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Comment by LeanderK | Hacker News Reader

I am worried that a company as important to the open-source community as github is now owned by one of the major players. I think it really impacts the neutrality of github. If I would compete with microsoft in a certain space, I would really think twice about relying on github.

Also, this monopolization is driving me mad.

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I could see developers ditching GitHub with the acquisition for a perceived conflict of interest. It's really easy to change your remote.

I see a potentially big market opportunity for anyone who wants to compete in the space now.

Changing the remote doesn't migrate anything in the issue tracker, merge requests, webhooks, pages or wiki

It wouldn't be seamless. But it wouldn't be difficult for a competitor to create a "competitor import" feature that moved over most of it in a few clicks.

It's possible, but I think it's a stretch to say it "wouldn't be difficult."

Migrating from GitHub to GitLab

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYOXuOg9tQI

this adresses some of the issues.

It doesn't solve the number one issue: External references to your project will all still point to github.com since that's where the project homepage (aka README.md) is.

If GitHub does get sold to MS and I end up moving to GitLab, I'll probably push one last commit to the GitHub repo adding a header saying the project has moved, with a link to the GitLab repo. It's not perfect, but it wouldn't be too bad.

Until MSFT/GitHub does what Sourceforge.net did - taking over project sites from projects which moved away and adding malware (adware/spyware) into those ;)

(I believe with all critique on Microsoft they aren't as bad, but want to exemplarize the risk)

This would be a great way for them to accelerate migration away from Github.

It might just be cleaner to close the github repo and when other projects find a 404 where it used to be, they'll have to use super detective skills (i.e. Google it) to find the project's new home. And if they can't find it that way, then nothing of value was lost. (Yes, yes, I know it's more nuanced than that, but if you wanted permanence, you'd be hosting on your own domain, right?)

Actually, the #1 issue is that everyone can easily file an issue/contribute in other ways at Github without having to create another account to do so.

You can sign in with your Github account to gitlab.com.

I expect Google could be convinced to accept certain files or metadata in a README as equivalent to a 301 permanent redirect, meaning searches will remain effective. That would account for a lot, especially if Chrome begins to honour it.

I seem to remember that under the GDPR, vendors have to make data exportable. I wonder if people could use that for GitHub issues and the Wiki.

GitHub pages is super easy to move except for getting users to know the new domain.

The GDPR only applies to personal data, which won't be most of the content on GitHub.

Anyway, there are APIs which one can use to export issues.

Personal data is extremely broad and is any data that can be identified to an individual. If my photos are Facebook are personal data, then so is my code on GitHub (even if some people are professional photographers or programmers).

This is also why I put my documentation in markdown files in the repo instead of using the Github wiki. I knew it would save me hassle later.

Wikis on Github are cloneable as normal repos: just use project.wiki.git instead of project.git in the clone URL.

Still one step too much making it harder to migrate. Should've been a directory in a repo, default to `wiki` or whatever and configurable to something else.

that leads to problems with access control, though.

This means everybody linking to your docs will link to GitHub, thus you have a hard time moving ;)

As opposed to linking to GP's GitHub Wiki?

Agreed on both points. The shift will bring a lot of opportunity to build a more decentralized repo base. I think something like (Keybase)[http://keybase.io] might be interesting.

Only way to disrupt monopoly is to use something else. I am going to migrate all my projects from GitHub. Be an example you want the world to be.

I'd recommend running your own FossilSCM server. It supports full code repo, wiki, bugtracking, and more. And it's free software to boot.

I'm looking to see if it's feasible to write a github->fossil layer to make it easy for programmers to dump to local. Right now, Git is easy to dump... but those issues and wiki support isnt dumpable yet..

if you mean dump from GH the wiki is a separate git repo. just clone <our_project>.wiki.git instead of <our_project>.git

Unfortunately, that misses the bulk of user communications. Those bug reports and issues are also tremendously important. And since they link back to commits, its essential to obtain that history as well and maintain the appropriate link between the 2.

Else, changes were made for "reasons", and those justifications are effectively lost.

This was the main reason I started developing https://sit.fyi. It allows you to carry issues, discussions, patches as files (for example, in a git repo) in a decentralized way and has a tool that allows to import from GitHub

If there are other things to use, it isn't much of a monopoly.

They weren't profitable. So the problem perhaps is these cool free tools that some people rely on just don't have a clear way to make money.

How profitable would they be if they didn’t pursue “growth at all costs” and built GitHub with a small and focused team like Stack Overflow or WhatsApp?

As a startup, worrying about competition from Microsoft hasn't been a big deal for almost a decade. I would be more worried about Facebook, Amazon, and Google.

the history of Microsoft is the reason why we all reacting this way. But encouraged by the move they made lately coming into Linux, even though other players have forced their hand

Microsoft has slain giants before. They will try to do it again. No one is too big to fail.

Except HSBC.

Yes, particularly because of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

As far as I can tell, today's MS is very aware of the brand problem they created for themselves and have been working hard to fix it.

A recent changelog episode addresses this exact issue:https://changelog.com/podcast/298#transcript-78

I would be as worried if it was AWS or Google.

Github should remain a neutral ground in my opinion.

It already was Google. Remember Google Code?

No, Google code was a failed attempt at a code hosting service from Google.

They failed to make it attractive to other developers.

I don't remember the name, but MS tried for a year or two to create another competing hosting platform if I recall correctly, and they also failed.

You are probably thinking of Codeplex: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CodePlex

Codeplex

> I would be as worried if it was AWS or Google.

Good. Need more people like you.

Why did the F/OSS community put all their eggs in one basket? Hell a lot of big companies did also. I wonder how they're going to react to this?

Exactly. Code.google.com even provided links for porting repos to GH. Will Google revive it's own code repository in light of this move?

Probably because its fairly low-risk. I have ~270 Github repos. About a year ago I made a ~5 line Python script that added Gitlab as another origin to each repo. I still use (used) Gitlab as my main host, I'm a paying customer - but for me to flick over to Gitlab is a one-liner.

Simple answer: GitHub is good to use

I'm all for FOSS (Git webgui) solutions, but they were absolutely not competitive until recently. Even now, with less trust, the social effect and the lack of need of maintenance and setup is attractive.

> monopolization

Conglomeration, unless you hated github before which I wouldn't object too.

I agree with you anyway.

Well, Google recently also purchased Kaggle, another major open-source repository for code. It hasn't really changed anything for now, but Microsoft's purchase will be in the same vein. I think that Microsoft's contribution to the open-source community in the last few years kind of makes sense for why they are purchasing it, just like Google purchased Kaggle because of their contribution to ML.

Your dream of “neutral” VCS is misfounded. Websites like GitHub are massive bandwidth and storage hogs and needs huge cash burn just for dev ops. Unfortunately they can’t be reasonably profitable as well because revenue sources are rather tiny. This means every vcs company out there offering free for all plan is bound to be sold or go bankrupt.

For GitHub I would have wished Google bought them because there is huge synergy both ways. With Microsoft, eventually some CVP there will realize that there is no profitability and they will leave it to rot.

Why is it important? What are you relying on? It's just git. Dozens of other services that do the same thing, many that arent losing money every year.

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