in the last 10 years, tells MS about it but doesn't wait for them to patch it for N months or whatever time they'd take so they push a working exploit/proof of concept on GitHub before the bug is patched. Will MS shut down the project/repository and/or sue the people behind it using IP/time information from their own logs?
- MS pushes another Windows 10 update that increases tracking, people write programs to work around/disable that and post it on GitHub. MS is arguing that without tracking they cannot determine who is pirating their Windows so they sue the authors. Can they get access to the IPs/times of when the repository was interacted with without a court order? Can they shut down the project on GitHub before waiting for the lawsuit to reach a conclusion?
- MS develops a new DirectX API that allows for many great things and some very hyped AAA games are already in the pipeline to be released to use it, but the catch is the new API requires Windows 11, a new version that costs money to upgrade to, previous Windows owners cannot use it. A Wine developer implements an emulation of the API on GitHub and releases a DLL build for Windows, suddenly all previous Windows users can play those games. What will MS do about that project?
I feel it's pretty easy to imagine lots of situations where there's a conflict of interest between being a neutral Git repository and being a software company so I can't say I'm very happy with MS purchasing it tho I agree with others that it could have been much worse too :)
Thank goodness for that. If Google had picked up GitHub I would have had to start a migration strategy since their buyout strategy has included killing off the service in < 2 years.
Google buys GitHub. 6 months later it launches a new different code hosting site that is tightly tied with Google services. 3 years later new site and GitHub both shut down.
Don't you guys think that GitHub was meant to give heads up about acquisition to its subscribers, at least to premium users? Yes this would give away the whole "secret" but if acquirer is some evil corp? Or a foreign entity? I feel like there is an important law missing regarding acquisition of companies who run premium plans.
The only thing that matters here is that they aren't actually owned by MS yet. They have just agreed to be bought soon. So, there's still a substantial time for customers to leave or adapt or whatever before the acquisition is completed.
It's true that it would be worse if one day you suddenly were already a customer of a different company without warning. That's not the case here though.
Side-note: I'm very critical of MS as a acompany and have been critical of GitHub separately, nothing above should be seen as defending them other than on acknowledging the fact that they've announced the acquisition long before it actaully will be completed.
[+] [-] bmelton|7 years ago|reply
Yes, Microsoft still has closed source programs (Windows), and yes, Google still has open source programs (Android, Tensorflow), but the general feeling I'm getting from Google is shrinking away from a commitment to open source on practical grounds.
I don't know if I'm ready to say that I have more respect for Microsoft than Google at this point, but I definitely have more respect for Microsoft than I ever have, and that's the direct result of their recent efforts to embrace the developer community at large.
[+] [-] toofy|7 years ago|reply
The situation with GitHub has radically changed, it is no longer a neutral and independent project which exists solely to provide a service to entire developer community. It is now a tool to leverage more profits for one software company — a company who has proven they care much more about market dominance than the wider tech ecosystem.
I’m not trying to imply some forgone conclusion that GitHub is doomed or that ms will ruin it, but the entire purpose of the project is now completely different than when it was an independent company and we would be wise to keep this in mind.
I particularly think we should be watching and cautious to see what types of changes they try to leverage into git itself.
[+] [-] some_account|7 years ago|reply
I can't understand why people today lack the ability to see a scam.
[+] [-] pier25|7 years ago|reply
You expressed it beautifully.
While I'm not a fan yet, I think Microsoft is much more invested in its developer and cloud products than Google. After all, most of Google's revenue still comes from ads.
[+] [-] dogma1138|7 years ago|reply
But essentially the entire Google suite and all their commercial apps and services are close source.
[+] [-] gimmeThaBeet|7 years ago|reply
There's just been too many things that I would never think would come to pass to think that opinion is fair, too many different faces. MS seems to have put more effort into going where the developers and customers are instead of trying to wrangle them in.
[+] [-] giancarlostoro|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gm-conspiracy|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spiralx|7 years ago|reply
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/microsoft-and-github...
[+] [-] trhway|7 years ago|reply
sounds like MS is trying to make Git into Clearcase. Typical bunch of FUD stemming from not understanding the tool and how to work with it, and of course the monstrosity of a solution ( "Git at enterprise scale" (https://www.gvfs.io/)) to the rescue:
"Microsoft wanted to move to Git because of Git's features, like its easy branching and its popularity among developers. But the transition faced three problems. Git wasn't designed for such vast numbers of developers—more than 3,000 actively working on the codebase. Also, Git wasn't designed for a codebase that was so large, either in terms of the number of files and version history for each file, or in terms of sheer size, coming in at more than 300GB. When using standard Git, working with the source repository was unacceptably slow. Common operations (such as checking which files have been modified) would take multiple minutes.
The company's solution was to develop Git Virtual File System (GVFS). "
I think it is more that Team Foundation Server is failing to scale and MS needs [their own branded/controlled] "enterprise-scale" VC solution for themselves as well as for their customers. GitHub with GVFS on top (ie. kind of Sharepoint for VC) fits nicely here.
[+] [-] merinowool|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gkya|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] city41|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maerF0x0|7 years ago|reply
[1]: https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204032-why-google-stor...
[2]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CodePlex
[+] [-] louthy|7 years ago|reply
So, I suspect this is shoring up their position, reducing the number of man ours needed in competing, and buying the best product on the market.
I wouldn't be surprised if github got more enterprise project management features, where it's a bit light right now, and perhaps more around management of super large projects. As well as tighter integration with Visual Studio (at the project management level, rather than just the source control level) - to phase out TFS over time.
[+] [-] swyx|7 years ago|reply
i just wanna take that in for a moment. when freaking Microsoft can't compete with you on enterprise software... you've done well.
[+] [-] cptskippy|7 years ago|reply
Did they though? Codeplex predated Github by 2 years and I don't recall there ever being much competition between the two. If anything I think Stackoverflow and Nuget played bigger roles in obviating Codeplex.
Codeplex was launched as a community platform for hosting Windows based opensource projects and libraries. It had forums, bug tracking, and all sorts of niceties but Stackoverflow showed up a couple years after it's launch and became the defacto destination for community support. Around the same time Nuget landed and removed the need for most consumer developers to even visit Codeplex.
GitHub showed up the same time as SO and Nuget and was largely a platform agnostic way to host opensource libraries but wasn't any more appealing than Codeplex to Windows Devs at the time. Since Nuget became the primary means for Windows Devs to consume libraries and Nuget packages could be hosted on any webserver, there was never a driving reason to use Codeplex or Github.
Microsoft launched Visual Studio Online for enterprises three years later without even farting in Codeplex's general direction. A couple years later they added support for Git to Visual Studio and have been moving people to use it for version control over their proprietary solution ever since.
I think Microsoft's purchase of Github wasn't so much to control or insert itself into Open Source, but rather to protect itself from others who might trying to push them out.
[+] [-] munificent|7 years ago|reply
I guess everyone already forgot about code.google.com.
[+] [-] theklr|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foepys|7 years ago|reply
1: https://www.visualstudio.com/de/team-services/
[+] [-] astrodust|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] banachtarski|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] greggman|7 years ago|reply
it makes zero sense for MS to look at private repos because the moment they are discovered everyone would move off the system.
they also run outlook.com and office online. if they got caught spying they'd lose all corporate customers
[+] [-] d1zzy|7 years ago|reply
- a researcher discovers a zero day security problem in Office/Windows/etc that affects almost all their products in the last 10 years, tells MS about it but doesn't wait for them to patch it for N months or whatever time they'd take so they push a working exploit/proof of concept on GitHub before the bug is patched. Will MS shut down the project/repository and/or sue the people behind it using IP/time information from their own logs?
- MS pushes another Windows 10 update that increases tracking, people write programs to work around/disable that and post it on GitHub. MS is arguing that without tracking they cannot determine who is pirating their Windows so they sue the authors. Can they get access to the IPs/times of when the repository was interacted with without a court order? Can they shut down the project on GitHub before waiting for the lawsuit to reach a conclusion?
- MS develops a new DirectX API that allows for many great things and some very hyped AAA games are already in the pipeline to be released to use it, but the catch is the new API requires Windows 11, a new version that costs money to upgrade to, previous Windows owners cannot use it. A Wine developer implements an emulation of the API on GitHub and releases a DLL build for Windows, suddenly all previous Windows users can play those games. What will MS do about that project?
I feel it's pretty easy to imagine lots of situations where there's a conflict of interest between being a neutral Git repository and being a software company so I can't say I'm very happy with MS purchasing it tho I agree with others that it could have been much worse too :)
[+] [-] PascLeRasc|7 years ago|reply
[1] https://github.com/W4RH4WK/Debloat-Windows-10 [2] https://github.com/10se1ucgo/DisableWinTracking
[+] [-] jacquesm|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ship_it|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mholmes680|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] urda|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bsharitt|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raverbashing|7 years ago|reply
"Why do I need a Google+ account to use GitHub?!?"
[+] [-] ravenstine|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gmiller123456|7 years ago|reply
IMHO the cost of self hosting your projects has been too low for many years now to give control of your web presence to a third party.
[+] [-] JeremyBanks|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dvfjsdhgfv|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petepete|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kkleindev|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] merinowool|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] EpicEng|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] modzu|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] acdha|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ship_it|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CodeSheikh|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quadrangle|7 years ago|reply
It's true that it would be worse if one day you suddenly were already a customer of a different company without warning. That's not the case here though.
Side-note: I'm very critical of MS as a acompany and have been critical of GitHub separately, nothing above should be seen as defending them other than on acknowledging the fact that they've announced the acquisition long before it actaully will be completed.
[+] [-] kjeetgill|7 years ago|reply
Source: Am LinkedIn Employee. Thats how long it took from public announcement through SEC approval.
[+] [-] xenomachina|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikehodgson|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|7 years ago|reply
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