This is a reaction that is both funny and frustrating. While there is enlightened self-interest for Microsoft to buy GitHub (they rely on GitHub for a lot of their open source work as well as their documentation websites) buying GitHub and saying "We're going to let it operate independently as before while we fund the project knowing it will never turn a profit -- that's how important Open Source is to us, we're willing to lose money every quarter to ensure GitHub will never implode for want of money" STILL brings distrust.
And yet, the hue and cry is "Unless you open source every byte of GitHub's code and infrastructure you're just evil monopolists trying to smother us!" Given all that Microsoft has done to embrace and support open source I think the onus is now on the Open Source community to justify their distrust of Microsoft because "Duh, it's Microsoft" simply doesn't fly as a legitimate argument anymore.
Do they even push for open standards of those products? No.
Is Windows open source? No.
Is the C# compiler open source? No.
Microsoft may have taken some positive steps to support Linux on Azure & other things -- things possibility necessitated by market demands -- as well some contributions to open source.
But to say they have embraced open source is patently false.
Embracing open source means contributing to open source and using open source. Buying a company to take advantage of open source has nothing to do with embracing open source.
This purchase makes you decide whether to opt out of your existing Github use. Or at least worry whether its usability (on whatever dimensions matter to you) will decline.
That is a very interesting point actually. That Microsoft is a sponsor of the Linux foundation is not just a plus point in this discussion, but also a motivator for the Foundation to report positively.
I agree, I made a similar comment here. I think it lacks integrity for the foundation to make such a statement knowing Microsoft is one of their board members as well as being a Platinum member.
I like his good vibe about all of it, and I agree I love to see that MS is doing more moves into the right direction. However I feel we should not trust him too quickly. Every big company tries to claim they have changed, will change and are currently in a process of change. But in reality most companies stay stuck at exactly that point in time where they were most successful. that means Microsoft is likely stuck ~10 years go, where Windows XP was at its peak.
It's not just a CEO who can change that. It needs all kinds of changes on all kinds of levels. For instance if department leader's KPIs and bonus structure hasn't changed, they will continue to actively fight open source. Even if there is now a new, fancy department with even big names from open source communities, that doesn't mean all the other departments changed.
Also what happens to the devs who are there for 20+ years now, probably quite a few of them in senior dev and architect roles. Will they drop all that they've grown up with? Can Microsoft afford to let them go for big money and hire new, unknown people instead?
If they manage to get this github integration right, I may start to think about them in a positive fashion but until now there's too much doubt and too many things that might go wrong. Compared to the size of a huge corp we've only seen fluff up till now.
Every big company tries to claim they have changed, will change and are currently in a process of change.
This is insightful, and in addition to this, culture change can and does happen at companies.
Just because they're evil today, doesn't mean they'll be evil tomorrow.
Similarly, just because they're good today, doesn't mean they'll be good tomorrow.
We should always look with suspicion at megacorps acting with what appears to be outrageous altruism. Companies don't throw around $7.5 billion without expecting to profit from it.
> For instance if department leader's KPIs and bonus structure hasn't changed, they will continue to actively fight open source.
They did change, and quite radically when Kevin Turner (then COO) was ousted (or voluntary left, it's unclear).
> Also what happens to the devs who are there for 20+ years now
Today, the biggest focus for Microsoft is Azure. And incidentally Azure grew enormously under Satya, so they had to hire a lot of new people there. A lot of them wouldn't even have considered joining MS under Ballmer, and a lot of them were hired specifically for there knowledge of non-MS technologies.
Things might be different in older divisions, such as Windows, but at least in the division that now matter the most, the culture is dead-set on open source and the values that Satya promotes.
> But in reality most companies stay stuck at exactly that point in time where they were most successful
This doesn't really make sense. How did they get to be that successful? They must have changed something from an earlier point, when their most successful point was less successful.
Your claim is like saying "A companies stock is always worth less than its historical maximum". It's only true until there's a new maximum.
> Microsoft is likely stuck ~10 years go, where Windows XP was at its peak
I feel that they were like this during the Windows 8 era.
But I like to believe they had their wake-up call (the failure of Windows RT, of Windows Phone, the rise of macOS and iOS) to a point where they were ready to try something radical, and what we're seeing now is the result of those efforts.
Can't really write something on the Linux foundation that'd annoy a platinum partner though, can you? :)
Though I'm in the middle on this, I'll see what microsoft does with github. The company has shown a different approach to the 'old microsoft' but it's still a company with the aim of making a profit. Github was losing money IIRC and MSFT has a lot of data on people as it is. Github might be a good way to target devs for advertisements :)
I wonder how many companies have considered selecting GitHub as the place for their source code, wikis, process, issue tracking, etc but hesitated or went with another vendor simply because the financial future of GitHub was an open question. Now, with Microsoft making that question a moot point, I think a lot of companies will now make the move to GitHub knowing it will not go away.
Ironically... having Microsoft behind GitHub and being willing to lose money on the company forever could actually be the reasons it has a hope to turn a profit some day.
this has a huge spin/politics feel to it, when you get to "it used to be easy to make fun of Microsoft, but.. I have grown up"
I call BS -- it was very grown-up of Microsoft to abuse repeatedly their clients and partners, and it is just and right to call them out on it.. that one statement is obsequious whiteash, plain and simple.
From the OP: "Whether it’s an established company or startup that’s gained mass appeal like GitHub, GitLab or Stack Overflow"
Thanks for the recognition for GitLab! We hope that for many people that switched https://twitter.com/develosysadmine/status/10050613234058731... was the case: "For me, I already knew GitLab was better than GitHub in a variety of ways. Microsoft just gave me the slightest nudge to actually make the switch."
Something is missing from this reaction: AI.
MS is buying a privileged access to billions lines of code with their history and corrections. In 5-10Y times most code will be produced by AI and the simplest way to train a AI system is to to have access to data. That's what they bought, data. Unfortunately this is another step towards more concentration in IT...
It's not for sure but highly likely that Microsoft will do some things that are not desirable. From now on, should you believe trending repos are not filtered by Microsoft? Don't you think they might put some advertisement for their own projects / products? What will they do with the massive amount of data they have now access to, including private repositories?
Those saying there is no reason to worry are just hoping for big amount of luck. Yeah I hope so too, but let's face it, it's very unlikely they're not gonna do anything undesirable and only improve the platform.
> Most of the important projects on GitHub are licensed under an open source license, which addresses intellectual property ownership.
This can be tricky in a legally messed up environment. In US, courts sided with Oracle about copyrightability of APIs. And guess who supported Oracle in that dispute? Microsoft. So how should open source projects feel about it, especially when they let's say implement MS own APIs?
I think what I don't appreciate is how many people are trying to calm peoples fears about the acquisition.
Feels like a parent chiding a kid
I guess Github was in worse shape than they looked like on the outside. Happens; the fact that the 3 founders made a fortune off of this is unfortunate.
One of those founders stepped down and yet he still won.
It's just a game; wether you play blackjack or poker or big stakes with companies.
Pretty sure this will be the first change after the acquisition. Microsoft has to ease the path from checking in code to Github to building and deploying it on Azure.
I'm no MS lover; I've been off their products both at home and work for over 15+ years, at home since basically forever except for some apps that only ran on Windows.
The MS of now is a far difference MS a decade ago, even five years ago. Things change--sometimes people don't.
Personally I'm not vehemently against this takeover, like others are. That said, I'm not super enthusiastic about it either. I've seen MS acquisitions go both good and bad before, so I'll simply wait and see how it turns out before passing judgement.
Consider me neutral[1] at this point.
> Ah, a voice of reason
I'm not going to argue "reason" or not, but the Linux foundation is not impartial in these matters: Microsoft is a platinum Linux Foundation partner.
Someone might want to inform MS Legal dept that they work for a "far far far different" company than a decade ago, the MS legal team seems to have missed that memo
" I will own responsibility for some of that as I spent a good part of my career at the Linux Foundation poking fun at Microsoft (which, at times, prior management made way too easy). But times have changed and it’s time to recognize that we have all grown up – the industry, the open source community, even me."
What is this guy talking about? Maybe he's changed but Microsoft hasn't: they're still a company doing evil things on a large scale that simply sees more value (for them) increased FOSS support. I'll especially highlight the patent suits with them pulling billions of dollars from Android vendors despite them not contributing anything to Android. They were working on displacing it with Windows Phone. Yet, they use legal threats to pull hundreds of millions a year for their "inventions" on paper from those actually building things we want to buy.
EDIT: In case anyone wonders, I was hoping a company like Red Hat acquired them. One that is a bit less evil with more incentive to keep high investments in FOSS. Given the numbers involved, one can't hope for much more.
People relax. If M$ really does go Weyland-Yutani on us with GitHub we'll just move to another git hosting service and they'll be out 7.5B. Unfortunately for them as a company they need costumers to exist, and we are those costumers, so, we just have to keep an eye out for shady stuff and act on them. Like always.
Ahh yes, Jim Zemlin the man that famously Attends Linux conference using a apple mac Computer and not Linux.... (am sure that will soon be replaced with the Surface running Windows 10 with the "Linux Subsystem" ...)
The Linux Foundation... the Business Organization that rejected the individuals of the community and focus solely on its corporate sponsors one of the largest being Microsoft
It is not shocking that the Linux Foundation supports their Corporate Master Microsoft in their acquisition of Github.. To do otherwise would cost them many many thousands of dollars
[+] [-] netsharc|7 years ago|reply
Microsoft: embraces open source
Open-source developers: "They're trying to control us! They're trying to control us!".
[+] [-] mikece|7 years ago|reply
And yet, the hue and cry is "Unless you open source every byte of GitHub's code and infrastructure you're just evil monopolists trying to smother us!" Given all that Microsoft has done to embrace and support open source I think the onus is now on the Open Source community to justify their distrust of Microsoft because "Duh, it's Microsoft" simply doesn't fly as a legitimate argument anymore.
[+] [-] pizza234|7 years ago|reply
"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches"
Times have changed, however it's reasonable to question if the Microsoft DNA radically changed or "not really".
[+] [-] wdr1|7 years ago|reply
Oh please.
Microsoft has not embraced open source.
Is their web browser open source? No.
Is Word, Excel, or Powerpoint open source? No.
Do they even push for open standards of those products? No.
Is Windows open source? No.
Is the C# compiler open source? No.
Microsoft may have taken some positive steps to support Linux on Azure & other things -- things possibility necessitated by market demands -- as well some contributions to open source.
But to say they have embraced open source is patently false.
[+] [-] Sylos|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilovecaching|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] occams_chainsaw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pasbesoin|7 years ago|reply
You can opt in to using .NET.
This purchase makes you decide whether to opt out of your existing Github use. Or at least worry whether its usability (on whatever dimensions matter to you) will decline.
[+] [-] OnlyRepliesToBS|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] syshum|7 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] thezultimate|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] monoid|7 years ago|reply
It would be really weird to see anything but a positive reaction from a consortium which receives a substantial amount of money from Microsoft.
[+] [-] erikb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linuxftw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikb|7 years ago|reply
It's not just a CEO who can change that. It needs all kinds of changes on all kinds of levels. For instance if department leader's KPIs and bonus structure hasn't changed, they will continue to actively fight open source. Even if there is now a new, fancy department with even big names from open source communities, that doesn't mean all the other departments changed.
Also what happens to the devs who are there for 20+ years now, probably quite a few of them in senior dev and architect roles. Will they drop all that they've grown up with? Can Microsoft afford to let them go for big money and hire new, unknown people instead?
If they manage to get this github integration right, I may start to think about them in a positive fashion but until now there's too much doubt and too many things that might go wrong. Compared to the size of a huge corp we've only seen fluff up till now.
[+] [-] Teckla|7 years ago|reply
This is insightful, and in addition to this, culture change can and does happen at companies.
Just because they're evil today, doesn't mean they'll be evil tomorrow.
Similarly, just because they're good today, doesn't mean they'll be good tomorrow.
We should always look with suspicion at megacorps acting with what appears to be outrageous altruism. Companies don't throw around $7.5 billion without expecting to profit from it.
[+] [-] sailingparrot|7 years ago|reply
They did change, and quite radically when Kevin Turner (then COO) was ousted (or voluntary left, it's unclear).
> Also what happens to the devs who are there for 20+ years now
Today, the biggest focus for Microsoft is Azure. And incidentally Azure grew enormously under Satya, so they had to hire a lot of new people there. A lot of them wouldn't even have considered joining MS under Ballmer, and a lot of them were hired specifically for there knowledge of non-MS technologies. Things might be different in older divisions, such as Windows, but at least in the division that now matter the most, the culture is dead-set on open source and the values that Satya promotes.
[+] [-] recursive|7 years ago|reply
This doesn't really make sense. How did they get to be that successful? They must have changed something from an earlier point, when their most successful point was less successful.
Your claim is like saying "A companies stock is always worth less than its historical maximum". It's only true until there's a new maximum.
[+] [-] whatever_dude|7 years ago|reply
I feel that they were like this during the Windows 8 era.
But I like to believe they had their wake-up call (the failure of Windows RT, of Windows Phone, the rise of macOS and iOS) to a point where they were ready to try something radical, and what we're seeing now is the result of those efforts.
[+] [-] kragniz|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d3sandoval|7 years ago|reply
Looks like disclosure to me
[+] [-] erikb|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] geggam|7 years ago|reply
They get a write off and your support as well as the marketing bits.
[+] [-] linuxftw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Insanity|7 years ago|reply
Though I'm in the middle on this, I'll see what microsoft does with github. The company has shown a different approach to the 'old microsoft' but it's still a company with the aim of making a profit. Github was losing money IIRC and MSFT has a lot of data on people as it is. Github might be a good way to target devs for advertisements :)
[+] [-] Kipters|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fred_is_fred|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikece|7 years ago|reply
Ironically... having Microsoft behind GitHub and being willing to lose money on the company forever could actually be the reasons it has a hope to turn a profit some day.
[+] [-] mistrial9|7 years ago|reply
I call BS -- it was very grown-up of Microsoft to abuse repeatedly their clients and partners, and it is just and right to call them out on it.. that one statement is obsequious whiteash, plain and simple.
[+] [-] Teckla|7 years ago|reply
The author implies that if you have a healthy skepticism when megacorps throw around billions of dollars, you're not "grown up."
[+] [-] sytse|7 years ago|reply
Thanks for the recognition for GitLab! We hope that for many people that switched https://twitter.com/develosysadmine/status/10050613234058731... was the case: "For me, I already knew GitLab was better than GitHub in a variety of ways. Microsoft just gave me the slightest nudge to actually make the switch."
[+] [-] DannyB2|7 years ago|reply
Acquired might be replaced with other euphemisms like "joined" or "became a member of".
[+] [-] ablutop|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeandejean|7 years ago|reply
Those saying there is no reason to worry are just hoping for big amount of luck. Yeah I hope so too, but let's face it, it's very unlikely they're not gonna do anything undesirable and only improve the platform.
[+] [-] shmerl|7 years ago|reply
This can be tricky in a legally messed up environment. In US, courts sided with Oracle about copyrightability of APIs. And guess who supported Oracle in that dispute? Microsoft. So how should open source projects feel about it, especially when they let's say implement MS own APIs?
[+] [-] damm|7 years ago|reply
Feels like a parent chiding a kid
I guess Github was in worse shape than they looked like on the outside. Happens; the fact that the 3 founders made a fortune off of this is unfortunate.
One of those founders stepped down and yet he still won.
It's just a game; wether you play blackjack or poker or big stakes with companies.
[+] [-] kyleperik|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tvirelli|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sethgecko|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sailingparrot|7 years ago|reply
However the opposite might very well happen: Use your GitHub account to sign into MS other services.
[+] [-] petilon|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davelnewton|7 years ago|reply
I'm no MS lover; I've been off their products both at home and work for over 15+ years, at home since basically forever except for some apps that only ran on Windows.
The MS of now is a far difference MS a decade ago, even five years ago. Things change--sometimes people don't.
[+] [-] josteink|7 years ago|reply
Personally I'm not vehemently against this takeover, like others are. That said, I'm not super enthusiastic about it either. I've seen MS acquisitions go both good and bad before, so I'll simply wait and see how it turns out before passing judgement.
Consider me neutral[1] at this point.
> Ah, a voice of reason
I'm not going to argue "reason" or not, but the Linux foundation is not impartial in these matters: Microsoft is a platinum Linux Foundation partner.
They're obviously going to be biased.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk1dd1D2Kts
[+] [-] syshum|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] some_account|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickpsecurity|7 years ago|reply
What is this guy talking about? Maybe he's changed but Microsoft hasn't: they're still a company doing evil things on a large scale that simply sees more value (for them) increased FOSS support. I'll especially highlight the patent suits with them pulling billions of dollars from Android vendors despite them not contributing anything to Android. They were working on displacing it with Windows Phone. Yet, they use legal threats to pull hundreds of millions a year for their "inventions" on paper from those actually building things we want to buy.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/ewanspence/2015/11/01/microsoft...
Both stevelord and I had a few more examples at the link below where we last discussed it:
https://lobste.rs/s/zknzmj/microsoft_acquire_github_for_7_5_...
EDIT: In case anyone wonders, I was hoping a company like Red Hat acquired them. One that is a bit less evil with more incentive to keep high investments in FOSS. Given the numbers involved, one can't hope for much more.
[+] [-] OptionX|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] linuxftw|7 years ago|reply
I find this article distasteful and lacking integrity.
[+] [-] syshum|7 years ago|reply
The Linux Foundation... the Business Organization that rejected the individuals of the community and focus solely on its corporate sponsors one of the largest being Microsoft
It is not shocking that the Linux Foundation supports their Corporate Master Microsoft in their acquisition of Github.. To do otherwise would cost them many many thousands of dollars