Microsoft buys GitHub (CONFIRMED)

[ataradov]

Microsoft wasn't even going to bother with skype for linux,

Exactly. What makes you think that they will bother with open project on GitHub? Especially competing ones?

but a patch fixing sounds like problem solved.

That is just some sed script that replaces a couple bytes in the binary, essentially removing a check for a version or something like that. They broke it intentionally go make users move to their new bloated version.

I don't use or like skype and if you don't like it you shouldn't use it either.

I'd be glad to not use anything Microsoft, but there is a number of people that I want to talk to only available on Skype.

[maginnovision]

Wait, so they have a version that works you just refuse to use it? That's a personal problem. I'm not sure what you mean with the first point though. They have alot of open source projects on github.

[ataradov]

Wait, so they have a version that works you just refuse to use it? That's a personal problem. I'm not sure what you mean with the first point though.

The "new version" is just a web page packaged with a browser. It barely works and can't do video calls. That's the basic pattern with Microsoft - as time goes on, the software becomes less functional  and more bloated at the same time.

[maginnovision]

I think that's how most versions of everything are going. Dont bother creating a real app just something for a browser you can repackage in an executable file. They can rely alot more on various toolkits to do alot of work rather than doing it themselves. I think there are enough developers like me around, linux and windows, that there is no reason to kill github support considering it'll likely be just maintenance releases unless they add features.

Worst case, windows or linux, you can get just about anything to work with a vm.

[james_s]

The trend throughout the software industry is heading more and more toward hack something together and ship it now, fix it "later", relying on the end users for QA. It's hard to pick on a specific company here because they pretty much ALL are doing something like this now. It gets called "Agile" but in practice it seems most places pick and choose a few aspects of the Agile process, skip the hard parts and slap that name on whatever process they end up with. There is so much focus on the "minimum viable product" which as a customer sucks because I don't want to buy the minimum viable product, let me know when you have a finished product and I'll consider it. Not that software is ever completely finished, but there is a point where all the show stopper bugs have been fixed, all the advertised features are present, and it is generally fit for purpose.

Frequent updates are touted as a feature, but most of the time it seems the bulk of these updates are things that should have been done before it ever went out the door.

[Marco]

I doubt Microsoft is going to do anything intentionally evil, apart from datamining people. I don't see how they are ever going to recoup that money though, that's just ludicrous.

[ataradov]

I doubt Microsoft is going to do anything intentionally evil

They won't do anything intentional. The problem is that their view of "good" is generally indistinguishable from what normal people see as evil.  Next thing you know, you are struggling to postpone updates and disable Cortana while using Edge.

[langwadt]

Wait, so they have a version that works you just refuse to use it? That's a personal problem. I'm not sure what you mean with the first point though.

The "new version" is just a web page packaged with a browser. It barely works and can't do video calls. That's the basic pattern with Microsoft - as time goes on, the software becomes less functional  and more bloated at the same time.

I don't remember doing anything special to run skype on ubuntu and video works

[ataradov]

I don't remember doing anything special to run skype on ubuntu and video works

It is a reasonably recent update (2-3 months, maybe).

[carljrb]

at this point I'm stuck on the Windows 7 sinking ship watching my options blip out

Same here Windows 10 is a *complete* disaster and it's only getting worse, but there's no real alternatives for a huge amount of Windows-only software.

Also, goodbye github. We've already been using gitlab at work for sometime (self-hosted VM), so it's the obvious choice for me.

[maginnovision]

at this point I'm stuck on the Windows 7 sinking ship watching my options blip out

Same here Windows 10 is a *complete* disaster and it's only getting worse, but there's no real alternatives for a huge amount of Windows-only software.

Also, goodbye github. We've already been using gitlab at work for sometime (self-hosted VM), so it's the obvious choice for me.

I don't know how it's a disaster but I suppose if that's how you see it. I've always used "Pro" windows versions for HW/SW development computers and this time around it keeps you from forced updates which seems to be linux peoples biggest issue. Just about everything people consider "the big problem" is easy to toggle. There is alot of misinformation out there but I generally let people stick to their incorrect facts.

I think it's sort of laughable the number of people on twitter claiming this is the end of github.

I doubt Microsoft is going to do anything intentionally evil, apart from datamining people. I don't see how they are ever going to recoup that money though, that's just ludicrous.

Still won't be bad as Nokia. At least it's still something people want and something they use themselves.

[Mr. Scram]

For the love of  Darwin, can we have one thread without people bawling their eyes out about how evil Microsoft is or how they are ruining Windows with 10? Regardless of how true it is, the incessant nagging is grating.

[timelessbeing]

So you clicked on a topic which is about Microsoft, and you're mad that people are talking about it. 

[Mr. Scram]

So you clicked on a topic which is about Microsoft, and you're mad that people are talking about it. 

You know perfectly well that's not what I said. I'm in the mood to wrestle a troll today.

[bd139]

As humans we reserve our right to bitch about everything 

[timelessbeing]

You said

can we have one thread without people bawling their eyes out about how evil Microsoft is

It's a topic about Microsoft acquiring a website based on open source software. Did I miss something?

[ataradov]

I migrated one of my private projects to GitLab, and I like it more than GitHub. So that problem is solved. GitHub has ease of discovery going for it, but if more people move to GitLab, it will be fine too.

[borjam]

I don't think it's really bad at all.

Note that I can't stand using Windows for a minute, I can get violent and all. I've always worked on Unix systems except for software development I had to do in OS/2 in the early 90's.

That said, Microsoft today is a really different company from the f**g retards they were in the past. No more bullying trying to force their crap down your throat. No more sabotaging of "alternative operating systems ("alternative" in their wishful "Just Windows™" universe). They are even contributing to Linux and FreeBSD so that it runs smoothly on Azure.

Now I even have a piece of Microsoft software (Visual Code) and I'm reasonably happy with it. Some friends said that hell froze below 0 K, but well, Microsoft has changed a lot.

Lately they are being reasonably good citizens. So I wouldn't worry. Nowadays I would trust them much better than Google.

[bd139]

Really though, for private projects, do you even need gitlab or github? I only use it as a convenience when I have to collaborate on a project with non technical users. Technical users, we run a mailing list and mail patches to it. Patch master has the job of assembling it into a product / project and gating it into the canonical published repository. This is actually how git is supposed to work in theory.

A git repo will quite happily work for a single or multiple users without ever even having a central point.

Also there are better VCS out there which handle all the meta-information around the code: http://fossil-scm.org/

[ataradov]

I use private repos for easy deployment on multiple machines. Additional backup does not hurt either.

[bd139]

Backup only backs up the remote repo state, not the local one. Completely separate problem. If you have stashed changes, private branches, spikes etc then you don't gain anything from pushing master or feature branches to another node. Need to back up locally as well.

Deployments; push the branch to the deployment machine and add a hook to do the deployment.

I might start a git re-education programme on the Internet. The centralisation is just so wrong.

[Mr. Scram]

It's a topic about Microsoft acquiring a website based on open source software. Did I miss something?

Nobody's biting the second time either. Move along.

[Nominal Animal]

This reminds me of 2010, when Stephen Elop was hired as the CEO of Nokia. Us Linux folks knew immediately that based on his past actions at Microsoft, Nokia's Linux development would be killed, Nokia would move to Windows Phones, and because they won't sell (Microsoft has only ever been able to compete as a monopoly), eventually Nokia would be in such a bad state Microsoft would buy it. Everyone called us conspiracy mongers, tinfoil hat long-haired smellies, and whatnot. Yet, we were right, on every single point. Even if "analysts" afterwards claimed that no-one could have predicted it..

It is not because there was a conspiracy or anything, it was because that is the way Microsoft (and officers hired by Microsoft, pun intended) operates.  Whatever will become of Github, it will be twisted just like everything else Microsoft acquires.  Ignoring the past behaviour of the company is just sheer idiocy.

If you're a happy Microsoft customer, then good for ya; you probably won't be burned by this.  Everyone else should consider the purchase price, past Microsoft behaviour, and draw their own conclusions.

[bd139]

Actually I don't think they genuinely did that one on purpose. The windows phones were pretty good to start with. I had a Lumia 710 and it was at the time the best handset I had used and to this day one of the finest bits of kit there ever was.

The problem with MSFT is they built the original codebase on Zune / Windows CE which was circling the drain already. This happened because MinWin (Windows NT refactor) was late because it was harder than it looked. They decided to move it over to Windows NT after that but this meant a rewrite and porting of a large quantity of apps. Also they abandoned the original hardware and the users with it. That and the subsequent push for "windows 10 on everything" and their inability to carry out the job just buried it further as everyone was fed up of the poor management.

They could have won with windows phone. It was cheaper, more reliable and had a better user experience than all competitors but as usual with microsoft, they fucked up the architecture, roadmap and feature set too many times.

Microsoft are schitzophrenic and run at a crazy idea velocity. That's the biggest risk. One minute they're doing X, then you're behind the curve before you've even finished porting everything to X because Y just came out and deprecated X and they're already blogging about Z.

What they do is pretty good but you can't rely on it either staying that way or actually getting far enough through a product lifecycle to fix all the bugs and not fuck you over.

Also another killer for me is I might as well burn what I know today because tomorrow it'll be worth nothing. I got good at C, really good, and that knowledge has taken me through many projects. You can't get good with their frameworks or applications because they change faster than you can get good at them.

Edit: applying this to github. Watch it turn into a moving target that no one can hit, then die.

[RoGeorge]

Microsoft buys GitHub will be bad for everybody, except maybe for Microsoft.

It will be bad even for the Git itself, because Microsoft always EEE.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish